Western Digital 16TB WD Red Pro NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD - 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, CMR, 256 MB Cache, 3.5 - WD161KFGX

I have a home lab with a NAS thats central for most things running. Last fall I realized the old disks were passing 8 years of total run time (and less than 50 Power On cycles) and not only were the old drives showing their age as in lacking good cache but I figured it wouldnt be too far off into the future before the drives would fail, so I started to replace the drives. Same housing, same hardware (Except for the disk) same software - once data was migrated over, nobody would be able to tell the difference except the newer disks were faster. And I was pretty happy - that is until last week. This disk was D-E-A-D - a ton of read errors, and no way to even send a command to the drive. I removed the drive and started testing it, to look at SMART data finding a looong list of errors (192) and a Raw Read Error Rate sky high (almost 500K). The log is showing failures even at PowerOn - its as if the drive is having a hard time talking back to the controller. The drive gets EXTREMELY hot being powered on for just a few minutes. So this is going the way of RMAs once WD gets back to me. Had I written this review a month ago it would be full 5 stars and never had a problem kind of review. Having replaced 4 drives with a very long run time without major issues this is a bummer. It happens - sometimes a drive is just bad, except in this case WD added to my frustration with a web-site that would not initiate an RMA for me.

First comment: Typical Amazon Quality Service. So far WD4TB Pro bare hard drive is absolutely quiet, vibrationless, super easy to initialize then format to ExFAT and only slightly warm to the touch. Hooked it up with a Unitek IDE/SATA to USB C 3.0 Adapter for now before mounting in stand alone case. Been using WD drives for a number of years so expect this new one will be as durable as the last.

Been running fine for two years now. After trying two 16 TB Seagate drives that arrived DOA, I decided to try these NAS drives. It looks like the Seagate drives are just too fragile to survive shipping. The new WD Red Pro fired right up and has been writing continuously for 3 hours now. Update: Still working fine after a year. Loses one star for being noisy as hell. It sounds like demons are trying to bash their way out when its busy.

I have fifteen of these drives installed in three separate NAS devices. I purchased two of these 8 TB drives to upgrade my memory capacity in one of my Digital Robotics (Drobo) NAS devices. These two drive units have been in use for about three weeks. As I understand it WD began offering these RED PRO drives specifically for a RAID application (my Drobos are) From the WD information - Since your NAS system is always on, a reliable drive is essential. With an MTBF of up to 1 million hours, the WD Red Pro drive is engineered to tackle 24/7 environments. I am a small tax practitioner and need reliability for all of my backed up files. I do have one important consideration. WD warrants these drives for five years. Unless their warranty policy has changed, a customer would be expected to return a defective drive to WD for testing and evaluation to confirm that the failure was within their warranty clauses. However, I am NOT going to send in one of my drives with some extremely sensitive tax client information just to have it replaced under warranty. However, I did have had one fail several years ago. I contacted Western Digital Customer Service and explained the situation. I was provided with a Confidentiality Waiver to complete. I submitted it to WD and the drive was replaced under warranty.

This is the standard NAS hard drive Ive been using and, so far, is working as advertised. However, out of many WD Red high density drives Ive ordered from Amazon, this is the first one that was not shipped in an individual hard drive cushioned box. This one came with the drive loose in a box with three bottles of fish oil. The drive seems to work so far (after a few hours rebuilding the NAS structure) but it was sliding and bumping loose in the box. I hope no permanent damage occurred.

I use a good handful of these drives in a few different NAS units. They infrequently fail and are reliably running 24/7/365. I started with 6tb drives. If I were starting fresh I would probably use slightly larger drives. I don’t know if the larger drives are less reliable or the same, but I have been very satisfied. Never forget that RAID is not the same as a backup and you will never lose a byte.

Used this to replace a failed drive in my NAS. Installed smoothly, and its storing information. The most important feature of any hard drive by *far* is longevity, and I wont know that for quite a while. But initial impression is it works just fine.

My laptop didt find the HDD. Went to Disk management and did some adjustments later laptop detected

If you own a WD NAS I strongly suggest you get the WD red pros not the Seagate IronWolf series due to potential formatting and pin voltage issues. Great hard drive and great reliability for the price if you live that long that is.

My older hard drive and external enclosure failed (it was time for sure). This was a solid replacement to use for Time Machine backup. I partitioned into two for additional file storage for movies. Plus you can hardly hear this drive spinning.