WD Red 2TB 3.5 Inch NAS Internal Hard Drive - 5400 RPM - WD20EFAX

I've bought many of these over the years - all have worked perfectly and still do.

Inexpensive, durable but slow which is reasonable because faster hard disks tends to die earlier.

Been using 4 of these for the last 5 months and they have been working great. Only thing to note is use good quality sata cables otherwise they start giving errors. Replaced with good cables and never had another problem. Will be buying these again.

I have used Western Digital disks for decades and never had a failure. However the disk in my NAS failed recently. To my surprise it was a Western Digital Red. I replaced with this model, and the replacement disk had thousands of errors and was dead on arrival. I returned it and replaced with another which was a painless process with Amazon support. The end result is good but I'm worried Western Digital aren't what they used to be.Update 03/2023:. The new disk has now failed. Arranging return with WD Support as Amazon won't touch it.

The two 1TB Seagate drives in our ZyXEL NAS326A were beginning to throw a few "Spin_Retry_Count" errors and were getting a bit noisy and hot. This is often a sign that the bearings are starting to go. As I also wanted to increase capacity, I opted for 2 of these WD NAS Red drives (2TB) - to run in a similar Raid-1 configuration.They arrived next day, factory sealed and well packaged direct from Amazon. Their manufacture date was November 2019 and the SMART information on each drive confirmed zero power on hours and zero accumulated errors. So I was able to swap one drive at a time with a rebuild in between. It took a few hours but everything seems fine.These new drives run a few degrees cooler than the older Seagate discs they replaced. They are also much quieter (though not silent). Transfer times are a marginal improvement - though that has never been an issue for us. After a week, we still have zero errors so I am satisfied everything is as it should be. Automatic backups to an external drive are also running smoothly.I was also able to register both drives on the WD website and received confirmation of the ~3 year (37 month) warranty. At 5400 rpm, they may not be the quickest NAS drives available, but at less than £70 each (including Prime delivery), I consider these discs a bit of a bargain.So, thus far, I am most chuffed! Obviously, time will tell.....

I have taken the step of backing up as much of my work as possible but with it still being accessible.I have purchased three of these now to safeguard my files and I have the option of being able to access them across the wired or wireless network.Very straightforward to install and set up. I have always used WD drives in my builds. The one time I used a Seagate drive, it crashed and I lost tens of thousands of files.

Arrived early, well packaged. Dead simple to install, no issues. I was replacing the 4 drives in a RAID 5 array so it was a complete restart and reinstate from backup. Copy back speeds were good and only took a day or so to reinstate about 10TB of data. Like WD Red (I'm using a mixture of 4TB and 3TB in the backup server), have so far had 3+ years of trouble-free use.

I bought a Synology NAS in January this year (2021) and searched Amazon to find Hard Drives to go with it. I chose these WD Red hard drives, costing over £90 each, as they were defined as 'NAS internal Hard Drives' and the description said 'specifically designed for NAS systems'. In March, 10 weeks later, my NAS stopped working and I got a flashing orange status light. After 4 long days of troubleshooting with the Synology support team they told me that these WD Red drives are not compatible with Synology. Apparently WD have changed the design of the HDDs to a lower spec (to SMR from EMR??) but have retained the same model descriptions. I contacted WD Support but no response after 4 days. I then called Amazon support and they were fantastic , agreeing to refund my money without quibble. I have returned the WD Red drives to Amazon and bought Seagate Iron Wolf drives to replace them.I cannot understand how a respectable company like WD can market their WD Red HDDs as 'specifically designed for NAS' when they don't work with the market leading NAS system - and how can they change the technology of the NAS without making the difference clear? All I know is that I will avoid WD products in future.Points to note: Synology Support is extremely quick to respond but took a long time to discover the issue. Amazon support is fast, efficient and friendly and a model to everyone. Western Digital appear to be marketing sub-standard products and their Tech Support is asleep.