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

The short summary: these work great for bulk file storage in the home--built to be continually powered up and to store large amounts of data for the home user, power user, or small business. Ive got a love-hate relationship with WD: their USB drives have been problematic and disappointing, but the Caviar Black internal drives have run very well for RAID 0 / RAID 5 gaming in my desktop PCs. I bought these Red volumes to fill in the slots in a home server that had a RAID 1 array where a member had died...it turned out to be cheaper to buy three 4TB volumes, start over, and gain a ton more space than to try to dig up an exact match for the bad drive and still keep a smaller array. This time around, I used Windows Storage Spaces, a feature in Windows 8 and above. On Windows 10 64-bit I was able to set up a large storage space with Parity and use it for my system backups. Western Digital have done a good job making it easier to understand all these drives, and if you stop by their site, youll see what the color codes mean (like Green for everyday desktop, Purple for surveillance systems). If youre big on the details with hard drives, you know that the way theyre built makes some better for gaming, some for large files, some for continuous writes, etc. The Red series is for storage: the kind you stick in a file server and expect them to be running 24/7 or for long periods of time, and youre not needing super-fast response time. Theyve been running continuously since I installed them and a periodic temperature check doesnt seem to indicate theyre overheating and getting stressed. So far Ive been happy with the ease of use of the WD Red 4TB NAS desktop hard drives. They were fairly cheap, they do the job, and I suspect theyll last me for quite a while in my home server.

Ive read a lot about these drives and how reliable they are, so I decided to try them for a change from normal/regular WD drives. I am used to WD green drives, which I use 24x7 (2x 500GB and 2x 2TB in RAID0) since 2010 without a single glitch (read/write some 10GB/day on average), the green drives are fantastic, and my SMART sensors still show very healthy indicators! I bought 4x3TB WD Red NAS to configure a RAID10 array, i need it for my massive music production samples collection (Kontakt 5 :-) ), sequential reading speed is crucial, so is redundancy, RAID10 is the key! Drives arrived a couple of days later than promised, its ok, things happen. I prepared everything right, done the backups, managed my ATX tower internal cables and controller ports to accomodate the 4 extra drives. plugged the drives, powered the system, and POOOOFFFFF, one of the drives is a Dead On Arrival!!!!! it just clicks and clicks and keep on clicking!!!! what a disaster! I mean to me its 4 brand new drives with one failing already, so 25% defect rate!!!! I contacted Amazon, they were very kind offered a replacement that arrives within 2 weeks as i live abroad, more wasted time, and i have to ship on my expense the defective product! too bad! I will wait for the replacement drive and update my review accordingly, i give 1 star due to already proven product reliability and RMA policy. Update: I should mention that Amazon customer were very kind and offered to me full refund for shipping the defective product back to the USA. The replacement drive arrived right on time, working great, I am increasing my rating from 1 star to 3 stars due to Amazon and WD great customer support. drives are in use since 6 months, all looks goods, cool drives, low temperature (27-35 Celsius) in the ventilated RAID cage. RAID10 on software IntelP55 SATA2 (3.0GT/s) using windows 10 x64: Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 253.285 MB/s Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 91.257 MB/s Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 15.873 MB/s [ 3875.2 IOPS] Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 2.962 MB/s [ 723.1 IOPS] Sequential Read (T= 1) : 135.242 MB/s Sequential Write (T= 1) : 59.555 MB/s Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 2.449 MB/s [ 597.9 IOPS] Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 0.442 MB/s [ 107.9 IOPS] Test : 100 MiB [E: 50.9% (1804.0/3540.9 GiB)] (x3) [Interval=5 sec]

I have purchased 6 of these 4 TB WD Red drives for a Synology DS2413+ NAS. Installed the drives, partition and deep scan took about 12 hours for a single drive setup and about 20 hours for the same with a RAID 1. I dont require anything else yet as I have offline backups and not yet enough storage to mirror all of the drives online, I dont want any smaller drives on the NAS. I plan on setting up multiple RAID 1s as I add drives to this system. They are easy to build and rebuild if I have problems. All six drives are in a basement area at 68f and the drive temps are 72f-73f. The were 83f when scanning and formatting. The packaging was superb, each drive is in its own brown cardboard box with plastic ends to keep the drive from shifting and then was packed in a larger box. No errors or problems with these drives so far. I need six more before I can get all of my movies and music online, will take awhile to image all of my retail DVDs and CDs. The NAS and the memory for it were also packed well and are running well. Love Amazon for their free shipping as a prime member, this almost paid for the years worth. Update 12-Dec-13 So far the drives are running fairly cool and are very quiet, I have added 2 more of the 4TB models to my Synology DS2413 NAS. This did increase the temps slightly, they now hover around 83f when idle. Room temp is about 70f. The NAS has passive cooling on the board (though it does have an exhaust fan) so more drives adds more internal heat. They are pretty fast when transfering data (too lazy to run a speed test) over the network but it is more than fast enough to run multiple movie streams.

I am an absolutely new user of this particular drive. I had five of the 3tB version in my Drobo 5N and, believe it or not, I was running out of protection space and the Drobo complained that the #1 drive should be replaced with something larger. I couldnt find a 5tB WD Red so I bought the 6tB and when the budget recovers Ill buy a second to actually gain a bit of actual storage space. For Drobo users, sticking one of these in the enclosure might be intimidating. 1) the hardware will be slow to recognize and initialize the drive so the indicator will stay red for some time -- be patient 2) even after the Drobo acknowledges the new drive it may be a few minutes before it starts the rebuild and 3) the most scary thing is the Drobos estimate of rebuild time; dashboard started out estimating 251 hours and then jumped to 299 hours(!) but then settled down to 20 hours after maybe 45 minutes of running and then quickly dropped to 17. Way more reasonable. (later) Well, after approximately 26 hours the data rebuild on the Drobo 5N completed with no complaints from the new 6tB WD Red drive. Of course this means that I will now need to buy a second equivalent drive to install because the Drobo, for its data protection scheme to work its magic, needs to have a #2 drive as large as the #1 to make use of the space. In other words, to gain 3tB of actual extra storage over what I had to begin with (5 X 3tB Red drives) I will need to expand to two 6tB drives along with three 3tB. Maybe I really should consider erasing some media files and keeping fewer hot backups... (later still) A month has gone by since I put the first of these 6tB drives into my Drobo 5N and my computer budget recovered enough to allow me to buy a second drive. With Drobos storage algorithms, adding the first drive didnt actually yield any increased storage but with the second addition I finally got an extra 3tB of storage. Again, the drive was thrashed pretty well in the 16+ hour data rebuilding process and everything went well. Im still impressed with WDs Red and Green drives with 10 or so of them in use the performance has been flawless. With two 6tB and three 3tB drives in the Drobo Im hoping that my server storage needs will be taken care of for a while. With all of these drives in the tiny Drobo 5N the operating temperature is good despite the small cooling fan and the fan noise is probably the loudest thing about the entire device.

Purchased this drive to fit into one of those western digital MYBOOKLIVE EX2 NAS. Could only afford to buy one of these drives at a time due to the amount it cost ($286 at the time). The drive works well so far, only had it since January 2015. Its pretty silent to me and it starts up quick enough from sleep mode. Most of the western digital drives Ive purchased so far usually last about 2 years before they start giving me problems, so Im hoping that this will last over three years or more. Im going to have to buy another one because I need the RAID function of the MYBOOKLIVE EX2 NAS server and it requires that you use the same type of drives. Hopefully by the time I get the second one, the original one wont have any problems. So far its a great drive but I wish western digital had a small box with a bit of padding to hold these drives for shipping instead of a plastic static free wrapper. The drive was shipped and packaged by Amazon which seems ok with the sheet of bubble wrap but its a bit scary to have so many terabytes that cost so much without packaging directly from Western Digital. I guess they must be packaging them differently at western digital when they ship in bulk. In closing, its a pretty larger amount of space for a single drive and the price is a little bit higher than the competition but Id buy it again since Ive noticed that I havent been very lucky with the Seagate drives.

I am a big fan of these WD Red NAS drives as I have several synology servers. Ive had pretty good luck with WD Black drives as those are extremely solid (and fast compared to these and the WD Greens), but these run significantly hotter which raises the overall temp of my NAS devices. The WD Green drives run cooler (and just about as fast as these WD Red drives), but are not good for NAS environments due to the TLER issue (they constantly spin up and down which adds needless wear and tear and will ultimately reduce the longevity of your drive). These arent the fastest drives out there, but they offer the perfect balance and are safe for use in NAS systems. I also had a lot of success with Samsung drives, but these were bought out by Seagate and, while I respect Seagates quality control, they are not comparible with SMART diagnostics, which is how synology units (and most diagnostic protocols) monitor the health of your drive. While my one seagate drive in operation has never failed me, I dont appreciate the fact that when and if it ever does, I will have zero warning. Therefore, I stick with WD drives so that I can monitor their health and replace them when and if they start developing bad sectors. Seagate seems to have done away with SMART compatibility so that end users could not diagnose the drives themselves. They probably got tired of people trying to RMA drives because of a single bad sector. So Seagate users are forced to use Seatools to examine their drives, which gives you only a passing (or failing grade) with no gray area in between (i.e. no hints that your drive is about to fail as long as it is still operating within what Seagate considers acceptable parameters). Its a shame too because my one Seagate drive is among the fastest I own and has worked solidly for 3+ years. I just dont completely trust it without the SMART data.

I run a project studio that deals with a LOT of media. From recording bands to full HD video editing, I need a lot of reliable storage. I started out with an EX4 Western Digital NAS unit that was loaded with 4 Western Digital Red drives. 4 drives at 4TB each for a total of 16TB of storage. After a year, I upgraded the Ex4 to a PR4100 unit as it was WAY faster then the EX4. I ended up moving the 4 drives from the Ex4 to the PR4100 and continued with them for another year; and they where in the NAS unit running 24/7 without any sleep mode activated on the drives. They where awake, on, and running 24/7. I just recently purchased 4 of these WD Red drives at 8TB each for a total of 32TB. I again, run the drives 24/7 in my NAS unit without any sleep modes enabled. There is no spin up/spin down time. I can not state how solid WD Red drives are. I have been using them for almost 3 years now. Theyre reliable, solid in speed when used in the right RAID configuration inside the proper NAS environments , and they are overall quiet (unless of course you are running a format on them for a new RAID setup, then they all get hammered on at the same time and make some noise). When I upgraded to the 4 new drives with 8TB on them, I took the older 4 drives with 4TB on them, and started using them in desktop PC as basic extra storage drives. No issues with any of them. They are still running solid after 3 years of use. All the drives run 24/7. I have never had a Western Digital drive die on me unexpectedly. Most of them run 3 to 4 years and I usually only replace them because I need bigger capacity drives, not because they die or fail. I highly recommended WD drives, and these red drives are fantastic!

I recently purchased four of these drives to make a new storage array in my workstation. I connected them in two pairs of Raid Mirror on a PCI controller board (with a backup controller) and then using windows to negotiate nightly backups between the two of them. Ive owned numerous western digital hard drives over the years and theyve hands-down been the most reliable. I was unsure about the Red Series of drives, however so far theyve been behaving well. Pros; Extremely high capacity-to-price ratio. Only exceeded by the Green series drives (which I would avoid due to performance issues) Sata 3 interface (not that this will saturate a sata channel, but its still nice) Large Cache 3 year Warranty Cons; I had been looking at using 2.5 drives due to heat, electricity and weight savings. WD doesnt make 2.5 drives anywhere near this large and they are prohibitively expensive per GB Theyre heavy. While normally not a huge consideration, for me it was, bear with me. It would be nice to have a 5 year warranty It would nice if they were fixed 7200 rpm drives, or at least if this was settable for those of us that want to keep out drives spinning all the time. Overall though; Unless you want to buy RE4 Enterprise level drives I would get these again. I will update this with any issues I have. NO MATTER WHAT THIS DOES NOT SUBSTITUTE A WELL THOUGHT OUT BACKUP SOLUTION. EVER. Seriously, go back your stuff up, RIGHT NOW.

Review for: WD Red 2 TB NAS Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, SATA III, 64 MB Cache - WD20EFRX I have 4 of these in my ReadyNAS NV+. They replaced four 1.5TB drives that had filled up and also periodically require a boot scan that would take hours to complete. These WD Drives have yet to need a boot scan. Transfer speeds with the new drives across my network did drop by about 20% from the old 7200 RPM drives. There a many complaints about new hard drives being DOA. Mechanical abuse is always a concern but drives can survive hard knocks surprisingly well when theyre not running. A more likely reason for DOA is user failure to treat these static sensitive devices with at least minimal electro-static discharge (ESD) avoidance procedures. Touching an earth ground before opening that silvery bag can make the difference between a functioning drive and a door stop. Avoid touching the drives circuit board and connector contacts. During winter heating season, the human body can easily acquire a 10,000 volt or greater charge just walking around the room. Do you sometimes get shocked touching a doorknob? Ideally, wear a simple grounding wrist strap connected to a known good earth ground before handling any ESD sensitive electronic component. One can be purchased here for less than $2: http://www.amazon.com/Static-Wrist-Strap-Discharge-Grounding/dp/B00530GDHG/ref=sr_1_4?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1395771639&sr=1-4&keywords=grounding+strap 6/4/2017 Update: One the the 4 drives failed after 3 years and was replaced with the same model. The 3 original drives and the replacement continue to operate nominally in the ReadyNAS NV+. 3/7/2019 Update: all drives continue to run nominally.

If youre looking at this review, youre probably in the market for some honkin big drives to stuff into a server or a NAS box. These Western Digital Red series drives are probably a total waste of money if youre planning to put them into a regular PC. If youre not doing a raid array of some kind, then save your money and buy the green or black series drives instead. If youre looking to set up a raid array of some sort, these are a bargain. They arent the fastest drives, but they are rated to run 24x7 serving up data! Their 3 year warranty is above the current industry standard for consumer hard drives. For my home-made FreeNAS (google it!) NAS/Server, I bought 5 WD Red drives from Adorama (purchased through Amazon) and 1 drive directly from Amazon. The one drive from Amazon came very well packaged, double boxed in what looks like a WD cardboard box with a shock absorbing cradle. Very well packaged for shipment. Honestly, Amazon has been stellar for packaging boxes for shipment. The 5 hard drives from Adorama came in a big box which clunked when it was tilted. Opening the box revealed some big plastic pillow air strips, and 5 loose smaller boxes. Inside each of the smaller boxes was a few pillows and a factory bagged hard drive. There were not enough pillows in each box to securely cushion the hard drives against rattling around, so theres a high likelihood of damage in shipment. BAD SHIPPERS! NO DONUT! Anyway, getting on to the performance of the drives... Im running 6 drives in a ZFS RaidZ2 array. They are all controlled using an IBM M1015 PCIE 8x SATA 3 controller which has been flashed to be an HBA providing JBOD to the ZFS OS. Thats a lotta acronyms! The speed of the array is quite fast... more than fast enough to saturate a gigabit network. I currently have about 5TB of data stored on the 10TB array. On to the bad stuff... One of the drives (I havent checked the serial number to see which shipper it came from) is starting to give signs of premature failure after about 70 hours of operation. During a scrub of the data pool, drive DA5 is experiencing unreadable sectors. Luckily ZFS is able to calculate the correct values for the corrupted data, and is busily recreating the data onto another part of the drive. ZFS rocks for data reliability! If the drive does turn out to be bad, I have a WD Green 3TB drive that I can put into the array as a hot swap temporarily until the failed drive can be replaced. *UPDATE* The ZFS scrub just finished, and it repaired 1.53MB of data, with no data loss. Did I mention that ZFS rocks? Warning/Advice about Data Storage: Note 1: If youre going to be using these drives, or any data storage device for that matter, make sure that you take into account that these are highly fragile and delicate devices which can be easily damaged in shipment, or just plain up and fail when you least expect it. You really need to use some sort of redundant array of drives so that if one drive fails, your data doesnt vanish. In my case, the final configuration is going to be 6 drives in a RaidZ2 (dual parity striping), which means that my data stays intact and accessible even if 2 drives fail simultaneously. Also, there is going to be a 3TB Green drive as a hot spare that can take over for any failed drive in the array. With the hot-spare, my data can survive the loss of 3 drives without losing data (as long as the failures dont happen all at the same time). Note 2: Always, always, always have a backup. In my case, I have two external 3TB USB3.0 drives which will be used only for backup purposes. Every so often, Ill backup the critical data onto the drives and stash them in my locker at work. If you dont have TrueCrypt, google it and see why your backup removable drives should be using it. If someone steals the drives, they only get the drives and not my data. Im giving 5 stars for the drives that work... 1 star for the failing drive... averages to about 4 stars score! Ill update this review once I have details on how the drives do in a week or so. Currently it aint looking too good for drive DA5!