Western Digital 4TB WD Red Plus NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD - 5400 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, CMR, 64 MB Cache, 3.5 - WD40EFRX

Im an HTPC enthusiast, and Im using this 10TB red drive in my Windows HTPC. Im running a 60GB SSD that holds my Windows 10 Pro OS, and then I have several other much larger internal drives that I store my audio/video files on. I would not recommend installing your operating system on a hard drive this large. I can only imagine the problems youd run into. I have been running these red drives as extra storage for awhile now, and they work extremely well for the intended purpose. Ive been replacing my smaller green drives as they have aged, and its sad that WD doesnt make the green drives in these larger sizes. Ive only found the blue drives in sizes up to 6TB, so these larger red drives really fit the bill. They are the only 5200rpm WD drives I can find this large. If I run out of space in the main hard drive bay, I always install them in a 5.25 inch bay adapter, with at least a 80cm cooling fan. The main drive bay has a bigger fan of its own. Make sure you have a fan blowing on these large drives. Without proper cooling they can reach temps of 50C+ really quick, and that can mean a loss of your precious files. Ive been collecting stuff for 25+ years and I cant risk a loss. So, I always do a full format on my new drives from the start. Its a great way to test a new drive before you start moving those files over to the new drive. A full format on a 10TB hard drive will take around 12.5 hours, so just let it run overnight. Your fully formatted size will be 9314GB under the Windows OS. If you dont understand that then search the internet, its everywhere as to why. This drive was sold as a Plus drive, but I didnt see it printed anywhere on the drive as you can see. It doesnt matter to me though, because I will not being using it in a NAS system. I wasnt real happy about the manufactured date because it was almost a year ago. Wouldve preferred a drive with a more recent date. Other than those 2 things, I havent run into any issues with these red drives. They function really well for extra storage in my HTPC, and Im going to buy more as the size increase. I sure do wish WD would make green or blue drives in these sizes, not sure why they dont.

I have two WD clouds. I have a WD EX4100 and a PR4100. Both units are 4 bays with 6 TB each. After several years of service Drive one failed in both units within a few months of each other. The model was actually WD60EFRX but I was sent WD60EFZX which is the Red Pro which is apparently WDs replacement for the older RX Red. I was skeptical but I put the disk into the bay and the rebuild went as advertised over the course of a day or so and it is as good as new and maybe a little faster as the cache is a little bigger if I am not mistaken. Interestingly, the packages I received were both labled as the RX but the actual drive was the ZX. Amazon was more than happy to do a return and made it easy as pie but I decided to keep the extra one I ordered as a spare. Although there was some mislabeling, it was not Amazons fault and all is well that ends well.

It is a typical Western Digital Hard drive. Not a whole lot to say. The one it replaced in a NAS lasted 7 years. Anything over 5 - 7 years is what you can most likely expect from these drives.

I am a big fan of these WD Red NAS drives as I have several synology servers. Ive had pretty good luck with WD Black drives as those are extremely solid (and fast compared to these and the WD Greens), but these run significantly hotter which raises the overall temp of my NAS devices. The WD Green drives run cooler (and just about as fast as these WD Red drives), but are not good for NAS environments due to the TLER issue (they constantly spin up and down which adds needless wear and tear and will ultimately reduce the longevity of your drive). These arent the fastest drives out there, but they offer the perfect balance and are safe for use in NAS systems. I also had a lot of success with Samsung drives, but these were bought out by Seagate and, while I respect Seagates quality control, they are not comparible with SMART diagnostics, which is how synology units (and most diagnostic protocols) monitor the health of your drive. While my one seagate drive in operation has never failed me, I dont appreciate the fact that when and if it ever does, I will have zero warning. Therefore, I stick with WD drives so that I can monitor their health and replace them when and if they start developing bad sectors. Seagate seems to have done away with SMART compatibility so that end users could not diagnose the drives themselves. They probably got tired of people trying to RMA drives because of a single bad sector. So Seagate users are forced to use Seatools to examine their drives, which gives you only a passing (or failing grade) with no gray area in between (i.e. no hints that your drive is about to fail as long as it is still operating within what Seagate considers acceptable parameters). Its a shame too because my one Seagate drive is among the fastest I own and has worked solidly for 3+ years. I just dont completely trust it without the SMART data.

Usually love WD, disappointed it died a few days after Amazons 30 day warranty and they wont even consider it. We are talking 3 days... Will try to get a replacement through WD but there are already warnings on WDs site that they are behind in replacing drives..... Update: 5/18 - WARNING WARNING WARNING.... Western Digital is claiming these are OEM drives (even though it isnt listed anywhere in their description) and WILL NOT HONOR A WARRANTY. Buy at your own risk because they will not replace it!!!!!!!! Very disappointed in Western Digital and these dirty tactics and Very disappoint in AMAZON for allowing the Bait & Switch- False Advertising!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Update 5/19 - Western Digital says my drive is OEM and made in 2014. So they are selling 9 year old drives as new and not OEM. Amazon allows them to continue this fraud. Amazon wont stand behind the product that failed 32 days in. Western Digital wont replace it because of the OEM. And the Seller claims they cant replace it because Amazon has all their stock. DO NOT BUY THIS!!!! SCAM

Ive had my WD Red for going on 4 years now. No problems, no corrupted sectors, no additional noise. It goes every day and every year without any problems. Solid recommendation from me!

The perfect expandable storage option for my PS4. My gaming library is pretty massive and it can be a hassle waiting for a title I want to play to finish downloading. This is a convenient workaround with the enclosure I bought.

May 2014 - I forgot to update this, so Im doing it almost a year later. Down graded to one star. TLDR - Amazon was great, however, 4 drives (two sets of two) failed in 24 hours. Extensive conversations with WD second level support resulting in them saying return the drives, so I bought 3TB green drives again for the external enclosures, and 3TB Toshiba/Hitachi drives for the NAS. Very unimpressed with WD RED drives - all marketing on what are really just average drives. This is to justify continued higher costs after the flood farce perpetrated on the public. Yes, the flood happened, however, the raping of the customers has continued (easily researched what theyve done, and prices dont lie). Lets hope SSDs come down in price soon.... ****** Original review ****** Im leaving a generous, but temporary, 2-star review. My two drives failed within 24 hours and Im awaiting replacement drives so Ill update this review after Ive tested them. First, I want to state that Amazons shipping was flawless and I dont think it was a problem for these drives. I currently own at least 25 WD drives (as well as many by other vendors) and ordered 2x 3TB Red drives for use first in external enclosures, and later to be put in a Synology NAS. They never made it past the enclosure stage, and were dead in a day. All work, no play, for me at least. 1) Drives were placed in USB 3.0 external enclosures, initialized as GPT under Win7 (x64), and a NTFS Quick format was performed. I then ran a SMART Quick Test using WDs Data Lifeguard (DLG), which passed fine. Note: DLG quick test only checks the first and last million sectors, leaving most of the drive unchecked. The drives were each loaded with approx 1.5TB of data, and then shutdown properly using Safely remove hardware before disconnecting. Note: the 1-year-old enclosures support 3TB drives - verified with the mfg again this morning - and were previously housing WD and Hitachi 2TB drives without issue. 2) Attempted to start the drives the next day, but they werent identified by Explorer, and when finally found in Disk Management (under Admin -> Computer Management) they were once again showed as Not initialized. They were in effect, dead to me. 3) I attempted to mount the drives on another, almost new, high-end computer running Win8 Pro. The drives were not seen by Explorer, but could be found under Disk Management, however, they showed with 2TB labeled MBR protected and 7xxGB unallocated. No data could be read. 4) Contacted WD support. After discussing all events and options, their recommendation was sendem back to us or Amazon, theyre dead. 5) I accepted that something had gone wrong, but again using DLG, I tried a low level process called Write Zeros. The first drive simply failed with bad sectors after running for 5 hours. I tried to continue the process by clicking the pop-up error window 50-100x times before finally giving up. I couldnt format it, couldnt write zeros, nothing worked. After several more attempts, I finally got it to finish a windows format (ran for the last 12 hours), but I dont trust it. The second drive did allow me to Write Zeros, but I dont trust it either. Theyre both going back. Write Zeros may temporarily fix drives, but may also just mask the underlying problem(s). (And yes, I understand erasing vs. formatting, the data implications, etc.). WD has a problem, and because of that so do we. I recommend everyone format and test these drives before use. I know drives fail; Ive had many drive failures in the last couple of years (3 Seagate, 5 Samsung F4s, etc.) but all before they were mounted in a NAS. Read the reviews, understand that its a lottery, and though I had hoped for more, I didnt win the first time. You may get lucky.... or.... you may not. Ill update this review after receiving my new drives, and have tested them in brand new enclosures.

These drives (10 in total) were purchased to complete the installation of two Digital Robotics (Drobo) 5N Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices. When I purchased my first Drobo 5N from Amazon several years ago the best Western Digital hard drive that was available was the EADS Green drives. However, technical support representatives from both Digital Robotics and Western Digital agreed that the EADS drives were not designed (or the correct) drive for NAS installations. Fortunately, subsequent to my initial purchase of five EADS drives Western Digital technology has continued to advance and the RED technology drives are now available. From the Western Digital website: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=810 NASware grows to 3.0 Built off of our determination to deliver the best NAS experience, NASware 3.0 extends our promise by further optimizing WD Red for the NAS environment with added support for 6 to 8 NAS bays. WD Red now supports small NAS systems from 1 to 8 bays thanks to NASware 3.0, which further improves drive compatibility and reliability. At 48 TB of total capacity in an 8 bay system, WD Red expands your NAS experience. and Professional solutions Designed specifically with SMB customers in mind, the WD Red family has expanded with the addition of WD Red Pro, which is available for the 8 to 16 bay medium to large-scale NAS environments. With capacities up to 4 TB, WD Red Pro carries a 5-year limited warranty and was engineered to handle the increased workloads from your business. A word of caution based on my actual experience. Regardless of the cost savings, purchase these drives directly from Amazon whose Customer Service is exceptional. I purchased another drive from one of the third party vendors. The vendor had listed it as a New drive. When I attempted to register it with WD I was informed that the three-year warranty had expired 18 months previously. The vendor had neglected to update the Amazon website and the drive itself, while still fresh on the vendor warehouse shelf, had been there for almost five years.

This purchase was made as a replacement for the same drive that had recently failed after about 2 years of backup-only use. I do not test the drive for speed, as thats not its purpose (I have WD Blacks and SSDs for that). Im purchasing strictly for reliability. So why the 3 stars? Pros: - The drive offers good capacity at reasonable prices - Designed for use in NAS or other similar applications - Runs seemingly cool Cons: - I had one fail not too long into its life (e.g., ~2 years) - That warranty is potentially useless if, like me, you are nervous about sending a non-wiped drive back to WD for replacement. I will elaborate on the concern... I contacted WD about the failed drive, and they readily were willing to replace it. That being said, since the drive has failed (clicking sounds, etc.), it is impossible for me to get it to mount, and therefore it is impossible for me to erase the drive. I suspect that with very little effort, someone with a little hardware expertise -- e.g., lots of people at WD -- could get the drive working again and have ready access to all my info. Give this 4TB drive is the clone of my entire digital life, I just wasnt comfortable sending the drive back to the company. And of course, if I were to crack the thing open, Id void the warranty. Ive read lots of views online about WDs policies and procedures on protecting info, but when it came down to risking all my info, I wasnt able to pull the trigger on the exchange. For other utilitarian data, Id have no such qualms. Obviously, this is a personal choice and you may be more trusting than me. In which case, paying a little extra for a 5 year warranty makes sense. So consider what you would do in a similar situation as mine. If you have come to view spinning-platter drives as disposable items, consider saving a bit of money and buying something with a shorter warranty -- particularly in an application like mine (a clone) where its easy to swap a new drive in. Undoubtedly you will pay less per TB in a year or two. Or youll go SSD if the pricing is finally right.