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

5/23/14 This WD Black 1TB is used as my primary data drive. I use a Kingston SSD as my O.S. / application drive. Win7 volume creation and format went without a hitch. The xfer of ~500GB data from my WD Red drive to this new WD Black drive went smoothly. This new Black drive has much faster read speed and very respectable write speed compared to other 7200rpm SATA drives I have used thus far. I also noticed that when I booted to win7 from it (I loaded a backup boot partition in case my SSD failed) the speed was impressive. No, not nearly as fast as my SSD but much faster than my backup WDSE and WDRed NAS drives which are also 7200RPM SATA3. Ive had Seagate 7200 RPM SATA3 drives which are not quite as nimble. Alas, it was all too good to be true:( My super speedy Black drive started clicking & chunking after appx. 2.5 mos. Hey ... This happens sometimes with hard drives ... ok, no big deal, the drive came with a 3yr. Wd warranty. This is where the fun started: Went to WD website and spent appx. 1/2hr. in RMA process. Very easy. Sent my RMA drive back via UPS label I printed from WD website (very convenient). After appx. 7 days I checked the RMA status on the WD website. WHAT??? The model# I sent them does not match the model# they are sending me. I looked up the model# they were sending me and it was the slower / cheaper Blue hdd with only 1yr warranty. I called WD to confirm. They answered the call after a few min of going thru the phone tree. The person I spoke to was very polite and spoke with no language accent issues. He said they didnt have any Black drives to send so they sent the Blue. I tactfully let him know this was not acceptable and requested a WD Red or SE drive as a replacement. You would think I was asking the United States Congress to agree on something. I have talked to 3 different reps on 3 separate phone calls with no resolution. I have had numerous business dealings with WD in the past. I was in network I.T. for over 20yrs. I have never gone through this much trouble with WD. Politely offering no resolution after hours of my time does not cut it with me. All this over a $90 hdd. Ill update when the issue is finally resolved. UPDATE 5/28/14 I called the corporate WD cust. svc. line this morning. The operator was very helpful and made sure I was connected to a live person, not voice mail. The Customer Service rep was very polite and sympathetic, but most important he resolved the issue within 30 min. The only reason it took even that long was because we were searching for an appropriate replacement drive I would be happy with since they had no (Black) drives to send me. I couldnt believe he actually offered a very generous upgrade for my time and inconvenience, which I of course accepted. I have always thought very highly of WD products. My faith in WD service is restored. I cannot upgrade the stars on my review because I am not receiving a (Black) hdd. I will give WD as a company a very favorable rating and will not hesitate to purchase from WD in the future. Update 5/29/14 My replacement drive arrived today, ahead of schedule. The drive is installed as my primary data drive and is loading as I write this. The drive is everything WD promised. I am a happy camper:) Update 11/25/14 Since my initial review I have added the following Western Digital hard drives to my systems: (2) 4TB SE NAS enterprise class 7200rpm (1) 4TB Green 5400rpm (2) 1TB Velociraptors 10,000 rpm All my W.D. drives are performing well 24x7. I run full Lifeguard diags on them once per week and have had no issues. The point is: Western Digital hard drives, as a whole, perform very well under very demanding conditions. I am chalking up the initial issue I had with the Western Digital service department as a one time fluke. They really did go out of their way to make it right. UPDATE 6/16/16 Since there are quite a few hits / comments on this review I thought I would supply a quick update All my WD drives from 2014 are still running great:) 24 x 7. UPDATE 4/6/18 Since there are quite a few hits / comments on this review I thought I would supply a quick update Green drive failed last month. WD sent replacement with no hassles and quick ship processing All other WD drives from 2014 are still running great:) 24 x 7. Thank you all for your comments. I am happy to have been helpful:)

This Western Digital hard drive is a little more expensive but it has superior reliability and performs well. I rarely have problems with Western Digital hard drives. All others seem to crash shortly after the warranty expires. Not Western Digital. They last for at least ten years.

This will probably be my last old school hard drive till I build or buy another computer in a few years. Drive seems to perform pretty good but I probably would have been better off going with a little slower but more quiet drive. For the most part it isnt too loud but sometimes for no apparent reason it goes crazy. It went crazy when I decided to use a screen saver. Windows is on a small solid state drive so not sure why this hard drive was firing off when that was active. So I quickly went back to just blanking the screen out after so long. If its on sale and you rock headphones or play music/games pretty loud then you will probably be satisfied otherwise seek quieter options.

This is for the 8TB WD Black hard disk. I have used Seagate, Hitachi, and Western Digital hard disks. They all last a long time for me. I have no problem with any of these brands. One thing good about WD hard disks is that you can tell the hard disk is about to fail. WD hard disks will make noises, and start to run slow. So, you know it is time to replace it. On the other hand, Seagate will just fail in an instant. No noise no nothing. However, if Hitachi is still in business, my first choice is a Hitachi. I have a bunch of Green and Blue. This is my 2rd WD Black. I have a 4TB for 6 years and it is still working without any problem. The 4TB is loud. This 8TB is even louder. If you are in a quiet office, do not get the WD Black. Get a Seagate instead. I have no problem cloning my 4TB to the 8TB with the Acronis WD Edition software. The Amazon package is ok. The hard disk is in the original thick OEM cardboard box with the 2 black plastic packing materials. I tried to catch the Amazon driver to let him hand over the box. But I was too late. He already threw the box on the ground. I have the hard disk for a month now. Looks like it survived the Amazon driver. Running Crystal Disk Mark 6, the 8TB is faster than the 6-year-old 4TB. 223/214 vs 138/131. I have some Crystal Disk Mark screenshots with my Samsung 850 EVO for comparison. Hope this help.

Had a 2G SSD and 2G SATA in my Dell XPS 8940. My second drive was constantly getting full from Backup. This is a nice drive pretty fast and good price. It is a bit loud when my Diskkeeper program is running on the drive but normal operation is fine.

The WDC hard drive this one replaced analyzed as okay though it kept blue screening on the Windows 10 Pro Core i5 computer it supported. Additionally the older 1TB WDC Black posted at 6 Gbps, but within the Windows environment was at 3 Gbps. No more !!, this 1TB WDC Black posts and presents in Windows with the WDC Dashbord Utiltiy at 6 Gbps and is teamed with a WDC Blue SA510 SSD. Both hard drives have breathed life back into my wifes computer.

I transferred about 1TB of large files to this drive so far and am seeing sustained write speeds of 230MB/s, and bursts of 750MB/s for the first few seconds. I am sitting right next to it and I dont hear any noise at all. If there is any, its quieter than my very quiet case fans so I dont notice it. I ran the CrystalDiskMark tests and didnt hear any noise during that either, even thought that reads and writes many small files. See my test results image. Overall, I am very happy since it was about 4x cheaper than a similar sized SSD would have cost, and is about 2x faster than any other hard drive I have owned in the past. It really is super quiet also, so I dont know what other reviews are talking about. Maybe this 6TB version is just that much quieter than the 2TB or 4TB versions people are saying are loud? Or maybe WD just improved them (bought mine Feb 2023).

I bought this WD 6 TB Black drive to store videos. It appears to be fast although I am not sure I saw a big difference compared to the cheaper 5400 rpm WD drives I have owned in the past. My PC has a Samsung SSD with my operating system on it (C: Drive) and another WD HD plus this 6 TB WD Black HD. I have bought many WD drives in the past and they have been very reliable. But, this drive is very noisy. It makes an annoying humming sound that is very audible if you work in a quiet office. Someone said it is like a humming refrigerator noise and I think that is an apt description. That is unfortunate. The hum could possibly be heard over audio if you record for YouTube or something like that. I still have the drive in my PC but I plan to remove it and either use a 4 TB WD Black which I heard is quieter, or a WD Blue or just invest in a smaller and faster 4 TB SSD instead even if a 4 TB Samsung SSD is now more than twice as expensive than this 6 TB WD Black. I may use this 6 TB drive as an external backup in a USB case, i.e., docking station. The second thing I learned through this install is that transferring my old desktop internal PC drive into an external USB 3.0 SATA Hard Drive Docking Station did not go as smoothly as I hoped. It took some research but it turns out you cannot take your old internal HD with the data on it, put that HD in an external USB case and easily access the same data in the portable USB Hard Drive Docking Station ( I used a Sabrent USB 3.0 Sata Hard Drive Flat Docking Station). Apparently Win10 now prevents data access from a previous PC SATA internal drive that has been installed in a portable USB docking station unless you first reformat the drive in the USB case, which of course, erases your drive. So I had to put the old drive back into my PC and copy the data to my regular Passport WD Portable Drive. Then re-install and format the new WD 6 TB Drive in my Desktop PC and then transfer the data from my WD Passport to the new WD 6 TB drive. I suppose I could have tried to clone the new drive with Acronis or similar software but that would have taken installing new software. So, with Windows10, you cannot just remove your old PC SATA Desktop Drive with the data on it and put it in a USB Docking station and have access to the same data in the external USB docking station to use or to copy to your newly installed PC Internal SATA Hard Drive. Back to this WD Black 6 TB Drive. If you dont mind the humming noise, it is a nice fast drive (7200 rpm - WD Black is obviously faster than 5400 rpm - WD Blue). If, like me, you are likely to find the humming sound annoying, then get another drive. I should have listened to the other reviewers who mentioned the noise. I still like Western Digital and so unless I get a Samsung SSD, I will likely buy another WD Drive - just not this one.

Western Digital Black - What Can You Say :-)

Have had many wd black drives over the years, never had one die on me. I figure for big slow storage it would work fine! Barebone drive, no cables included. Didnt test the speed but not expecting anything insane from a 7200rpm mechanical. Big storage cheaper than ssds