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

I love WD drives (I must: in the 3 desktop and server machines Im sitting next to as I write this I have 16 of them ranging in size from 3 to 8 TB). And in the room across the hall (my wifes study) her machine has 2 WD Black drives,1TB and 3TB, and neither of them runs hot, but they are both over 5 years old FWIW). Years ago I stopped using a (then) much more popular and slightly cheaper brand and singled in on WD. Why? Because the other brand ran hot and the WDs dont - or at least until I got this one they didnt. The drive sitting next to it is a WD 6TB (red, not black so not 7200 RPM) drive and it has a curremt temp of 30C (86F). And it - as well as the other 4 drives in this drive cabinet have never shown a temp higher than 37C (98.6F). (My Secret: lots of fans and a direct connection to the houses A/C - they have their own duct which keeps fairly busy machines comfortably cool. Before buying this drie I did read reviews but I missed the ones where the people talked about this drive getting really hot. (Ive found and read several of them in the last hour however...) The drive is already installed in the coolest part of the cabinet, and although the (very busy) drives surrounding it are at 36C (96.8F) right now, this one shows up at 57C (134F). Thats too hot to hold in your hand without gloves BTW. Id add another fan to give that a try, but this cabinet already has pre-cooled air (62F at the moment) and 7 coolng fans (3 4 and 5 5) and I dont think it would help. Ive shut that machine down and once the drive cools off so that I dont have to wear gloves to touch It Im going pull it and then returning it. Now maybe the heat problem doesnt sound bad to you, BUT.... Heat leads to drive failures. Not good. What initially caught my attention was that the drive started giving errors - so many so that the system took it off line and warned me. So I guess Ill be going back to a cooler 6TB drive after this, and Ill stick with a WD or HGST with which Im familiar. This the first WD product that Ive ever owned for which I could not give a good recommendation .. and perhaps i just got a lemon. But I cannot recommend this drive to anyone who works in a room with an ambient temperature above 10C (50 F). OK - Im kidding - I dont think the room temperature would help much. I just cannot recommend it to anyone, period.

This is an awesome drive make no mistake. These Western Digital BLACK Drives wear like iron in my experience. That said video games are getting bigger and bigger with each new title. There was a time not too long ago that a @TB could hold an absolute plethora of games but that day has passed. The mechanical drive is where you store your PC games most economically so you want space to do so. Swapping games in and out from remote sources is a time consuming laborious chore no one loves. Im sorry I brought this drive NOT because it is bad in any way. I am upset having wasted money on this drive because, I stupidly thought 2 TBs would be enough to store all my games. I WAS WRONG! Turns out I needed 4 TBs just to store my current games. I ended up buying a 6 TB drive so Id have room to add games. Same thing if you are a content creator on any social media platform. Creating 4K or 8K media content is a space and processor intensive undertaking. A 2 TB drive as your storage solution wont cut it for long. The Western Digital BLACK drives are dependable work horses in general its just this 2 TB version is an anemic little Philly that might have overstayed its welcome. 2 TBs of storage made for a good drive in its time but it really cant handle the storage needs of systems today. I took a star off for it being essentially obsolete as a valid storage solution but other than that The WD BLACK is a fine storage drive solution in terms of pure functionality!

Have had many wd black drives over the years, never had one die on me. I figure for big slow storage it would work fine! Barebone drive, no cables included. Didnt test the speed but not expecting anything insane from a 7200rpm mechanical. Big storage cheaper than ssds

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.

I have been a big fan of Western Digital and have been using the Black edition since they were introduced. I have several that are probably 10 years old. I have never had a Black edition hard drive fail on me. I could have went with a less expensive model, since this is used for cold storage, but believe its worth the extra cost for data security. I have been using Western Digital hard drives since the 90s and have only had a few failures. Which were a couple Blues and Green. and 2 before they were identified by colors. I use a purple in my Network rack NVR and a Red in a stand alone NVR. Both write 24/7 without an issue.

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

UPDATE 3/26/15: This drive will make audible noises when accessing the data on the drive, but it gives pretty good speed. Even with the third replacement, it makes noises, so Ill just have to deal with it. The speed is pretty great. I wish this wasnt as loud as it is now. It sometimes bothers to hear the drive making access noise whenever I launch Adobe After Effects, but I can live with it. ~Simon. UPDATE 3/17/15: I received the replacement drive to find out that it has a similar (ticking sound while accessing data) symptom. I resorted to calling the WD Customer Support. The customer service representative was really helpful. He told me that the problem might be the bad cable. I switched the older SATA cable with a newer SATA cable I happened to have on the computer to find the problem still existing, so I told him about it. The support said he will send me a third replacement drive since both of the hard drives are giving me the same problems. I was a little conflicted because that meant I will have to pay for an extra return label. I voiced my concerns to the support, and the support said he will make me prepaid shipping labels--two labels--for the two (maybe not-so defective) drives I have to return. Also, the some complicated and strict return instructions happened to be for the people returning hard drives in a bulk. Im just an end-user, so the support clarified that I can just return the hard drives in the original packaging. So, people, web replacement support may sound more convenient, but calling the tech support proved to be much better. At least for me and my situation. If any of you have some noisy drives, try switching the SATA cable to a newer one. Apparently, this drive works better and tolerably quieter with a newer SATA cable (thus, the two drives I have to return may not be defective). ~Simon End of update. Old review below. == Edit Start == Well, I think I gave a horrible rating at the beginning, but bad start is a bad start, I guess. At least the clicking drive worked. The shipping fee I have to pay for returning is around 7 dollars, which was what threw me off. Also, the billing address have to be the same as replacement shipping address. That also threw me off, deducting one whole star. Anyways, I hope no more problem exists with this new drive they sent me. == Edit End == This drive works, but its making abnormally loud clicking noises whenever it is reading off or writing on the disk. Its so much louder than my other (regular) hard drives I dont feel safe using Adobe After Effects with this drive. I submitted a replacement request through WDs website, but the steps there is just horribly laid out. Its not easy navigating through the website for support. Also, you have to pay the shipping fee for replacing the already defective product with WD. Also, WD is practicing some complicated and strict return instructions. I mean, come on! You shipped the clicking drive at the first place!

Bought for storage in a new build. No complaints.

Bought on sale, used 24/7 for about 4 months at time of review Purchased this to replace my primary drive in a Dell computer that was killing every SSD I fed it. I have had reasonable luck with every hard drive I have owned, except when they were used in dell computers. This one seems to have broken the curse. A little noisier than some (head movement and platter spin whine) but most people will not notice if their computer case is closed. Good value for the money, I would purchase again

This review is for the 6 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. 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