WD Red Plus 4TB NAS 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - 5400 RPM Class, SATA 6 Gb/s, CMR, 256MB Cache

I have been purchasing HDDs for many decades now and I am sticking to the Western Digital brand because I trust WD to reliably store my data (all personal, including many TB of family video). Some HDDs are on 24/7 with constant access and can get hot, especially when the ambient temperature is high during summer, and I choose WD Red for these more demanding uses. As a personal user, I carefully pick the size and style (e.g. Green Blue Black Red, Red Plus, Red Pro) to give the best price per TB and performance for intended usage. I am paranoid about preserving data and have a rigorous strategy of redundant usage and multiple backups which I have had to prove on occasions due to human error. I do not expect HDDs, from any brand, to last forever though some are still going strong after 20 years with no hint of degradation. In my experience, a few % of HDDs start to show signs of problems after 5 years, and I constantly monitor the raw read error count. These WD HDDs keep going reliably with 100% data integrity for years after the first signs of problems, allowing me time to choose how to retire/replace. I have never had a WD HDD fail catastrophically, it is always a graceful degradation, hence why I trust WD to look after my data.

I have of these 24 drives in a NAS that has been running for 15-9 years, and have to say they have been very reliable to date. In that time, I've only needed to replace a small number of drives, well below what I was expecting (I still have a number of 15 year old drives), despite having them in a location that in the summer should ideally be much cooler. They are reliable, perform well and have survived the test of time. For now, I only use this specific model given my experience. There may be other makes and models that work just as well, however I have been happy with the Red Pros to date, especially for a small office NAS solution. I just wish that after all this time, their prices would have reduced more significantly ;-).

Not good to be honest. These WD 12TB drives were selected from the. Synology approved 3rd party supply list for my selected NAS. They didn’t work, not recognised by the Synology application when attempting to setup the NAS. Instead I attempted to initialise the drives for use as backup and they failed to power up even with a powered SATA cable, hence returned for refund. The refund was processed efficiently by the supplier without any issues, for which I’m grateful.