Western Digital 4TB Intellipower SATA 6Gb/s 64 MB Cache 3.5-Inch NAS Desktop Hard Disk Drive - Red (WD40EFAX)

I've just recently purchased my third home NAS drive (an upgrade/replacement for the first NAS, which I've out-grown). As before, I wanted to use Western Digital Red drives, because they are designed for 24x7 operation in a NAS.My last NAS was equipped with WD Red 6Tb models (5400rpm) and this time I elected to upgrade to 12Tb, helium-filled drives, selling for just shy of £400 each. I wanted 16 drives in total - 8 for the new NAS, 8 for the old (I use RAID6 and wanted 2 spare drives for each 6-bay NAS). I decided to split the order in to 4 - with 4 drives in each - to split the risk in case of transit damage (you don't want to put all your drives [or eggs!] in one box, because if that suffers damage in transit that you cannot see, you run the risk of all your drives failing at the same time...).Please see attached pictures of 2 of the drive deliveries received so far. As you can see from the images, the drives turn up sealed in original packing material from the factory, but with ABSOLUTELY NO SHIPPING PROTECTION WHATSOEVER. These drives will have been thrown around in the back of vans, on trains, who knows what, subject to unknown shock treatments.I've already had to return one batch of 4 drives to Amazon; one of them had a dented top plate and the other 3 failed when I added them to my NAS - clear signs of significant transportation damage. I've asked Amazon repeatedly, through the customer support and returns procedures, to have expensive items packaged more safely. Suffice to say, nothing has changed.These are AWESOME drives and a recommend them unreservedly. However, if you need to buy them mail-order (and to be fair to Amazon, they use multiple different couriers so there is no way of knowing who is going to abuse them in transit), you must1. Split your order in to multiple batches - don't order one bulk load2. Split your orders over several days - to avoid the risk that all parcels get put in the same lorry and subject to the same damage3. Photograph the outside of the shipping box (e.g. smartphone camera) before opening it, ESPECIALLY if you see signs of transit damage4. Check your drives with painstaking care when you receive them - and be prepared to reject any that don't look like they are behaving perfectly out-of-the-box5. Put labels on or otherwise mark each drive so that you know which order it was shipped with - that way, if you have a problem with a drive failing, you will immediately be able to work out which other drives came in the same packaging...6. Be ready to demand replacements or refunds. The only way Amazon and 3rd party resellers are going to learn to pack orders properly will be when people insist on it.Whew!With that out of the way, here's a review...The WD Red drives form something along the lines of a "Prosumer" range of hard drives. These are easily a step up from regular retail drives (say the Green range), but perhaps not quite as robust as their Enterprise range. They are priced a little bit more than competitors from companies like Seagate (who have the IronWolf range), but they perform MUCH better. Don't take my word for it; web search for the "Backblaze" review of hard drives - that is the definitive reference for drive performance... These 5400rpm drives may not have the rotational speed of the 7200rpm "Pro" siblings, but are priced accordingly - and offer almost-as-good performance. In fact, you can offset the speed difference by selecting a good RAID configuration and using a good NAS.For:-1. Very well made; truly excellent, reliable build quality2. Very quiet in operation, moderate but not excessive heat output when running hard3. Excellent long-term data retention; my oldest Reds now 7 years old and going strong, ZERO faultsAgainst:-1. Pricey in comparison to the competition.Sum-Up:-You get what you pay for. If you are using these to preserve "your digital life" (in my case, tens of thousands of irreplaceable photographs and hours of recorded video content) then what price data integrity??? Put simply, if you are storing data that is materially or sentimentally valuable to you, then you would be crazy to go with anything less than the best drives you can afford.

I was deeply perturbed by the recent bad reports of Amazon's frustration free packaging, and of the apparently high incidence of drive failures. Decided to risk it anyway, and all has gone well so far.I bought two drives from Amazon (not a reseller), and am pleased to say Amazon appears to be learning. The package was delivered in an Amazon box by Royal Mail Parcelforce, although it lacked the old "shrink-wrap" internal containment, and used scrunched up brown paper to secure the drives in the big box. The drives themselves were still in WD's boxes, with their plastic supports isolating them from damage. So perhaps Amazon has learned about jiffy bags not working.The drives themselves are simply the best I've ever had.Fast, responsive, very little waiting time, even when the drives are "parked".And best of all, they are so quiet, I have to strain to hear them spin up.They've been running for two weeks now, so no sudden death experiences either.They are used as regular drives in a PC, but as the PC is often on for 12 hours a day, I figured these would be a better bet than WD "green" drives (my 3 year old 1Tb green drives were still running fine, but I needed the extra space).I'm cautiously optimistic they will run for many years, but as always, backups of important data is the only way to guarantee not losing it.EDIT: almost 18 months later, and both drives are still running perfectly. No glitches, no errors, no failure to respond. These remain the best drives I have ever bought.2nd EDIT: OK, it's getting on for 3 years now, with my PC in use eight hours a day, every day, on AVERAGE. That's 8,000 hours-ish. And all is well. Relieved to have bought a good pair. Touch wood...

I just came across this in my order list and noticed that today is it's 7 month birthday so I decided to load up the benchmarking program named HD tune. 255 and do a series of health checks, temps and speed tests on it.So, To start with I'd like to point out that it's a 1 terabyte drive, In my o.s folder it states it has 931 gb's available. Thats a loss but from what I've seen that's sort of the norm, I mean I have two other drives I purchased for this build a 250gb ssd that allows me 232 gb's and a 2 tb hdd that allows me 1.81 tb, so my guess is that's the norm???Anyway lets move on. The drive is housed in a three drive holder along with the other two drives I mentioned and they have a pair of Corsair 120 sp fans in push/pull connected to there box.This 1tb Red is connected via the faster sata 3 connection.Now for the test results.HD tune 255 reportsBenchmark transfer rate min: 67.6 avg: 114.2, max: 147.2Access time: 20.3 msBurst rate: 171.2 mb/sThe error scan found no damaged blocks.The drive sits at 25' C and a 20 gb data transfer over to it did nothing to change that, that's roughly 4 degrees cooler than it's 2 tb Seagate room mate. It does spin slower though.Overall the drive behaves perfectly, I can never hear it and I don't ever get reminded that it's there, which is a good thing. As you can see from the speeds it's okay but I was a bit disappointed as the 2 tb drive I got is quicker even through the slower sata 2 port, But that's understandable seeing as it spins at the slower rpm and that's by design and not the drives fault.Overall impressions are very good. It's passed the 7 month period in perfect health so I can't give it lower than full marks at this stage. I'll update when and if required.