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

Purchased WD Red 4TB in 2016. I did not use it much for the first year or two. Early this year, I started using this drive a lot. I am using as an external drive in a USB 3.1 cradle for backups and short term storage of large (20GB to 100GB files). I appreciate the low vibration; other drives in the same cradle can cause resonate vibration of other things on my desk; this drive is almost silent and vibration free. I am getting all of the expected performance; no degradation from not having a direct SATA III connection. Operating temp is very good; it seldom gets above 40c, even after long periods of high activity. Other people have commented on warranty issues. While I have never had a problem with these drives, I did look up the warranty status on WDs website recently. They correctly reported that the warranty had just expired after my three years of ownership. In 2016, I paid about $150 for the 4TB model. I considered that a decent price. Earlier this year, I started looking for a new 4TB drive. At that time, this drive was about $115. I spent a week or two looking at refurb enterprise ;evel 4TB models. They go for about $80, and the quality and warranty are really hit or miss. Now, this drive in the 4TB size is down to $100. At that price, for exactly the same drive that I know and trust, it is hard to consider any other option than another WD Red 4TB. Make sure you purchase your drive from Amazon and not an Amazon market place seller. Check your warranty status as soon as you receive your drive and return it if WD does not recognize the full three years you are entitled to. If you compare price to size in the WD Red line, you will see that the 4TB size is by far the most economical. I am going to buy a second drive for general use. If the current pricing holds, I am going to buy six more of these to replace all of the drives in my ZFS system over the next year.

I purchased several of these hard drives to populate a NAS. I have been using Western Digital drives for decades and they have always been reliable and affordable. For my project, I under-estimated my drive requirements because I completely forgot about the dishonest business practice of drive manufactures counting 1000KB = 1MB. In real life, 1024KB = 1MB. The end result is that the consumer loses space and the manufacturer gets to advertise a larger capacity than what the hard drive can actually deliver. In a 4-bay NAS using 8TB drives, basic math says 4 drives x 8TB = 32TB of storage. In reality, you only get 29TB (4x7.25), which is a significant loss of 3TB over what the manufacturer advertises! Grrr!

I have been around computers since the mid 80s and remember purchasing my first hard drive. It was for my Apple II in an enclosure about half the size of the computer with a self-contained power supply, fans and all sorts of what were then, goodies. It was an SCSI drive and it had a whopping 25 megabytes of space at my disposal. The hard drive was a Shugart, named after the fellow that built them and the predecessor of what is today, Seagate. There was a period of time in the 90s where my experiences with what were then the kingpins of hard drives, WD and Seagate simply did not prove reliable in a server or NAS environment which is why I always ended up paying top dollar for SCSI servers and enterprise drives that were significantly more expensive than an equivalent ATAPI desktop drive. When Samsung introduced their line of desktop drives, for the first time I felt comfortable using them in a server environment where they run 24/7. Today, after testing hard drives as they come out in both sizes and formats, I found that by far, WD has the best NAS drives for the money and they are not that much more expensive than a regular desktop drive. In fact, the WD Black line, which is intended for desktops is also a terrific drive and would not hesitate to stick them in a NAS box with one from their Red line. But I say so only from the point of view of reliability. As in the past I often found that anyone selling a non scuzzy drive claimed they were purpose built for a server environment, I questioned it as it seemed that I could not see any tangible evidence of them being anything more than the same drive as any other with a different label and a higher price. I can quantify the difference even between a WD Black drive and the Red NAS line. The transfer speeds are higher and they dont run nearly as hot which explains their great longevity under enterprise environment. There are still good reasons for going with enterprise scuzzy drives if that is what you need and can afford it. But for the everyday person that simply wants to keep their data backed up off site or off their PC, the WD Red line is a terrific drive and deliver a lot of bang for the buck. I presently have a location where I run 10 NAS boxes with two to four hard drives each and over time, the WD Red drives have outlasted Seagates equivalents -- by a long shot. That is not meant to be a put down of Seagate because I use their hybrid drives on my desktops and they are terrific. I personally prefer them to WDs Black line even though I know they are also great drives. I must admit that I am baffled when I read about someone these days getting, say, 4 new drives and one or two being DOA. Maybe Ive been fortunate, but I have purchased hundreds if not thousands of hard drives and I have yet to get one tha was DOA. Some clearly perform better than others and last longer than others, but as a whole, I would say the hard drive market is extremely mature and whether they are made in China or the US, makes no difference. All I can say is that in my experience and for my needs, the WD Red line is an excellent NAS drive and will continue to use them in the foreseeable future. Something else may come out that it is better or not. But when one is dealing with a NAS environment, there isnt much room for testing new equipment if the one I use now meets my needs and has proven itself. As my needs change, I will go through due diligence in determining what will be best. But at least presently, there are alternatives to SCSI if you do not need it and the prices per megabyte are lower than ever. I highly recommend this line of drives from WD for its intended use.

I trust my music, movie, and picture collections on these. I have a few of these. One of them is over a year old and I have had no issues with it at all. Ive bought many hard drives and have had many failures from all of the big brand names including WD, Seagate, Toshiba, etc.. I admit, I push my hard drives to the limits. They are often on 24/7 and are running because I also run a server through them. I should probably upgrade to data base/enterprise drives but so far these have outstood all of the other drives I have used. I often experience failures on newer drives within the first 6 months because off the high usage they get. I run a hard drive program to keep an eye out now on my drives (HD Sentinel). Ive noticed the drives that I have that are not NAS approved are down to a health rating of just fair, while my current NAS drive that I bought around the same time is in excellent condition. All my NAS drives are in a MediaSonic ProBox enclosure and they seem to get plenty of cooling power to never have to worry about heat.. and the enclosure never jumps into a higher fan speed then the lowest setting so they must be producing hardly any heat themselves. From now on Ill forget about spending any money on anything less then a NAS drive. I feel secure again about where my data is stored and dont have to worry about failing drives like I have for so often before. The drives are faster then I thought. Dont let the 5400 RPM speed fool you. These drives can easily stream 4k content without a glitch. Super fast accessing time as well. I highly recommend these drives.

I purchased two of the 3TB drives and one of the 2TB drives. When I went into WDIDLE3 the setting for all three drives were set to 300 seconds (5 minutes). Since I was in there I simply disabled it. These drives are working flawlessly thus far as I have the two 3TB drives in a media center running Media Browser 3, PlayOn, and a few other apps. The 2TB drive is hooked up to a Dish Network Hopper as a secondary storage. I have not experienced any issues so far with these drive. I will update as time goes on with more info. *Update 3/27/15: Some drive information obtained from HD Guardian: Drive 01 Serial Number: WD-WCC4N7E***** Firmware: 82.00A82 User Capacity: 3,000,592,982,016 bytes Product Name Status Exp Date (MM/DD/YYYY) 3 TB WD Red Hard Drive In Limited Warranty 1/6/2018 Overall Health: Temperature: 34*C High: 36*C Low: 34*C Last Test: Completed without error. No bad sector detected. No ATA error detected. SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 185 182 021 Pre-fail Always - 5733 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 42 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 673 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 5 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 1 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 40 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 116 110 000 Old_age Always - 34 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0 Working Time: 673 hours (28 days, 1 hours) Last Update Fri Mar 27 01:53:28 2015 CDT Drive 02 Serial Number: WD-WMC4N0F***** Firmware: 82.00A82 User Capacity: 3,000,592,982,016 bytes Product Name Status Exp Date (MM/DD/YYYY) 3 TB WD Red Hard Drive In Limited Warranty 12/11/2017 Overall Health: Temperature: 37*C High: 41*C Low: 35*C Last Test: N/A No bad sector detected. No ATA error detected. SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 181 179 021 Pre-fail Always - 5950 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 50 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 672 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 4 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 1 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 48 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 113 109 000 Old_age Always - 37 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0 Working Time: 672 hours (28 days) Last Update Fri Mar 27 01:53:28 2015 CDT ------------------------------------------- Update 5/14/2015 Some drive information obtained from HD Guardian: Drive 01 Serial Number: WD-WCC4N7E***** Firmware: 82.00A82 User Capacity: 3,000,592,982,016 bytes Product Name Status Exp Date (MM/DD/YYYY) 3 TB WD Red Hard Drive In Limited Warranty 1/6/2018 Overall Health: Temperature: 37*C High: 37*C Low: 34*C Last Test: Completed without error. No bad sector detected. No ATA error detected. SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 186 182 021 Pre-fail Always - 5700 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 193 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 98 98 000 Old_age Always - 1844 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 5 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 1 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 190 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 113 108 000 Old_age Always - 37 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0 Working Time: 1844 hours (2 months 16 days, 20 hours) Last Update Fri May 14 22:31:35 2015 CDT Drive 02 Serial Number: WD-WMC4N0F***** Firmware: 82.00A82 User Capacity: 3,000,592,982,016 bytes Product Name Status Exp Date (MM/DD/YYYY) 3 TB WD Red Hard Drive In Limited Warranty 12/11/2017 Overall Health: Temperature: 37*C High: 41*C Low: 35*C Last Test: N/A No bad sector detected. No ATA error detected. SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x002f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0 3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0027 181 179 021 Pre-fail Always - 5908 4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 242 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0 7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x002e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 98 98 000 Old_age Always - 1836 10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032 100 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 5 192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 1 193 Load_Cycle_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 240 194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 110 106 000 Old_age Always - 40 196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0030 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0 199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0008 100 253 000 Old_age Offline - 0 Working Time: 1836 hours (2 months, 16 days, 12 hours) Last Update Fri May 14 22:31:35 2015 CDT

These are just hard drives, but I really like the Reds because I know that I can just plug them in and not worry about them - reliable and very low noise/vibration. They cost more than alternatives, but they are work horses and my data is important. In that regard, they are a bargain. My only complaint (which is not significant enough to deserve a lower rating) is with WDs warranty/replacement process and Amazons extended warranty offerings - These are NAS drives. Im (personally, YMMV) using mine in RAID 1 configurations. I dont want to pay $15 for a data recovery plan (Amazon addon, not WD; thats what the RAID mirroring is for). If a drive fails, I just want the unit replaced. QUICKLY! Id rather have the option to buy one of those cheaper PC/Peripheral Protection Plans from SquareTrade (or whichever vendor is the best option for this sort of thing). If one fails under warranty, I just want a replacement ASAP with a return shipping label and NO HASSLE - I dont need to pay for someone to recover the data because I already have it, and I dont want to argue with some call center where English is not their native language. I just want it replaced now and I am willing to pay extra for that. At the very least, such a thing would be a nice addon/option. I try to avoid irritation whenever Im allowed, even if it costs me a bit more up front.

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

Here is a quote from a review at pcper.com Im going to let the cat out of the bag right here and now. Everyones home RAID is likely an accident waiting to happen. If youre using regular consumer drives in a large array, there are some very simple (and likely) scenarios that can cause it to completely fail. Im guilty of operating under this same false hope - I have an 8-drive array of 3TB WD Caviar Greens in a RAID-5. For those uninitiated, RAID-5 is where one drive worth of capacity is volunteered for use as parity data, which is distributed amongst all drives in the array. This trick allows for no data loss in the case where a single drive fails. The RAID controller can simply figure out the missing data by running the extra parity through the same formula that created it. This is called redundancy, but I propose that its not. Since Im also guilty here with my huge array of Caviar Greens, let me also say that every few weeks I have a batch job that reads *all* data from that array. Why on earth would I need to occasionally and repeatedly read 21TB of data from something that should already be super reliable? Heres the failure scenario for what might happen to me if I didnt: * Array starts off operating as normal, but drive 3 has a bad sector that cropped up a few months back. This has gone unnoticed because the bad sector was part of a rarely accessed file. * During operation, drive 1 encounters a new bad sector. * Since drive 1 is a consumer drive it goes into a retry loop, repeatedly attempting to read and correct the bad sector. * The RAID controller exceeds its timeout threshold waiting on drive 1 and marks it offline. * Array is now in degraded status with drive 1 marked as failed. * User replaces drive 1. RAID controller initiates rebuild using parity data from the other drives. * During rebuild, RAID controller encounters the bad sector on drive 3. * Since drive 3 is a consumer drive it goes into a retry loop, repeatedly attempting to read and correct the bad sector. * The RAID controller exceeds its timeout threshold waiting on drive 3 and marks it offline. * Rebuild fails. At this point the way forward varies from controller to controller, but the long and short of it is that the data is at extreme risk of loss. There are ways to get it all back (most likely without that one bad sector on drive 3), but none of them are particularly easy. Now you may be asking yourself how enterprises run huge RAIDs and dont see this sort of problem? The answer is Time Limited Error Recovery - where the hard drive assumes it is part of an array, assumes there is redundancy, and is not afraid to quickly tell the host controller that it just cant complete the current I/O request. Heres how that scenario would have played out if the drives implemented some form of TLER: * Array starts off operating as normal, but drive 3 has developed a bad sector several weeks ago. This went unnoticed because the bad sector was part of a rarely accessed file. * During operation, drive 1 encounters a new bad sector. * Drive 1 makes a few read attempts and then reports a CRC error to the RAID controller. * The RAID controller maps out the bad sector, locating it elsewhere on the drive. The missing sector is rebuilt using parity data from the other drives in the array. *Array continues normal operation, with the error added to its event log. The above scenario is what would play out with an Areca RAID controller (Ive verified this personally). Other controllers may behave differently. A controller unable to do a bad sector remap might have just marked drive 1 as bad, but the key is that the rebuild would be much less likely to fail as drive 3 would not drop completely offline once the controller ran into the additional bad sector. The moral of this story is that typical consumer grade drives have data error timeouts that are far longer than the drive offline timeout of typical RAID controllers, and without some form of TLER, two bad sectors (totaling 1024 bytes) is all thats required to put multiple terabytes of data in grave danger. The Solution: The solution should be simple - just get some drives with TLER. The problem is that until now those were prohibitively expensive. Enterprise drives have all sorts of added features like accelerometers and pressure sensors to compensate for sliding in and out of a server rack while operating, as well as dealing with rapid pressure changes that take place when the server room door opens and the forced air circulation takes a quick detour. Those features just arent needed in that home NAS sitting on your bookshelf. What *is* needed is a WD Caviar Green that has TLER, and Western Digital delivers that in their new Red drives. End quote and back to reviewer. Ive got 5 of these in a

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.

These HDDs are excellent for use in a NAS, and preform very well in RAID configs. They are my go-to drives for any kind of backup or redundant storage option I need. HOWEVER... If you are looking to buy these drives, do NOT buy them from Amazon. Although it is convenient, the packaging is not on par. I bought 2 of them from here. When my drives arrived, I opened the box to see that there was a small piece of brown packing paper to protect my drives. Because of this, there was still at least 4 inches of space for the drives to rattle around in. Not only this, but one of the drives shipped with a box that had a broken seal, raising my suspicions even more. I thought nothing of it and attempted to deploy them into my NAS, only to find that my suspicions were correct, and both drives were dead on arrival. Returned with no problem, submitted a packaging review through Amazon, and bought them from a local computer store. Again, I highly recommend these drives (and any drive from WD), and they deserve 5 stars. However if you are planning on buying these, save yourself the potential trouble by physically going to a store and buying them, or at least buy them online from a computer store such as Newegg. Because of this experience, I cant recommend that anyone buy a mechanical hard drive of any brand, capacity, or form factor from Amazon.