Customer Reviews

WD Red 3TB for NAS 3.5-inch Desktop Hard Drive - OEM

The drive is everything that I expected it to be so far. I bought the drives to to in a Drobo 5N NAS box and the RED drives, which are recommended for this box, are fast. It is obviously too early to tell if they are reliable.

One heads-up that people should be aware of is the warranty. You get 3 years from Western Digital, and they have a dedicated customer support line just for the Red drives. Registering the drives online at their website is quick and easy, but in the case of the drives that I acquired via an Amazon Marketplace vendor it said "OUT OF REGION - Product is outside the region (Americas, Europe-Middle East-Africa, or Asia-Pacific) where it was originally shipped." What it means is that the Amazon Marketplace vendor didn't buy the drives directly from WD in EMEA, but instead sourced them from the Americas or Asia-Pacific. Luckily this isn't a big deal for a home user because your product is still covered by the full 3 year warranty, but you are limited to 5 RMA's per year for out of region products.

Are my 5 drives going to cause 5 RMA's in one year? I hope not! If you had 50 drives you may have an issue though as any good engineer knows the chance of drive failure increases in proportion to the number of drives that you have.

So buyer beware - get a product direct from Amazon and I guess it will be officially sourced. If you do get an out of region product from a Marketplace vendor you will still get support but there will be caveats.

The first two examples I purchased were via Amazon but supplied by a third-party retailer. I had previously purchased numerous internal hard drives of various brands and capacities, some supplied directly by a retailer and often in OEM anti-static envelopes, others in various 'Retail' packages but many more on-line. Some were supplied in the same OEM packaging but a few have been nested in similar types of boxes as were those. The packaging used here was certainly fabricated by the retailer and could probably accommodate 4 drive units if each was less well protected. Both individual cartons for the two drive units ordered were contained within a much larger outer and was filled with a reasonable amount of packing paper. The outer carton was slightly damaged on arrival but the inner cartons were well isolated from the point(s) of contact and were completely pristine when extracted.

I have seen similar damage to other external packaging used for some hard drives ordered in the past but have yet to have one that was D.O.A. due to transit damage that penetrated to the internal containers and to the drive(s) within.

The Western Digital Red drives are intended for any usage that is more intensive than 'normal'. Hence, if employed in any form of server that is 'on' 24/7 and for long periods at a time, in NAS devices or even in a desktop PC where usage demands and expectations are high, they are ideal. They offer an MTBF (Mean Time Before Failure) far higher than is offered by WD's other drives which should translate to higher reliability over longer periods of time. Sometimes offered at much higher prices than are currently available, they are currently sold for little more than a comparable lower-spec alternative of the same capacity. Another feature is a claimed improvement to the spindle bearing design which results in a very low noise engagement. However, if employed in an enclosure that is fan-cooled, the fan(s) may themselves be sufficiently noisy to be noticeable in a quiet environment.

A direct alternative to other products which they could replace if their higher reliability or lower noise is essential and where the price premium can be overlooked.

They have now been in use for about 2 weeks in a NAS enclosure. I have not been aware of any noise emanating from the drives or the enclosure but I have other RAID/JBOD enclosures quite close by which are in simultaneous use and where there is an active fan within each enclosure. Although not completely silent, there is a slightly audible hum from those fans and an occasional mechanical vibration that can also sometimes be heard from one which would mask any sounds that may emanate from these drives. However, placing my ear close to the enclosure, I have yet to hear anything.

POSTSCRIPT @ 08-2013

I have since purchased several more directly from Amazon for RAID use. All arrived in WD-branded packaging, with each drive contained in a small carton and nested between two plastic moulded sleeves that hold them safely and securely. The individual cartons were contained within a much larger outer and surrounded by yards of packing paper. Subject to two separate orders, all the drives arrived safely and there was no damage to either of the outers.

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Just Returned Drive DOA - It was sent in a tan bubble mailer envelope.

Just concerned about ordering another from AMAZON if the are sending out Hard Drive like this ....

Excellent packaging and prompt delivery!

Bought these to replace two failed Seagate drives ( won't be getting those again )

So far so good, installed in synology NAS without issue!

Update March 2014. All three are still working flawlessly in my NAS.

The drive Amazon dispatched (in a sealed box) had previously been screwed in to some drive rails and installed in someone else's system. Check carefully that you receive a new model from Amazon and the sides of the drive aren't scuffed.

The drive itself was delivered with no padding, which is rather worrying for the long-term health of the drive.

**Update 3 weeks after purchase.

Drive has now failed. Looks like the poor packaging may well have contributed to it's demise. Amazon's service upon replacing it was diabolical too, I have had to take my business elsewhere. Whole episode has left a bad taste in the mouth. Will never buy a HDD from Amazon again.

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Bought two of these drives now to go into my unraid box and they perform better than my hitachi 5k3000 drives which were my favourites until WD released these.

the amazon packaging leaves a little to be desired in my opinion but the drive arrived and works fine. it's currently undergoing a 7 day stress test before it enters my array.

i get around 140MB/s read and write speeds and the temperatures are in the lower 30s. very good drive, in my opinion worth the slight extra over the greens purely due to extended warranty.

I have this as a 3gb data drive alongside my SSD in a server I use for backup and streaming. The price was slightly higher than the WD green drives, but overall performance is slightly better in terms of speed. I found it still to be very quiet when being accessed. One advantage over the green drives is the longer warranty.

Pros
- Longer warranty than green drives
- Fast but still quiet

Cons
- Slightly more expensive

I was looking forward to receiving these drives and trying out my new Synology....

The box was dented on collection, was surprised to see drives so poorly packaged.
There was no Fragile warning or anything on the box either.
Both of the above probably contributed to dead on arrival state for one of the 2 drives.

The second drive seemed to work ok but was skeptical so returned both.

Very very dissapointed. - WD red drives may be v good, who knows... however doesn't matter how good they are if a delivery monkey from City link throws it around the warehouse and around his van...

I bought this drive to install into a HTPC. My HTPC can hold up to 6 3.5 inch drives to store movies, music and any other relevant media files so acts as a media server for the home network (as a NAS would).
I understand that this drive is intended for use in a NAS which is operational 24/7 which is not the case in my system so I cannot comment on reliability over prolonged periods. At the same time, reliability for storing large files (movies) takes priority over speed for my intended purposes so this drive seemed the ideal choice.

For those of you who are unsure between this and the 3TB Seagate Barracuda (slightly cheaper, quicker read/write speeds but shorter reported lifespan) I also own one of those installed in the same machine alongside the WD Red. All I can report is what the technical stats already tell you; the Seagate seems to spool up faster when accessing. That's literally the only difference in operation. The proof of the pudding will be lifespan and reliability but at the moment, both haven't missed a beat.

So to summarise, I have no issues with this drive for my uses. No dodgy noises, no read/write errors, decent access speeds when viewing the content via Windows. For the application it was designed for, it seems great so far. I have only awarded the drive 4 stars because it's still too early to confirm if WD's claims of reliability and longer lifespan are justified.

One final thing... Be wary of negative reviews about dead drives and early failures from other reviewers when shopping for hard drives. From experience, the people who make an effort to log on to have their say are usually the people who have a gripe, so that can sway the ratings unfairly.

Bought 8 of these to populate a NAS. 5 arrived really well packed, suspended in plastic mounts within individual boxes. 3 arrived not so well packed, just a layer of bubble around them in a smaller box. All looked new though, and all were in sealed bags.

Popped them all in the NAS and none were DOA which is good. Disk #1 is running a couple of degrees warmer than the rest - which I'll be monitoring, but other than that I'm pretty happy.