WD Red Pro 4TB NAS 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - 7200 RPM Class, SATA 6 Gb/s, CMR, 256MB Cache

In March 2021 I bought a "WD Red Plus" (CMR) 4TB drive, suitable for NAS usage (unlike the "WD Red" (SMR) version).Having read of improvements to Amazons packaging of sensitive electronics such as hard disk drives, I decided to take a gamble. However I have returned my Red Plus 4TB as am not willing to risk a premature failure within the 3 year warranty and the associated hassle (read on).WD RED PRODUCT LINE CHANGES:Historically, the Western Digital "Red" product line used to consist of just Red and Red Pro. WD recently (last 2 years?) silently switched their Red 2TB-6TB capacity drives from CMR to SMR technology (to save money/increase margin?). This is inferior to CMR in many ways and largely seen as a cost saving move by WD.Amazon reviews for older Red low capacity drives that use CMR technology are now akin to the new Red Plus range of drives. This now means that the WD Red Plus / Red Pro 2-6TB drives are their only suitable low capacity Red product line of drives for use with NAS and the "WD Red" 2-6TB drives should be avoided.AMAZOM PACKAGING:Normally I hate reviews of suppliers mingled with product review but as this was "Dispatched from and sold by Amazon EU." I feel it important enough to write to protect buyers purchasing directly from Amazon until they address their inconsistent packaging policy.There is a real risk of a latent failure having developed during transit due to the poor packaging, thereby causing the disk to die prematurely. Who knows how these packages are handled or thrown around in the backs of vans during transit. Whilst these factors are perhaps beyond Amazon's control, packaging the item correctly is not.A key observation is that the packaging does not even meet the manufacturer RMA (returning) suggestions of hard drives , as detailed by the "Western Digital Acceptable Packaging" (a simple web search will present photos of what is acceptable by WD).I have tried several times in voicing my concerns to Amazon via chat and getting the company to improve their packaging , but without success. I can only hope that if enough people mark this post as helpful, that Amazon will take heed.Whilst Amazon have accepted the return, I was somewhat taken aback by the empty reassurances from customer support. 11:49 saira | Customer Service Hello, I understand your concern. I apologize for any inconvenience this caused. I’ve now escalated this issue to our concerned team to review this issue and fix this as soon as possible. Please be assured this will not happen again going forward. S11:53 me I am not happy [to use] this item due to the poor packaging as I don't want to find it has a decreased lifespan due to the [handling in transit], so it needs to be returned please 11:54 saira | Customer Service I can assure you that there will be no issue with the item S11:54 me how do you know that? 11:55 saira | Customer Service I suggest please use it and if in case any issue then you can return it S11:55 me I cannot believe you have written that. Out of interest do you know anything about hard drives? 11:55 saira | Customer Service I'm sorry I don't have any idea about themUPDATE 20210311: after speaking to customer services trying to address the packaging issue I requested that they put specific packaging instructions for bubble wrap and a box on a repeat order, which they kindly did. It has now just arrived and these instructions had been ignored as it arrived in the C2 book packaging again.UPDATE 20210618: Ok I have tried for the forth time and despite receiving assurances from Amazon that my complaints about inappropriate packaging would be fed up the chain and something would be done - "nothing" has been done it would appear.Just to confirm Amazon are still shipping out retail packaging of WD40EFRX CMR drives and not the slightly newer WD40EFZX CMR Red Plus of the same name, which has slightly faster data transfer rate and 128MB cache.This yet another shady change (but only looking positive this time?) was reported via "WD Silently Replace EFRX With EFZX Drives"

I've had a pair of these drives running in a Synology DS216j NAS for a year and a half. They're quick and were performing flawlessly until one drive began reporting I/O errors and shortly afterwards failed, putting the NAS into degraded mode.WD's support website is not the most lucid on the planet, but a (free) telephone call connected me with a very competent operator who helped me log an RMA. The drive was duly dispatched and replaced within a few days with no quibbles, costing me a total of £4.40 postage. The NAS rebuilt itself overnight.I had heard bad things about WD support and was expecting a struggle, but the process was quick and easy, so I am one satisfied customer. One word of advice: when purchasing drives, keep the anti-static bags and at least one box. You never know when you might need them.UPDATE: the second drive has now failed (growing number of bad sectors) on the second anniversary of purchase. It has been returned under warranty (outcome unknown). I have downgraded my rating from 5 stars to 3 as I don't feel that these heavy-duty drives should fail so quickly.

I bought 2 of these drives (6tb WD60EFAX) as, at the time, they seemed like a good deal but after some further research from comments I had since reading on multiple forums it turns out that the drives are actually SMR Shingled drives. Now I have the drives in a Synology NAS with no noticeable issues but Synology states that I should not mix SMR with CMR drives in the same array. As most Nas drives are CMR, am I going to have an issue with mixing different drives that could affect my data integrity? I am disappointed that WD did not make it clear that this NAS drive is really an SMR drive and that this may have implications with compatibility.

In May 2016 bought 2 of these (WDBMMA0040HNC) in retail packing for a new Synology DS216+ NAS. The NAS reported a couple of bad sectors on one drive about a year later (2017), possibly after a power failure, so bought a spare drive to swop in but did not have time to test or RMA it until the other original drive reported bad sectors a year later (2018). When I tested the first drive it failed the WD Data Lifeguard diagnostics and gave CRC errors on simple write/verify tests ( HDDSCAN and H2TESTW). No problem getting an RMA except had to email WD support when online RMA request failed with "Indirect RMA Creation Failed" message. Replacement drive arrived and the model is different (WD40EFRX). This does not have a "WD RED" label but shows as "WD RED" when registered and has warranty expiring in 2019 as per the original failed drive. I tested this drive thoroughly before swapping it with the second failing drive in the NAS and am now getting this drive RMAed.One issue with current hard drives is that higher capacity can come at the expense of reliability. According to Steve Gibson at GRC. com they rely on dynamic error correction and remapping of bad sectors to achieve the higher capacities and may have more likely to fail. I have Steve Gibson's SpinRite test and data recovery utility but this only supports up to 2TB at moment. The main reason to use 4TB drives was to avoid spending more for a 4 drive NAS but upgrade options are limited to replacing the drives with higher capacity drives. I would not recommend using high capacity drives except in a NAS/RAID as they are do not seem to be reliable enough, although newer models may be better (I hope!). It is a good ideal to fully test a new drive before installing and using. I am unsure as to whether the WD RED models are actually worth using as they do not seem to be as reliable as other drives. According to a post on a Synology forum WD claimed that 90% of WD RED failures were from Synology NAS users. Maybe it was bad luck choosing WD RED drives but the replacement drive model may be better. One data centre (BackBlaze) uses retail drives and has published reliability statistics by manufacturer. My lesson on failing hard drives is where possible to use them with the data duplicated i.e. in NAS/RAID/Window Storage Space as sorting out a failed drive and any data lose is a pain. And have a backup of important stuff somewhere else as well.