WD Gold 4TB Enterprise Class Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM Class SATA 6 Gb s 128MB Cache

I bought three of the 4TB WD Gold drives and the performance is outstanding. In addition to the speed, I needed the best reliability I can get for my money and this is the model to which I have committed my IT project's success. I have been a server engineer for many years and can say that these babies do not disappoint when it comes to performance. How did they arrive? I don't normally mention packing when talking about a product in the review but it has to be mentioned. These are sensitive devices. What's the point in buying a nice drive if it gets shipped in such a way that it becomes compromised? The packaging for these drives is top-notch. No nail-biting necessary when you order from Platinum Micro. These WD gold units are cushioned with end-brackets and each drive also arrives in it's own box. The drives are hermetically sealed and labelled individually--on the drive and on the Mylar vacuum bag. SMART Diags indicate that all drives are brand-new and the manufacturing date on the label verified it also. How am I using them? I use them in an AMD FX 8 core file and backup server running Windows 2012 R2. I need reliable storage that was based on the SATAIII interface for this particular build. I have a 1TB Samsung Pro SSD for the primary disk with these being used for network file storage and backups. Why did I go with these?* I compared datasheets, RAID configs, performance and reliability reports and online comparisons and then chatted with a WD engineer about my findings and concerns over reliability. I also chatted with storage support from Seagate and IBM. I was given this model number to look up online by WD and was told that it or the 6TB unit would not let me down. I spent weeks researching competitor's drives and their performance. I looked at many characteristics over the long run for various configs, setups and chipsets. I felt good about this decision after doing my homework. When I checked to see who sold them, Amazon had them in stock. So I bought 3 of them. Is the duty rate high? They are tested for 24x7x365 reliability at workloads up to 550TB per year. I tested two of these with very large data transfers, large photoshop saves and multiple simultaneous copy streams. They didn't skip a beat or lag and the copies didn't slow down over time. All the while, the network share to these drives remained available with instant response to other systems. So there is a steady transfer rate and very good I/O handling. As a side note, the trick to keeping server-class drives in optimum condition over the long haul is to keep them as cool as you can and at a consistent operating temperature. Read more

This review is about the drives that are sold by 3rd parties which get them at a discount but are then the ones who are supposed to warranty the product, western digital will not replace the drive if it goes bad, since they are not providing the warranty. This is a good drive and I have 4 of them now, the last two I bought directly from western digital, since I know they will have a warranty if the drive fails. The first two, sadly after reading other reviews here, have no warranty so I'm hoping that they will last long enough to be worth the money. I know it doesn't seem like as big of a deal with a good drive, but mechanical hard drives do fail, and even good ones can have an issue. So I suspect the seller having made their profit will not honor the warranty since they got my money already and it's past the point I can return them. So I do recommend the drive, just not from 3rd parties who I suspect are misrepresenting these drives by not listing them as OEM drives and making everyone think they are retail. Read more

Boy I sure do wish I had never bought a Seagate drive, and had sooner learned how reliable Western Digital drives are. I'm sure this drive is no exception to that rule, and I do not see myself ever buying a HDD from a different company. That being said, I still cannot explain how excited I am to use this drive until it is no longer adequate due to the inevitable technology advances that will eventually make it obsolete. Straight out of the box, the drive performs at over 200 MB/s sequential Q32 read AND write. Of course, as to be expected from any drive, the more you fill it the slower it will become, so I have attached a screenshot for a read/write test using CDM at 0% capacity and 75% capacity. To address the people that say the drive is loud, I'm not sure what they were expecting from an enterprise DATA CENTER drive. These drives are meant to operate 24/7/365 and are not constructed to be quiet, like one would expect from a drive most people would use on a personal home computer, like the WD Blue series. I've actually found that this drive is even more quiet than my WD Black drive, AND it out performs it (and I'm sure it is even more reliable). Others may even point out how hot the drive can get, as if it is a defect. This, again, is not the case as these drives are made to safely operate at up to 60°C. TL:DR - If you are looking for the most reliable drives that also out perform any other drives in its class, and you don't need it to be ultra quiet, you've come to the right place. Read more

I'm storing only media (music, movies, etc.) on this drive. I have no issues. I have it installed on a networked computer. If I transfer a 3GB file over the network from my SSD, I get writing speeds of about 80 - 100 MB/s. Obviously my hardware would affect all of that, but this is the best I can tell you in short review. For reference, I have Intel Core i7 4790K CPU, 4GHz, 16GB ram, and 1 TB Samsung SSD. The computer I transfer to and from is about half that size. Read speeds are great, they seem higher, but I haven't really tested other than transferring from the network drive to my PC. From this HDD, over the network (onto my SSD drive) with the same 3GB file, I get about 100 - 120 MB/s. Not a very technical review, but I hope this helps. Read more