Western Digital 16TB WD Red Pro NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD - 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, CMR, 256 MB Cache, 3.5 - WD161KFGX

WD Red drives are no stranger to me. I own many of these drives and have never had any issues, until this 20tb version. This drive was very noisy. Despite being formatted but literally empty this drive spins up and down all the time and had a weird vibration noise to it - in a grindy sort of way. None of my other red drives, even after years of service have this issue. Perhaps I got a bad one...

I purchased a pair of these on Black Friday 2021 well in advance of when I would actually need to use them. They sat on my shelf unopened in their original boxes for over 3 months. When I went to install and use them, one drive was OK. (I have a pair of media servers with 24 large drives in them) The other drive was riddled with errors, would not format and made any machine it was connected to unstable. This is a BRAND NEW DRIVE WITH ZERO HOURS ON IT!!! Because of my own stupidity I did not test them when I got them. Now for that mistake I can only get my new drive replaced with a used refurbished drive. It gets worse. I have had TREMENDOUS trouble getting into my Western Digital account and receiving information from Western Digital. I guess Western Digital is an Indian or Pakistan company. I cannot understand these people. I have spent days and days and more days on the phone just trying to get an RMA. I sent the drive to California where it was received and has sat for 4 weeks. Western Digital does not even show they received my drive yet and that they are still waiting for it. I called them on the phone and they looked it up and promised to update things. Nothing has happened in a further 2 weeks. It is my conclusion that Western Digital warranties are worthless. I wasted $400 on one of drives and the alternative drive company is even worst than this.

I BOUGHT 2 HARD DRIVES FROM NEW EGG AND AFTER SEVERAL DAYS OF TESTING WITH QNAP; THEY WERE DEEMED, DEFECTIVE OK......THAT HAPPENS. BUT I HAD INSTALLED THESE INTO A NAS AND HAD TAKEN OVER 2 WEEKS GOING BACK AND FORTH WITH QNAP IN MY SPARE TIME TO DIAGNOSE THE HARD DRIVES. NEW EGG WILL NOT TAKE THEM BACK BECAUSE I DO NOT HAVE THE ORIGINAL PACKAGING. I HAD PACKAGING FOR 2 OTHER HARD DRIVES (BLACK). SAME SIZE BOX ETC. ETC. WILL NOT TAKE BACK AND GIVE NEW ONES!!!! WHAT IF THESE WERE IN THE NAS FOR A YEAR? AM I SUPPOSED TO KEEP THE BOXES FOR THE HARD DRIVES UNTIL THE DAY I THROW THEM OUT? DOES NEW EGG THINK I AM INCAPABLE OF PACKAGING UP 2 HARD DRIVES SAFELY? I WAS REFERRED TO WESTERN DIGITAL TO GET REPLACEMENTS. THIS MEANT OPENING AN ACCOUNT AND SENDING THE HARD DRIVES TO THEM AND WAITING FOR REPLACEMENTS........WHICH CAME AND DO WORK. THE POINT IS, THAT TOOK ANOTHER 2 AND A HALF WEEKS. SO FROM THE ORIGINAL PURCHASE OF DEFECTIVES UNTIL I HAVE WORKING HARD DRIVES TOOK OVER A MONTH. ALL THIS FOR 2 DEFECTIVE HARD DRIVES THAT WERE ROUGHLY 2 WEEKS OLD. NEVER AGAIN NEW EGG!!!!

I purchased the 4T version for home PC with a windows operating system. I need this particular HDD because it is listed 7200RPM. I didnt meet any challenge when I installed other WD hard drives. It involved only a few clicks when I switched from WD 1T to 2T months ago, for example. I simply inserted the new disk into a USB case and cloned the entire disk in Minitool participation and got the job done. I was not lucky with this disk. It gave me so much trouble and wasted my two days to figure this out. First, sector size was different from my old 2t WD Blue drive thus I couldnt clone it directly. Because the target drive was not the main OS drive so I decided to simply copy all the folders into the new HDD and switch the two. Then I used Minitool to format it. It refused the command, software reported error. I then tried all other software including the one recommended on WD website (Acronis True Image for Western Digital). I finally got it done by using EaseUS. I formatted it and copied all folders from the old disk and switched it with the old internal disk. When I opened windows, none of the partitions created in EaseUS showed up. HDD showed up in BIOS menu so I knew it was there. I googled answer to this problem, read all articles to educate myself. Checked Manage disk in OS and realized one of the partitions was listed as GPT protective partition. I then followed the article published on Seagate website (ironic) and cleaned the entire disk using diskpat command. All data were removed. I returned to day 1. If your partition software doesnt work in Windows, check whether this disk is GPT protective in disk management. Dont repeat my mistake. I am glad I didnt do anything harmful to the old drive thus I spent the second day repeating what I did before, copy and paste. Now the new drive works and it works faster than old WD blue 2T. It is quite noisy but not scary. I am satisfied with the product so far but I hope WD can improve the product to meet various needs from customers. I am not a tech guy but switching HDD shouldnt be so difficult and time-consuming, thus I removed one star (should have been two stars when I felt frustrated yesterday).

I purchased 5 18TB drives and have only received 3 so far. One was a 6TB drive that was mislabeled on the unopened package. I got a replacement and it was the proper size drive, but was DOA. The two drives that have worked are running great. I was able to backup just over 20TB between them and the speeds have been as expected.

Its huge and reliable. Plugged into my 120tb array like expected and ran a unRAID preclear like a champ. Now its humming along in my unRAID array

Bought four to add to my Synology NAS. Its only rated up to 14TB, but these worked just fine. No issues so far, but its been less than a week.

Affordable Price

Ordered 6 6TB drives for a new QNAP NAS. So far they are performing very well. Unfortunately Amazon shipped the drives loose in a large box with only a bunch of air pillow packing filled in on top. Drives were in sealed mylar, but as can be seen in damaged mylar, the drives were banging around while the box was being shipped. installed them and was able to get the NAS online, but one drive immediately started giving bad block errors, is going back for replacement.

I recommend to buy this. Do not see the negative comments, few might have issues and few people dont know how to use it. It is silent and functions very smooth