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

i have ordered two of these and use both for external backup. the first one worked so well i ordered another. both are housed in the RSHTECH Hard Drive Enclosure. yes, they come unformatted. install the drive in an enclosure of choice and connect to computer then in windows 10 pro, right click on start menu and click disk management; look for the drive that is indicated as unallocated and not formated. right click in that stippled space and follow instructions to format. honestly, i already forgot how to do it beyond this point but instructions to use disk management to format a new drive abound on the net. the trick to remember: above 2tb a different formatting system has to be used. not a big deal but this product 100% has to be formatted. regarding the discussion of wd or another brand - at the end of the day i went with wd for their reputation and because i have not had problems with them previously. regarding the black level of the product - it has the specs i want for my application at this memory size which is speed and cache. i am reluctant to go with a larger size hd preferring 2 smaller sizes such that in case of failure not all my eggs are in one basket. i also use the cloud for storage and have other items dispersed in dual backup amongst various ssds and memory sticks - my conclusion being one can never be too cautious about having multiple copies of saved files in the digital paperless world. i always plug in thru a surge protector and manually turn off when not in use. so far so good with wd and i will continue to buy again from them; fyi, they now own sansdisk which is another product line that has performed well for me over the years.

5/23/14 This WD Black 1TB is used as my primary data drive. I use a Kingston SSD as my O.S. / application drive. Win7 volume creation and format went without a hitch. The xfer of ~500GB data from my WD Red drive to this new WD Black drive went smoothly. This new Black drive has much faster read speed and very respectable write speed compared to other 7200rpm SATA drives I have used thus far. I also noticed that when I booted to win7 from it (I loaded a backup boot partition in case my SSD failed) the speed was impressive. No, not nearly as fast as my SSD but much faster than my backup WDSE and WDRed NAS drives which are also 7200RPM SATA3. Ive had Seagate 7200 RPM SATA3 drives which are not quite as nimble. Alas, it was all too good to be true:( My super speedy Black drive started clicking & chunking after appx. 2.5 mos. Hey ... This happens sometimes with hard drives ... ok, no big deal, the drive came with a 3yr. Wd warranty. This is where the fun started: Went to WD website and spent appx. 1/2hr. in RMA process. Very easy. Sent my RMA drive back via UPS label I printed from WD website (very convenient). After appx. 7 days I checked the RMA status on the WD website. WHAT??? The model# I sent them does not match the model# they are sending me. I looked up the model# they were sending me and it was the slower / cheaper Blue hdd with only 1yr warranty. I called WD to confirm. They answered the call after a few min of going thru the phone tree. The person I spoke to was very polite and spoke with no language accent issues. He said they didnt have any Black drives to send so they sent the Blue. I tactfully let him know this was not acceptable and requested a WD Red or SE drive as a replacement. You would think I was asking the United States Congress to agree on something. I have talked to 3 different reps on 3 separate phone calls with no resolution. I have had numerous business dealings with WD in the past. I was in network I.T. for over 20yrs. I have never gone through this much trouble with WD. Politely offering no resolution after hours of my time does not cut it with me. All this over a $90 hdd. Ill update when the issue is finally resolved. UPDATE 5/28/14 I called the corporate WD cust. svc. line this morning. The operator was very helpful and made sure I was connected to a live person, not voice mail. The Customer Service rep was very polite and sympathetic, but most important he resolved the issue within 30 min. The only reason it took even that long was because we were searching for an appropriate replacement drive I would be happy with since they had no (Black) drives to send me. I couldnt believe he actually offered a very generous upgrade for my time and inconvenience, which I of course accepted. I have always thought very highly of WD products. My faith in WD service is restored. I cannot upgrade the stars on my review because I am not receiving a (Black) hdd. I will give WD as a company a very favorable rating and will not hesitate to purchase from WD in the future. Update 5/29/14 My replacement drive arrived today, ahead of schedule. The drive is installed as my primary data drive and is loading as I write this. The drive is everything WD promised. I am a happy camper:) Update 11/25/14 Since my initial review I have added the following Western Digital hard drives to my systems: (2) 4TB SE NAS enterprise class 7200rpm (1) 4TB Green 5400rpm (2) 1TB Velociraptors 10,000 rpm All my W.D. drives are performing well 24x7. I run full Lifeguard diags on them once per week and have had no issues. The point is: Western Digital hard drives, as a whole, perform very well under very demanding conditions. I am chalking up the initial issue I had with the Western Digital service department as a one time fluke. They really did go out of their way to make it right. UPDATE 6/16/16 Since there are quite a few hits / comments on this review I thought I would supply a quick update All my WD drives from 2014 are still running great:) 24 x 7. UPDATE 4/6/18 Since there are quite a few hits / comments on this review I thought I would supply a quick update Green drive failed last month. WD sent replacement with no hassles and quick ship processing All other WD drives from 2014 are still running great:) 24 x 7. Thank you all for your comments. I am happy to have been helpful:)

I have had good experiences with WD hard drives through the years. I dont have the money to purchase a large SSD so this drive was my comprimise. So far the experience has been really good. The drive is faster than the one it replaced. The new WD 3.5 6tb drive provides plenty of needed space over the WD 2.5 700gb it replaced. It did take me a while to divide into maximun partition sizes under Windows 10 which as far as I can tell is 3tb. So I divided it into two 3tb partitions one of which is the operating system. Someday I hope this limitation is overcome so that the entire 6tb can be one partition which is recognized as the system drive. Now durability is the only issue that remains unknown. The system runs 24/7 so it is burning in and in a year I will be comforted as to its future durability. This is why I only give it a 4 star rating. In time I hope I can give it a hearty 5 star.

Fast and lots of room, just what I was looking for. It also has the backing of WD and their quality is top notch! I highly recommend.

This review is for the 2 TB black hard drive. I have owned several different brands of hard drives and several different versions of WD’s hard drives over the years, including the greens, reds and purples. I have only have had one failure in that time, which happened to be worked hard, operating on a security camera server for a few years before failing. This is my first black as I wanted a reliable drive for backing up my desktop. These hard drives have a great 5-year warranty, which is one of the big reasons, I purchased this. I connected this drive to my Windows 10 computer with no issues. It took less than a minute to get setup and going. It was pre-formatted, so it was quick to a drive letter and get going. File transfer speeds are fairly speedy for a large size drive. I do think the drives are a bit pricey, but have come down in price over the last couple years. I currently have three of the black drives, this 2TB, a 6 and a 8TB....all have been reliable so far. Overall, other than being slightly pricey, these are great hard drives with good speeds and good warranty that I expect to be reliable over the long term. 4.5 stars

Ive had two WD Blue drives fail on me, one laptop HD within 11 months ciritically and losing everything. I really hate losing data and admittingly dont backup anymore, per se. I used to run DLT4 backups daily on all my systems, but now I just clone drives when a drive sounds like failure is setting in. I also use gSMARTcontrol to monitor my drives. Yup, I could also drop files to thumb drives to backup as well and do that with truly important files. Anyway, the whole point is, I have a somewhat blind trust in these WD Black drives. They have a 5-year warranty, so I know they are expected to live longer than Blue, so why not pay the few extra dollars to possibly get a far better drive which probably has a far lower failure rate? I currently have two WD Black 1TB drives, and the older one seems to run hotter. Mind you the system these are in is an antiquated and not well set up box. Also, my office is ridiculously hot in the Winter, currently 85 degrees, and stays that way for about 2 months out of the year, since here in the South, Winter is really short and freezing cold days are sandwiched between Summer like days. Here are the SMART figures on my old and new WD Black drives: Item: Old and New Raw Read Error Rate: 0 and 0 Spin-Up Time: 1291 and 1875 Start / Stop Count: 349 and 97 Reallocated Sectors: 0 and 0 Seek Error Rate: 0 and 0 Power-On Time: 45140 and 7466 (5 years, 54 days, 20 hours) and (311 days) Spin-Up Retry: 0 and 0 Calibration Retry: 0 and 0 Power Cycles: 347 and 97 Head Retract Cycles: 170 and 46 Load / Unload Cycle: 349 and 55 Temperature: 49C/120.2F and 37C/98.6F Reallocation Events: 0 and 0 Everything else: 0 and 0 So, basically, the old WD Black drive have been going for over 5 years and has never had a bad sector or read error, even though it has been on the edge of boiling up. It, for some reason, is always running hotter. Ive swapped where these drives are installed and the results were the same. The old drive runs hot, but it still is going. I have been noticing a bit of a whine from the drive occasionally, but currently it is sounding normal. The newer drive which is about a year old has consistently been running about 10 degrees cooler. Id suspect it is time to replace the old drive, so I might just order another one of these today. If not a WD Black, Ill probably go for an HGST (a WD company) which according to some public information from cloud service providers has some of the lowest failure rates. Im also cautious about getting larger size drives, worried about failure rates spiking due to pushing limits. But that doesnt seem to hold water, Ive seen reports of the 2TB having a far greater failure rate than the 3TB or 4TB.

I added this to a ThinkStation P390 with ease. The SSD and the 4TB platter drive I got in the bundle have given me adequate storage for my 3D / Digital art content. That said, Ive trusted Western Digital/WD drives for years and am very happy with this purchase.

The delivery here in the Phillippines takes a long time, especially into Mindanao which is furthest point from Manila. I let the drive sit idle for 24 hours in my air-conditioned room just to make sure no temperature or humidity issues impacted installation or stability. I ran multiple tests and surface scans to ensure the functionality of the drive was 100% functional. I have recently had difficulties with another drive vedor product and happy to get back to having a WD Black spinning in the computer. I added after market cooling fan because temps were running above 41 degrees idle. It is advertised as Gaming drive because it runs at 7200 rpm, but its not really going to be really gaming with 250mb read/write speeds.

I have been buying Western Digital drives for decades now and have had excellent drive life and reliability. This 4 TB Black model drive has started out like others I have had in the past. I got this drive to replace a WD Blue 1 TB drive that is now too small for my needs, but is still performing well. Low noise level and excellent access speeds have continued with the 4TB WD Black model. If I have any issues, Ill update this review.