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

Western Digital Black - What Can You Say :-)

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.

Installed easily in my HP Envy desktop.

Your typical, run of the mill, mechanical Hard Drive. This thing gives you a good amount of storage at an extremely reasonable price.

Ive used nothing but WD drives for over 30 years. First one was a tiny 240MB drive and since have been through many upgrades. While most were due to outgrowing the drives, Ive had maybe 2 catastrophic failures. I had a few drives start to go bad developing bad sectors but were caught in time to preserve data on a backup drive. While I know SSD is the thing now and is my preference for sure for a laptop, I do not find them to be a great advantage for sustained transfers like backing up or cloning a HD. SSD rates are initially very high then slow down after a few seconds. So for a while I will stick with spinning platters. This particular model is very fast rivaling SSD transfers for routine writes to another section of drive, as fast as my SSD laptop is.

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!

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.

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!

safe packing and fast delivery recommended

This Western Digital hard drive is a little more expensive but it has superior reliability and performs well. I rarely have problems with Western Digital hard drives. All others seem to crash shortly after the warranty expires. Not Western Digital. They last for at least ten years.