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

Bought 9 of these bad boys for my Backup redundant server to put in a RAID 10 configuration. Flawless and reliable so far. I may change this if the drives fail too soon down the road, but good for now.

First things first. This 2TB Red Pro drive is CMR (not SMR) technology, which is a relief. In any event, I installed these drives (2 of them) in my quite old, Synology DS211 NAS and thus far have had no issues at all. Pretty happy with them. I havent done any performance testing and this is just an occasional use device, largely for archival storage. I did upgrade to Synology DSM 6.2, no problems there either. All the drive features seem to work including sleep mode and S.M.A.R.T and other drive management technologies. Im mostly happy these drives were not SMR, that was my biggest concern. As far as noise, when these drives are spinning they are pretty darn quiet... literally cant hear them at less than 3 feet from my head. They do make some interesting noises when going into sleep/wake mode however.. very bizarre sounds. Vibration seems non-existent as well. I did have some older WD drives in this NAS for almost 8 years and they seemed to occasionally have some harmonics, these new Red Pro 2TB drives dont seem to have that issue at all. Good luck!

Ive never had any problems with any WD drive Ive ever purchased, but I received one this past week that would not work in my new NAS. I submitted an exchange and they quickly sent out another before I could send the bad one back. Very impressed with the customer service - highly recommend.

I use two of these Western Digital 16TB WD Red Pro NAS hard drives in RAID 1 configuration as a backup for my most important work files. I know that if one of the two drives should fail, I can simply replace it in the RAID set and keep going while it repairs itself. The Reds are built tough for industrial, commercial, Network Server purposes which makes them more reliable than average. Not a fast drive for gamers, its a more reliable drive for important data.

A great value for money, especially if you can get it on special which quite often could be found. It just works and provides enough storage for me.

We all know that these are slow and loud but man is this one beyond loud. It screeches Every 3 seconds for me which is different than any other one I’ve used in the past. It has a massive storage but if I could return it for another I would.

Those HDDs which I got as 20 TB is not actually 20 TB, it is 1.4 TB less or 18.6 TB. I can live without that 1.4 TB for now, but there should be an explanation or disclaimer in the description why you will get not 20 but 18 TB... You can see it in the screenshot. Other than that it is ok. Very quiet and hold the data pretty well. And, oh boy, it is fast!

These drives make a constant ticking noise once every 5 seconds. This seems to be a feature of the drive, as they continuously proactively scan the media for bad sectors and relocate them before they become unreadable. This in itself is a good thing. What is bad is excessively audible noise this creates. Sitting anywhere close to these hard drives, the periodic clockwork nature of these clicks, every 5 seconds from each drive, it becomes very annoying real fast. I expected 7200 rpm drives to be have more white noise than 5400 rpm drives. Thats fine. A bit louder random head movements while drive is being accessed, I can get used to that. However, I did not expect these to click like a very loud antique clock all day long even when completely idle. If you are buying hard drives for a datacenter, these are probably great. If you are buying them for a NAS box that youll keep far away from sight (and ears) in a separate room in a basement, these should do just fine. If theyll be anywhere near you while you work, constant ticking clock-like noise from these will start driving you nuts real fast.

Bought the 18 TB variant, definitely not the best packaging for a $400 hard drive. The drive works but I hate the occasional loud clicking noise from head parking or some advanced power management (APM) feature that I couldn’t disable. APM resets minutes later after I disable it. I tried several disk management softwares with no luck. It must be the firmware. Why put APM on a NAS drive that is meant to run 24/7??

I just installed two of the 4TB Pro versions in a two-bay Synology NAS. Only time will tell if theyre reliable. Im using them as a file dump at home, so Im not exactly pushing the limits of their capabilities. I had no issues whatsoever setting them up in a Raid 1 configuration. Its been quite a while since I picked up a WD HDD. One thing I forgot about is how much noisier they are compared to the NAS-rated Seagate HDDs Ive used in the past. In fairness, the DS220j in which I installed them is far from soundproof, but WD HDDs have this harsh, grindy quality to them that I just havent experienced with comparable Seagate drives. Its not such a severe problem that I wouldnt recommend buying these drives. Its NAS storage. Reliability is paramount. But its surprising to me that WD HDDs still make the same muffled pops and crackles that they did 12+ years ago, specifically, a 2.5 WD Black HDD I put in my PS3. In my experience, Seagate HDDs at comparable performance levels sound less harsh. Again, its nothing severe enough to put you off buying these drives, but have some distance between you and your installation.