Western Digital 4TB WD Black Performance Internal Hard Drive HDD - 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 256 MB Cache, 3.5 - WD4005FZBX

Because it took five months to buy all the parts I needed for my new computer, and I bought this hard drive first, I did not know that this was a dead hard drive until a few days ago. And of course, Amazon.com only gives customers 30 days to return items, not five months. So now I am stuck going through the WD support site to get a replacement drive. When, and if, I get a working replacement HDD, I will either update this post, or give a new review of this product. MACJR Update: The replacement drive arrived a few days ago, from WD. The HDD itself is very nice, and by itself, would rate 5 stars. The reason I only give this drive 3 stars is because of WD support. The anger and irritation I am feeling at WD right now should have this drive rated at one star, but as I said, the drive is actually very nice. Warning: If you are a Windows 10 user, and you buy a brand new WD drive (although I hear Seagate has, or had, this same issue), the TrueImage software found at the WD support site WILL NOT clone a good copy of Windows 10 to the new drive! The software maker is more than happy to sell you their own full version of the software, with all kinds of extras (that I did not want of need) for a rather steep price for a program an average user would seldom need. That software is priced out of my range right now. I just spent a small fortune, on my budget, building a new PC, there is no extra to throw away on a software package that only has one feature I needed. Warning 2: Be careful about the low cost and freeware options you will find in a search for HDD drive cloning software. Most of it is pure junk, that will not even work, for one reason, or another (and may get you on a SPAM list in some cases, if you give them your e-mail address). On the second day of searching, I finally found software that offered a free version of their software that would allow me to clone a Windows 10 HDD. Search for DriveClone, if you find yourself in the same situation as I was in. It worked. I am still angry at WD, even more so after trying to tell them I found a solution, only to have their support form not work for me today. I just wanted to tell them the I finally got the blasted drive up and running with a cloned copy of Windows 10, from my old drive, and that I did not need the RMA they sent me, that I did not ask for. I am also still angry at Acronis, the makers of the OEM versions of the software that WD and Seagate offer at their support sites. The full version of their software is too expensive for the average person to justify, and most of us would only rarely need it. Acronis does offer a free trial version, but the catch is that the cloning tool is disabled in the trial version. Bleep, bleepity, bleep,,, and so on. Done ranting now. MACJR

I have my OS on an SSD and files (media, docs, music) on an HDD. This solution allows fast boot times, keeps my costs low, and allows me to work on OS and data separately - whether it is to clean reinstall Windows every year or so, or to replace the HDD with a larger one. Was running out of space on a 1.8 TB Seagate, and decided to jump on this WD Black 6TB. Replacement was relatively easy. I had run out of SATA cables / power cables on my setup. Opened up the ones connected to the DVD drive and plugged this drive in. The first one seemed to be a DoA - did not spin up. Amazon was great as usual and shipped the replacement super quick. The second one worked great. Since this is greater than 2TB, it was not recognized readily by Windows 10. I had to go into My Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management, set up the volume, and make it online. I installed Clonezilla on USB, rebooted using the USB, and followed through with the instructions to clone my existing HDD into the new one. After cloning with CloneZilla, it is important to unplug the old drive before rebooting - since it will copy the same drive ID to the new drive, and the OS will get confused seeing 2 drives with the same ID. That done, reboot was complete. Since CloneZilla clones like for like, I could only see 1.8 TB of the drive. Another visit to the same My Computer -> Manage -> Disk Management, clicking on Actions -> Rescan disks, and I was able to see the rest of the 6TB as unallocated. It was easy to extend the online volume over the entire disk to get to see the entire 6TB. Performance numbers from Crystal Disk Mark are attached as a screenshot. Please note that I reduced the test to 100MB instead of 1GB.

Received them, tested them all night, put them to work the next day, still running; much quieter than I thought theyd be. Pleasantly surprised, thanks!

No tuve ningún problema, lo sigo usando hasta ahora, principalmente para videojuegos

I am using this hard drive to play FLAC and WAV files on a KDlinks A400 media player. I consider myself to be something of an audiophile and I love good quality audio. The hard drive that I had been using prior to purchasing this WD Black was the Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM006 (A 2TB hard drive). The Seagate was solid and reliable for roughly two years and I had no complaints. The reason I decided to upgrade to the WD Black 6TB hard was because it was specifically made for multimedia and I wanted to ensure I was futureproof with regards to available hard drive space, so I decided to splurge on the WD Black. When I initially installed the hard drive in my A400, I was disappointed, because the sound was bright and shrill sounding. However, I heard all sorts of detail in my music that I never heard before and overall, the volume was louder as opposed to how the Seagate sounded, so I was a bit conflicted. I had to change the settings on my receiver (Pioneer SC-79) to try to remove that bright and shrill sound. There were a few factory settings on the receiver (Upsampling, Hi-bit32 are what I remember) that I had to turn off or to the lowest setting because they were processing the sound and making it sound artificial along with it sounding bright and shrill. These changes made it sound better, but it was still bright and shrill. I was really disappointed in the WD Black, but I remembered that some electronics require a break in (especially for audio purposes), so instead of giving up and returning the hard drive I figured Id keep it and hope that it would break in. After about 90 days (not 90 days straight without shutting it off, but just playing it whenever I had time to listen to music or wanted music playing in the background), I noticed a magical thing. One morning, I sat down and turned it on and I noticed for a few hours that I did not get up because my music was sounding especially good. My music was extremely clear, the music had excellent detail (far more than the Seagate) and the volume was louder than the Seagate. The sound coming out of my speakers was something I was not prepared for (in a good way). I figured maybe I was just in some sort of a good mood and wanted to listen to music. Well, I made it a point to turn on my system for the next few days as time permitted and it sounded so much better (as opposed to Day 1) to the point of not wanting to get up and move on with my day. Another observation I noticed after the break-in is that the music has a darker background. its hard to describe what I mean but think about it like this. If you know what white noise is in the background, this hard drive seems to deliver less of that sort of sound. You hear more of the artist and instrumentation. It even made the difference between FLAC files and WAV files less pronounced. What I mean by this is that some albums I have ripped in both FLAC and WAV. WAV is the absolute best sound (between the two), but FLAC is close. it was far more noticeable on the Seagate drive, but less noticeable on this WD Black. In closing this review, if anyone is buying this for audio purposes, I suggest exercising some patience with the break in and if you are using a receiver, turn off anything that is processing the sound (similar to what I mentioned above). The audio output from this hard drive is pure. Read the owners manual and find any audio processing settings that are turned on as a default. There may be some things you leave on and you may also have to do some EQ adjustments, bass, treble, etc. but the result is well worth it. Exercise some patience with your receiver and you will be rewarded. As for my A400, there are some settings on that for optimal audio output that Ill be covering in my updated review on that whenever I get around to it. It is seriously a good piece for music. I did NOT expect anything special from a higher end hard drive other than available storage space, but I have been pleasantly surprised and I no longer regret my purchase as I did on Day 1. I highly recommend this hard drive for audio purposes. in fact, I cannot recommend it enough. Hope this helps with your purchase decision.

WD drives do not exhibit the HD having to go to the zero stop/HOME on the drive due to losing track of cylinder position. That is what the frequent Knocking sound is even when the drive is Idle. The drive will work BUT is defective. Seagates lose the cylinder position and have to go out to the zero stop position then count back in to where they were supposed to be. I have observed this problem since the 1990s and just had it with a 16TB drive I sent back. I should have known better!

I bought this drive before I moved into my new home. My PC is used for work, gaming, and anything else. Its been on 24/7 since I moved, with few exceptions. My WD Black drive is still going strong.

i get decent performance from this hard drive but at times it can be noisy but most of the time its quiet good harddrive for the value

First of these drives, very recently, was a 6TB. It was incredibly fast (~200ish MB avg) versus my other drives and quite quiet. It did click when writing data, but not very loud. I just got another 8TB and it spun the platters up to take off speed, and slowed down the computer post speed (must have had problems recognizing drive), so obviously something very wrong. Amazon is replacing (will update when received, but Amazon takes 2 weeks to ship replacement somehow now) But...for those saying this is loud, if it sounds like a crazy spinning wheel of death, its broken!...it shouldnt be louder than most case fans... I cant hear my 6TB over the fans (which are very quiet) when the case is closed. Just wanted to point out that some of these loud issues may be bad drives...I had never seen a drive try to take off with its platter spinning like the bad 8TB drive.

Ive been using WD hds since the early 90s and theyve been consistently reliable for me, more so than their peers, which I why I tend to gravitate towards them when buying hds. To be honest its been years since Ive bought one since my pc is all SSD or at least it was until I installed this drive. Previously my fastest hd was a wd velociraptor but this one is very fast for a mechanical drive. Id hoped that the Seagate hamr drives would be available to the public by now but alas enterprise customers only. I needed large capacity storage and a 4tb ssd is $600 so this was a happy medium that I could live with. I have included my crystaldiskinfo drive test so you can see my throughput. My system is an AMD X570 with a R9 3900X that was using a crucial mx500 2tb sata ssd for storage but its just not enough room for my 4k videos. I dont hear much drive noise when its active but then again my Cooler Master HAF932 case is loaded with fans and I tend to hear my gpu and aio fans above everything else so they could be drowning it out. Bottom line is that if you need a new hd this one would not disappoint you for a mechanical drive. I keep my games on my ssds so I cannot comment on things like loading times from them but you see the drive test so you know what Im getting out of it.