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

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.

Product met the sellers description

Just bought 2 drives advertised as Used: Like New | Details Sold by TechnoDealsUSA These drive pass all the S.M.A.R.T test but they have both be run for 48,000+ hours virtually non stop. That is over 5.5 years. I would not exactly call them Like New. I only saved about 20% buying used over new. I hope I dont regret this.

I bought these to run in a RAID Array after my WD Blue RAID array kept failing. The RED drives, with their TLER support, prevent arrays from breaking due to read/write delays unlike the blue drive,s which was the issue I was having. Also, with their 3D Active Balance Plus you can run them in multi drive environments (or even in a PC with other fans running) without fear of increased wear/tear or damage. At first I had thought all the technology was just gimmick, but when my Blue array kept failing, I upgraded to these and havent had a single issue since. They are not the fastest drives available, but then again most people with NAS dont have enclosures fast enough to take advantage of the increased speed regardless... I use my HP Z600 as my NAS, which allows me to use the data/drives without a network bottleneck locally, and allows my other computers to access it through the LAN. It works well for what Im using it for. Overall, I can say Id buy them again. They have been running 24/7 for 7 months now without any issues, so so far, so good. Ill update this review if anything changes.

The drive is old, manufactured 2017-Feb-05, but arrived quickly sealed in original packaging. At first power-on, SMART showed no errors and zero previous run time. The drive is relatively quiet - I did not take actual SPL measurements but it is more quiet (especially on head seek operations) than similar sized Seagate drives and about the same as similar sized Samsung and Toshiba drives. A full drive write and read completed without trouble. The drive is used in a hot-swap cage, powered up periodically to run backup operations, and is jostled and moved occasionally. So far no troubles.

Lets get this out of the way first, Im kind of a WD fanboy but with good reason I think. Ive been using them for as long as I can remember, and maybe its just my personal luck but I think theyve been better to me than any other brand. The only ones I dont really like are the Green drives, and Im willing to accept that they are perfectly fine as external drives that arent being constantly accessed. The Green is in mega power saving mode and loves to spin down, which means youre looking at longer access times and more wear and tear if you leave it plugged in and access it frequently. I wanted to punch my monitor every time I waited the magical 5 minutes (or whatever it is) before clicking on what I needed, just to wait several seconds on the drive to spin back up. I dont currently use NAS or RAID but considering my options this seemed like my best bet for frequently accessed mass storage, and I was at one point considering RAID (still am kind of). Black is better, faster, and as such costs more, but I couldnt justify it since I have an SSD for things that need to be fast. I bought this 4TB Red to put in my computer and replace a 3TB Green external drive I was using. Ive had it since August of 2014 which isnt that long at this point but its given me zero reason to complain, same as the 3TB Red I bought in October to replace a 1TB Blue. The only thing Ive noticed that was cause for concern at first is these things seem to be a little louder than your standard WD Blue or Green drive on read and write operations, and I thought I may have gotten one with a defect. Im not sure why that is, but I was much less concerned about it when I got the second drive and it sounded about the same. They seem to have quietened down some with use, and again they have given me no issues whatsoever. Ill definitely be buying more of these when the time comes. UPDATE 6/30/2015 Just wanted to say I am still running a 4tb and a 3tb WD Red in my computer and theyve been absolutely trouble free. One of them seems to make a short quiet buzzing noise every now and then that sounds out of place if youre used to diagnosing bad drives by sound like Ive had to do on many occasions, but every test Ive run comes up clean and Ive had no issues whatsoever out of either drive. Chkdsk, SMART, and benchmarks are clean and consistent and I use these daily as secondary drives for all my storage and most of my games. I really cant recommend these highly enough. That being said, I always feel the need to tell people KEEP BACKUPS. Any drive can fail and its always painful when it happens if you dont have regular backups. Its not cheap to match storage space for backups but trust me... That one day you need it -- and you will one day or one year unless you replace your drives regularly -- its money well spent.

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.

These work well in my QNAP TS-451 NAS setup. Have two 3TB drives in raid 1. Quiet and cool, no problems whatsoever yet. I did notice that even though I have recent firmware on the drives, the load cycle count was still going up: Even though my drives came set to 300 seconds, here were my stats for each drive after 3 months: ~6000 LCC over 1451 hours ~= a load cycle every 900 seconds These drives are supposed to be rated for 300,000 LCC, so 300,000/6000 * 1451 hours = 8 years 8 years aint too bad, (Id probably replace the drives in that time) but it really doesnt provide much buffer. I reasoned that I am still happily using a 1TB drive from 2009 (6 years ago) and expect to for another couple years. So in the end I decided to just disable it for now. Since I didnt have a external SATA enclosure compatible with drives of terabyte size, I had to find a wdidle binary compiled for my NAS. Once I did, disabling the load cycle feature was easy: ------------------------ Move the program to the NAS and make it executable: macbook_computer$ scp idle3ctl [email protected]:/root xxx@xxxxs password: idle3ctl 100% 14KB 14.2KB/s 00:00 [~] # chmod +x idle3ctl [~] # ./idle3ctl -V idle3ctl v0.9.1 ---------- Find your drives locations: [~] # fdisk -l /dev/sd? Disk /dev/sda: 3000.5 GB, 3000592982016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 364801 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 1 267350 2147483647+ ee EFI GPT Disk /dev/sdb: 3000.5 GB, 3000592982016 bytes 255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 364801 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sdb1 1 267350 2147483647+ ee EFI GPT ... ------ Check the current values: [~] # ./idle3ctl -g105 /dev/sda [~] # ./idle3ctl -g105 /dev/sdb (both said 300 seconds) ------- disable both (can do just one to test first): [~] # ./idle3ctl -d /dev/sda [~] # ./idle3ctl -d /dev/sda -------- reboot (I rebooted from the web UI) and check again: [~] # ./idle3ctl -g105 /dev/sda Idle3 timer is disabled [~] # ./idle3ctl -g105 /dev/sdb Idle3 timer is disabled -------- In the end I wouldnt let the LCC feature sway you one way or the other. Its been fixed to an acceptable timer setting now, and in many cases is probably useful. I just disabled it to be safe so I can get hopefully 8+ years out of these drives.

I bought four of these drives a month ago and have been evaluating them since. I was so pleased with them that I bought a set of four for my self. Pros: * Excellent performance on large read and write workloads such as backing up large files. I plan to use these to as backup/archive servers where they will have 16 to 500G individual files copied to them nightly. As single drives or in RAID 0 or 10 sets, performance has been very, very impressive. * Power consumption is very low at approximately 4-5 watts each. If youre using these for a home NAS unit then four drives will use about the same power as some of my single older 7200 RPM drives. This appeals to me from an environmental responsibility perspective as well as keeping my utility bills from climbing. * Very quiet: I dont hear them at all. * Cool to the touch: Since they dont use much power and spin rather slowly, they dont generate much heat and can tolerate hot environments rather well. * They can be made very fast by short-stroking them: allocating only the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the disk for a RAID array and using that. Seek times drop in half and the high platter density provides some incredible performance numbers. * Price is very good for 3 TB of reliable storage. Cons: * They are not ideal for heavy workload, high simultaneous-transaction environments. Their average seek time is about double what Im seeing on some of my Hitachi 1TB drives which are much more aggressive for transaction processing workloads but cost $100 more for the same size, use more power and generate more heat and noise.

TLDR: it works as expected and theres nothing more reassuring than that especially when its at this price point. I tried buying from Amazon. I got it after a couple of weeks which is pretty fast since its international shipping after the holidays. Plugged it in and it was detected immediately without problems and works as expected and specs are as specified in WD website. The one I bought locally was just a brick. Cant get detected so its useless. I should have just bought from Amazon instead of buying from a local unknown seller.