Western Digital 4TB WD Black Performance Internal Hard Drive HDD - 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 256 MB Cache, 3.5 - WD4005FZBX

I build computers and servers for a hobby and I repair the computers for my friends and family. In my experience the highest failure items on a computer is the mechanical hard drive and then the cooling fans. Based on that I try to purchase higher quality drives to avoid the time and money wasted troubleshooting and replacing defective drives. This Western Digital Black drive is one of the good ones. I use the 2 TB versions in servers and I have had a good experience with them. I just purchased 4 more of these and I think they are a good drive. They also are one of the few that still have a 5 year warranty on them. Many drive makers are lowering the warranty period on their drives and at one time many of them had 5 year warranties. Now I am seeing 1 to 3 year warranties. I gave these drives a 5 star rating. That doesnt mean they will not fail as they all do. They just seem to last longer. I have used hundreds of Seagate, Toshiba, Western Digital and other brands of drives. The best last 5 years and the worst didnt work out of the new box. These drives came nicely packaged and sealed in the box and inside of a factory sealed static discharge bag so you know you are not getting someones returned drive. You can download Acronis True Image WD Edition for free from the WD site to clone your current system drive. You can also download the Data Lifeguard Diagnostic software for free from WD to test you drives. These are good drives and I like the quality. I rated them 5 stars.

This is a GREAT value if you get it on sale, the only problem with it is its only 7.27TB after windows 10 formatting

Received them, tested them all night, put them to work the next day, still running; much quieter than I thought theyd be. Pleasantly surprised, thanks!

At the moment its going great, just the noise, but personally it doesnt bother me, and Im getting used to it

If you need storage, this drive works well. Fastest sata drive out there. Not the best choice for newer games, you would want an ssd or m.2, but a lot of games will still run off this. Not to mention so much room to save movies, music, backups, etc. Very good addition to any pc.

Bought for storage in a new build. No complaints.

I love WD drives (I must: in the 3 desktop and server machines Im sitting next to as I write this I have 16 of them ranging in size from 3 to 8 TB). And in the room across the hall (my wifes study) her machine has 2 WD Black drives,1TB and 3TB, and neither of them runs hot, but they are both over 5 years old FWIW). Years ago I stopped using a (then) much more popular and slightly cheaper brand and singled in on WD. Why? Because the other brand ran hot and the WDs dont - or at least until I got this one they didnt. The drive sitting next to it is a WD 6TB (red, not black so not 7200 RPM) drive and it has a curremt temp of 30C (86F). And it - as well as the other 4 drives in this drive cabinet have never shown a temp higher than 37C (98.6F). (My Secret: lots of fans and a direct connection to the houses A/C - they have their own duct which keeps fairly busy machines comfortably cool. Before buying this drie I did read reviews but I missed the ones where the people talked about this drive getting really hot. (Ive found and read several of them in the last hour however...) The drive is already installed in the coolest part of the cabinet, and although the (very busy) drives surrounding it are at 36C (96.8F) right now, this one shows up at 57C (134F). Thats too hot to hold in your hand without gloves BTW. Id add another fan to give that a try, but this cabinet already has pre-cooled air (62F at the moment) and 7 coolng fans (3 4 and 5 5) and I dont think it would help. Ive shut that machine down and once the drive cools off so that I dont have to wear gloves to touch It Im going pull it and then returning it. Now maybe the heat problem doesnt sound bad to you, BUT.... Heat leads to drive failures. Not good. What initially caught my attention was that the drive started giving errors - so many so that the system took it off line and warned me. So I guess Ill be going back to a cooler 6TB drive after this, and Ill stick with a WD or HGST with which Im familiar. This the first WD product that Ive ever owned for which I could not give a good recommendation .. and perhaps i just got a lemon. But I cannot recommend this drive to anyone who works in a room with an ambient temperature above 10C (50 F). OK - Im kidding - I dont think the room temperature would help much. I just cannot recommend it to anyone, period.

I am using this hard drive to play FLAC and WAV files on a KDlinks A400 media player. I consider myself to be something of an audiophile and I love good quality audio. The hard drive that I had been using prior to purchasing this WD Black was the Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM006 (A 2TB hard drive). The Seagate was solid and reliable for roughly two years and I had no complaints. The reason I decided to upgrade to the WD Black 6TB hard was because it was specifically made for multimedia and I wanted to ensure I was futureproof with regards to available hard drive space, so I decided to splurge on the WD Black. When I initially installed the hard drive in my A400, I was disappointed, because the sound was bright and shrill sounding. However, I heard all sorts of detail in my music that I never heard before and overall, the volume was louder as opposed to how the Seagate sounded, so I was a bit conflicted. I had to change the settings on my receiver (Pioneer SC-79) to try to remove that bright and shrill sound. There were a few factory settings on the receiver (Upsampling, Hi-bit32 are what I remember) that I had to turn off or to the lowest setting because they were processing the sound and making it sound artificial along with it sounding bright and shrill. These changes made it sound better, but it was still bright and shrill. I was really disappointed in the WD Black, but I remembered that some electronics require a break in (especially for audio purposes), so instead of giving up and returning the hard drive I figured Id keep it and hope that it would break in. After about 90 days (not 90 days straight without shutting it off, but just playing it whenever I had time to listen to music or wanted music playing in the background), I noticed a magical thing. One morning, I sat down and turned it on and I noticed for a few hours that I did not get up because my music was sounding especially good. My music was extremely clear, the music had excellent detail (far more than the Seagate) and the volume was louder than the Seagate. The sound coming out of my speakers was something I was not prepared for (in a good way). I figured maybe I was just in some sort of a good mood and wanted to listen to music. Well, I made it a point to turn on my system for the next few days as time permitted and it sounded so much better (as opposed to Day 1) to the point of not wanting to get up and move on with my day. Another observation I noticed after the break-in is that the music has a darker background. its hard to describe what I mean but think about it like this. If you know what white noise is in the background, this hard drive seems to deliver less of that sort of sound. You hear more of the artist and instrumentation. It even made the difference between FLAC files and WAV files less pronounced. What I mean by this is that some albums I have ripped in both FLAC and WAV. WAV is the absolute best sound (between the two), but FLAC is close. it was far more noticeable on the Seagate drive, but less noticeable on this WD Black. In closing this review, if anyone is buying this for audio purposes, I suggest exercising some patience with the break in and if you are using a receiver, turn off anything that is processing the sound (similar to what I mentioned above). The audio output from this hard drive is pure. Read the owners manual and find any audio processing settings that are turned on as a default. There may be some things you leave on and you may also have to do some EQ adjustments, bass, treble, etc. but the result is well worth it. Exercise some patience with your receiver and you will be rewarded. As for my A400, there are some settings on that for optimal audio output that Ill be covering in my updated review on that whenever I get around to it. It is seriously a good piece for music. I did NOT expect anything special from a higher end hard drive other than available storage space, but I have been pleasantly surprised and I no longer regret my purchase as I did on Day 1. I highly recommend this hard drive for audio purposes. in fact, I cannot recommend it enough. Hope this helps with your purchase decision.

Some people might find it stupid to buy a drive like this just for storage but after trying a couple of other brands and dealing with crap like SMR and loud and flat out defective drives from other brands its worth it in my opinion. This drive is pretty loud when seeking but is silent otherwise and I can deal with that. Im happy I was able to finally get a decent drive.

Your typical, run of the mill, mechanical Hard Drive. This thing gives you a good amount of storage at an extremely reasonable price.