Western Digital 12TB WD Red Pro NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD - 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, CMR, 256 MB Cache, 3.5" - WD121KFBX

TL;DR: Western Digital 20TB WD Red Pro: A whisper-quiet, storage powerhouse for home NAS systems, effortlessly reliable. Imagine finding the holy grail of storage solutions for your home NAS setup. Enter the Western Digital 20TB WD Red Pro NAS Internal Hard Drive. This behemoth of a drive isn't just about its massive 20TB capacity; it's a symphony of quiet efficiency and steadfast performance. The drive hums along like a silent ninja, a much-appreciated trait for any home system. Its insides are where the magic happens, integrating into my NAS setup like a dream, showcasing its prowess with every task thrown at it. Setting this up was a walk in the park, user-friendly enough for even the most tech-averse. It's like having a friendly storage wizard guiding you through the process, whether you're aiming to safeguard precious family data or just giving your digital library room to grow. With five of these titans in my NAS, I'm swimming in a sea of storage space. It's like having your own digital Fort Knox, reliable and unflinching. WD has been a constant companion in my tech journey, and the Red Pro series upholds that legacy with aplomb. In short, the Western Digital 20TB WD Red Pro is like the Rolls Royce of NAS hard drives – luxurious in capacity, whisper-quiet in operation, and reliable to its core. For anyone seeking the pinnacle of storage solutions, this is it. WD Red Pro doesn't just meet expectations; it sails right past them into the stratosphere.

I bought two units of the 20TB version of this WD Red Pro drive for my new storage system. I particularly went with the 20TB version, because - according to the datasheet on Western Digital's website - it is less noisy than some of the lower capacity models. I tested one of the units, not in my storage system, but in my open bench USB 3.0 to SATA Adapter (with a max transfer rate of over 500MBps). It performed well, the sequential read and write speeds as high as ca. 270 MBps and ca. 130 MBps on the low-side. This is typical of all HDDs: on the outside of the drive they can pack more data on one track than on the inside, so on each rotation they can write and read more data on the outside area of each disk platter. The write and read tests were also successful, no bad blocks were reported. For some performance figures, please see the attached screenshots (which have the serial number removed/redacted). Please note that the CrystalDiskMark results are performed on an empty HDD, so they seem to be executed in the "fast" section of the drive. The other graphs were taken from HDSentinel, relevant there are the bottom graphs, which show transfer rates across the surface of the drive. The sound of my test unit was also pleasant enough, the clicking wasn't too bothersome. But since I will move this drive into the case of my storage system very soon, the clicking will be a lot less noticeable than it is already. One action I always perform, BEFORE opening the product box of an HDD or SDD is to check the serial number on the box against the manufacturer's warranty website to ensure that the item is covered by the manufacturer's warranty. I do this both when amazon is the seller and when a 3rd party is the seller and amazon is just the fulfillment party. (I do not buy HDDs from a 3rd party seller that does not have fulfillment with amazon.) This is to avoid OEM/gray-market units that aren't covered by the manufacturer's warranty. A store warranty by a 3rd party seller is of no use to me, since these sellers come and go and I also don't want the hassle of dealing with them. Since the Red Pro series offers a manufacturer's warranty of 5 years, and HDDs fail frequently enough to make such a warranty very valuable, I always insist getting the manufacturer's warranty and even will query 3rd party sellers, if their stock with amazon is covered by such a warranty. As it turned out, the serial number of second 20TB HDD that I ordered (from a 3rd party seller, since amazon themselves were out of stock) did not show up in the manufacturer's database for U.S. warranty, so I can only assume that it is a gray-market unit and I immediately returned it. (I can only hope that the 3rd party seller will have to bear the full cost of this return, since I emailed them and asked about the manufacturer's warranty, before the item ever shipped, but they didn't answer my question.) One more tip: There has been some research that failure rates of HDDs from the same batch are somewhat correlated, so I always try to space out my purchases (either in time or by using different vendors) to increase the chance that I will be getting units from different batches. That's why I bought from two different 3rd party sellers on amazon (one of which apparently sold a grey-market unit), without disclosing that fact ahead of time.

Using 2, 4TB drives in a home RAID array for photos, videos, etc. Main drive is an SSD but decided to go with these for bulk storage as they are a bit cheaper (guessing my last time buying HDD's and next time will just use SSD's because they are just so much faster). Drives seems to perform nicely and other than a little HDD noise here and there don't find them bothersome at all. Previously had 2, 2TB of these red drives in a RAID array (had it running for about 8 years) and never had any issues. In our office we have Gold versions of these running on a backup server for about 6 years with no issues. All in all, very reliable. Speed is fine, but obviously not going to compare to SSD. One thing about size of the drives which I see some comments on... The size of the 4TB drive is going to be approximately 4 trillion bytes (mine is 4,000,765,177,856 bytes), however your system will likely report that as 3.64 TB or 3.726 GB. The reason for this is that Windows computes 1GB as equal to 1,073,741,824 bytes and 1TB as equal to 1,099,511,627,776 bytes. These numbers are achieved by raising 2 to an increasingly greater power till you get your first number in the billions and then trillions. There is some technical reason why this is done, but ultimately it is just confusing as it creates 2 different ways of computing size. One, counting the actual number of bytes and the other, dividing your bytes by one of those numbers to get the amount of GB's or TB's. For MB the number Windows uses is 1,048,576 bytes (for example a 20,000,0000 byte file will be reported as 20,000,000 / 1,048,576 = 19.07MB). In any case, here is a summary of the approx drives sizes and around what Windows will report the size as (assuming the drives sizes represent actual bytes exactly, so 4TB for this calculation will be 4,000,000,000 bytes and not the number my computer showed above... so expect the actual numbers to be slightly higher than these): 2TB Drive = 1.82TB or 1,862.65GB 4TB Drive = 3.64TB or 3,725.29GB 6TB Drive = 5.46TB or 5,587.94GB 8TB Drive = 7.28TB or 7,450.58GB 10TB Drive = 9.09TB or 9,313.23GB 20TB Drive = 18.19TB or 18,626.45GB Hope this clears up some confusion here.

These drives are always good. Just wish Amazon would package them a little better.

Keeps making scrubbing sounds at all time. Won't be suitable for use in a home NAS device, if noise is a concern.

Nach vielen Jahren positiver Erfahrung mit den WD Red und Recherche im Internet wollte ich mir für mein neues NAS 2 WD Red Pro zulegen. Etwas skeptisch haben mich die Bewertungen bezüglich der Verpackung gemacht, aber der Verkäufer hat sie sich augenscheinlich zu Herzen genommen. Die Verpackung ist mehr als perfekt. Ich habe leider nur 1 Foto gemacht, aber es war eine Kartonhülle, darin mit Noppenfolie umhüllt die Karton/Schaumstoffummantelung der Festplatte. Besser geht es nicht. In den ersten 2 Tagen nach der Einrichtung des NAS waren die Festplatten schon intensiv zu hören. Aber seitdem finde ich die gelegentlichen Geräusche nicht als besonders unangenehm.

I bought another pair of the 4TB WD Red Pro drives to go in another Synology DS218 NAS, my third now. These drives have the extra benefit of being optimised for NAS working and are heavy duty, and the Synology knows about them and how to make the best use of the system. Except for some chatter when the heads are seeking, I cannot hear them working unless I use a screwdriver as a "mechanic's stethoscope" on the box. The box runs cool. The drives do not come with a fitting kit, but this is not required in most installations which expect to see standard drives and have appropriate mounting systems, as is the case with the Synology. Commissioning and drive checking took about an hour, including unpacking, initialising, updating, and installing all the software and permissions needed. The end capacity in the NAS is not 4TB, but much closer to 3.6TB after big-drive formatting and RAID system are taken into account. However I am happy with this as it is about two years worth of storage, and then it will be time for another newer RAID drive. More smaller new systems with incremental improvements instead of one big old slow one is like having several easily managed baskets for one's precious eggs instead of a big heavy one just asking to be dropped.

Valutazione: ​​★★★★★​​ Recensione: ​​Ho recentemente installato il WD Red Pro da 4TB nel mio NAS e sono rimasto estremamente soddisfatto delle sue prestazioni.​​ ​​Questo hard disk è progettato specificamente per ambienti NAS, offrendo una capacità di 4TB e una velocità di rotazione di 7200 RPM, che garantisce trasferimenti di dati rapidi e un accesso fluido ai file.​​ ​​La sua affidabilità è comprovata, con una garanzia estesa e un supporto premium, assicurando che i dati siano al sicuro e rapidamente accessibili.​​ Pro: Affidabilità: ​​Progettato per operazioni continue, con una garanzia di 5 anni, il che offre molta tranquillità.​​ Prestazioni: ​​La velocità di 7200 RPM consente caricamenti veloci, ideale per streaming di contenuti e accesso a file di grandi dimensioni.​​ Facilità di installazione: ​​Compatibile perfettamente con il mio sistema NAS, l'installazione è stata semplice e senza problemi.​​ Contro: Prezzo: ​​Sebbene il costo sia giustificato dalla qualità, ho trovato che fosse leggermente più elevato rispetto ad altri modelli simili sul mercato.​​ ​​In generale, il WD Red Pro è un'ottima scelta per chi cerca un hard disk NAS affidabile e performante.​​ ​​Lo consiglio vivamente a chiunque abbia bisogno di spazio e velocità senza compromettere la qualità.​​ Nota sulla Tecnologia CMR vs SMR: ​​È importante notare che il WD Red Pro utilizza la tecnologia CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording), che offre prestazioni superiori rispetto alla tecnologia SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording).​​ ​​La tecnologia CMR consente una scrittura dei dati più efficiente, rendendo il WD Red Pro ideale per ambienti NAS e RAID, dove le operazioni di scrittura frequenti sono comuni.​​ Spero di esserti stato utile.​​

Installato in un Synology DS224+, è stato immediatamente riconosciuto mettendo a disposizione lo spazio per la creazione del volume del nas. Ora speriamo nella durata. Performance velocistiche coerenti con le attese … considerato che è un disco meccanico e non un ssd.