2TB WD NAS Internal Hard Drive HDD - 5400 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, SMR, 256MB Cache, 3.5" - WD20EFAX, Red

This is not your average Western Digital desktop hard drive. The WD Reds are made for heavy duty, high duty cycle use. They are made for use in Network Attached Storage devices. The NAS environment can really torture a hard drive. Especially when it has to support a lot of users and devices. This hard drive is made to be able to function in such an environment. I have a Terramaster NAS in my home network. That system has two Seagate Ironwolf hard drives. It has been flawless in operation. I attached an external hard drive enclosure to the Terramaster to have a backup of all the data. The hard drive enclosure does not come with its own hard drive. You get to choose, depending on your needs. I bought this WD Red hard drive to use as the backup for the Terramaster. I backup the data from the NAS on this hard drive and then store the drive in a safe location. The WD Red has been flawless. It is easily the equivalent of the Seagate Ironwolf. The operation is silent and reliable. I have not had any issues with these NAS hard drives. Yes you can use a regular desktop hard drive for this purpose. A WD Blue caviar hard drive will also work. However, the WD Red is a more robust hard drive. It is more expensive than a regular desktop hard drive. But the reliability and peace of mind are worth it. NAS hard drives will also work on your desktop computer. You can swap out your WD Blue hard drive for this one. You will get added durability and dependability. But it will only be worth the extra cost if your computer is regularly stressed. A one-user desktop PC that gets used for 5 hours per day is not under stress. However, if you have a PC that is used for security monitoring purposes or as a home server, then yes, invest in a more robust hard drive. I love solid state hard drives for their performance and lighter weight when used on a laptop. However, for storage purposes, I still prefer a mechanical hard drive. If I were building my own desktop PC, yes, I would use a NAS hard drive such as the WD Red. But I would not throw out a working WD Blue that comes with a new PC. Evaluate your needs carefully. A data storage system used in a business setting should have robust hard drives. If you are a content creator on Youtube, get at least a four bay NAS storage device and fill those drive bays with WD Reds or Seagate Ironwolves. If you surf the internet, shop online, and basically only consume social media, then a regular PC with a traditional desktop hard drive will be good enough. Highly recommended for NAS Storage systems and heavy-duty desktop use.

This hard drive does exactly what it promises. It's fast, quiet, and reliable. Perfect for NAS setups or internal storage. Western Digital remains a solid choice for quality and performance.

Buying anything off Amazon related to computer equipment can be a risk. Great experience from this seller and would buy 4 more hard drives if I had the money. Received it, bench tested and ran with no errors. Formatted and spun right up on my NAS. Great customer service and very responsive! Saving for future purchases 5 Star!

Perfecto

I bought 4 of these to put into a 5 bay drive. I'm using them as a RAID 5 and it's been running continuously for a couple of months now. I've had no problems. I looked into buying used Hitachi drives, but I decided it wasn't worth the time and money to buy used hard drives. You never know what you'll get. I've been very happy with these. _____________________ It's now almost 2 years since I ordered 4 of these for a RAID 5 array. One of them has failed. It's the first WD drive that I can remember failing on me, and I've been using them for years. WD has agreed to honor the warranty (they were warranted for 3 years). The problem is that the drive failed in a way that it can't be reformatted. In order to make useless any data on the hard disk platters my only option is to physically destroy them. But then WD won't honor the warranty if there is physical damage to the drive. They assured me that the disk would be reformatted. BUT, in a previous, unrelated order from Amazon in 2020, I received a "new" WD drive. In preparing that drive for use I discovered that it had already been formatted and there were several Word files on it from the former owner. Some of the files were immigration forms containing personal information. In light of this knowledge, I asked WD if I could drill holes through the platters before sending them in. The reply was a quick "No, physically damaged disks aren't covered under the warranty". My only 2 choices were to keep the disk and destroy it myself, or return it for a replacement and hope that WD follows up and re-formats it. I chose to keep it and eat the loss. I think that WD should formulate a better policy for situations like this, and that's why I've given them a 4 star rating instead of 5.

I had a NAS server with x2 2TB WD Reds in it, and I was looking to upgrade, as I was reaching capacity. These have been fantastic so far. They're holding up well, and the transfer from the old drives to the new ones was relatively quick given the amount of data that was on there. Shipping hard drives can be tricky, but they were packaged well and very protected. They also are both functional, so I didn't receive any duds, which is wonderful. They're quiet and running just fine so far. Speeds are great, everything I could hope for. WD drives have always treated me well, and I am more than happy with these. Crossing my fingers that they will last me a nice long time with the upgrade! Highly recommended!

I considered throwing away my six year old Roamio, model 846500, when it failed. The Tivo wouldn't get past the "Welcome" screen. I fixed the failure in less than an hour with only this WD20EFAX drive, and now have four times the storage as a bonus. The internet knowledge base (and the Weaknees company that's probably the best third party support company for Tivo) says that this failure mode is almost always caused by a failed hard drive. They also recommend this particular model replacement drive. Replacing the drive in Tivo Roamio is extremely easy. It's easy both both physically and because this Tivo will automatically format a new drive (as long as the drive size is 3TB or less) and automatically load all the required Tivo software during boot up. You will, unfortunately, lose any recordings and such drive-kept data as channel lists, scheduled recordings and One-Passes, and so on that were on the old failed drive. There are plenty of decent videos on the internet to show how to do this, but here is a quick procedure to give you an idea of how easy it is: Remove two torx head screws in the back of the unit and use a thin blade such as a common dinner knife to carefully pry up the top of the box. Remove three torx screws that attach the drive's adapter rails to the box and disconnect the drive's data/power cable by pulling the connector away from the drive. Remove the drive mounting rails from each side of the drive, noting their original position, by removing the two torx screws connecting each rail to the drive. Using the new drive, put everything back together. Reconnect the Tivo to your TV system, plugging in the power cable last. Plug in the Tivo's power and let the system boot up. Be patient because it will take some time for the Tivo to automatically format the drive and load all the software needed. Follow the screen guide to set up the Tivo as for a new unit. Your current account with Tivo and any monthly or All-In programming are still in place because the account is based on the box'es ID number which is stored on Tivo's motherboard rather than its hard drive. Voila...You just saved yourself the cost of a new Tivo and upgraded your video storage capacity, as I did!

I've been a long time fan of using WD Red drives in my servers and they've served me well... until now. These drives are SMR, which renders them useless for NAS. They'll work great, I've got no complaints about performance, and the four I own are all working fine 2.5 years later without a single reallocated sector. However, when you resilver to replace a failed drive, the SMR technology completely falls apart and turns it into literally a 2 - 3 week long process (VS under 24 hours for a standard CMR drive). If you're at one drive of redundancy then you'd better hope you don't get a second drive failure that month... and you're NAS performance is going to be terrible during the process as well. Thus these drives are not significantly better than any cheap drive, for a significant price premium. What's worse, when I bought my drives there was zero indication that they'd switched from CMR to SMR drives in the WD Red product line, and even today they don't explain why that matters. As such, I'd be extremely nervous about buying a WD drive in the future, as who knows what new cost-saving technology they'll silently implement. Aside from performance and reliability, the next most important aspect of a NAS drive is the warranty. Harddrives fail, regardless of the company or price point, so if you're running a NAS with several drives then you're inevitably going to get some that die prematurely. I've had to send a couple drives in for replacement, and the process is typically doing an RMA on the manufacturer's website and they'll ship a replacement to you for free. WD now charges to replace defective drives. They want you to mail your drive to them, at your own expense, then once they receive it and process it in a couple weeks they'll mail you a refurbished replacement with you paying for shipping ($8 for it to arrive in ten days, upwards of $50 for faster shipping). If you want them to ship immediately you need to pay $25 (non-refundable) plus the cost of the replacement drive (refundable after they receive and process your old drive). Yes, that's right, if they send you a dead drive then you'll need to pay another $50+ and wait for weeks for a replacement. Oh, and the replacement will probably have thousands of hours of use so you can look forward to repeating the process in another year or two.