Western Digital 6TB WD_Black Performance Internal Hard Drive HDD - 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 256 MB Cache, 3.5" - WD6004FZBX

A Western Digital Black SATA drive has been the storage drive on my family's Dell XPS desktop system since 2017. It is where all of my kids' baby photos, videos of first steps, vacations, and other memories are kept. Of course I have backups onto external hard drives, and with a cloud storage service, but it all starts with the WD Black. And the drive has been absolutely perfect for eight long years. There hasn't been so much as a hiccup, read error, corrupted file, or anything in all that time. I'm talking performance reliability of an impossible 100% over all that time.I'm now shopping for a new desktop computer, and wanted to have the same setup with a big secondary drive for storage. While I looked at other brands, I figured why tempt the devil? This time I bought a Western Digital Black with 8 TB of storage. I connected it as a third internal drive on that old XPS system, and copied all of the files to it. Connection was easy, transfer speeds were great, and I have no doubt it will be a trustworthy, safe place to keep family memories for the next eight years.

I've never had a problem with WD Black 6TB HD's and I have purchased 4 of them so far. 2 of the drives are possibly 5 years old. These drives appear to be very durable. Not one failure on any of these drives for me.

Western Digital Black drives have always been very fast and reliable for me.

I've had a lot of hard drives over the years, but the reliability in performance of Western digital black drives stands above the rest. Yes you can spend less money on a drive the same size, but sometimes you get what you pay for. When you get a Western digital black you get a longer warranty and faster speeds. These drives are fast, quiet, and reliable.I bought this to replace a failed Western digital black 2 terabyte drive of the same model, that was part of a raid array. Mind you, when I say that that drive failed, it did so honorably after 9.27 years of uptime in computers that were left running 24/7. I still have three more identical drives that are the same age, and still working fine. That's well beyond the 5-year warranty. I say computers, with a plural, because when I upgraded to a new computer I continued to use my old, and still functioning WD black hard drives.So with any luck, this new drive will last as long as the old one did, or more.I don't have any heat issues with these, but then again I have a high air flow case, and the drives are installed with fans blowing over them. I did try it one point mounting several drives very close together and and enclosed space, and I did run into heat issues. As long as you have reasonable air flow and you don't pack them too close together, they're not going to get too hot.I know in this day and age still using hard drives is kind of antiquated, but depending on what you use them for and how you use them, they can still have some benefits. I use these in a raid configuration consisting of five identical drives that contain a raid 0 array and a raid 5 array. This way I have the benefit of speed over data protection for one volume, and the benefit of data protection over speed for the other.

UPDATE 3/26/15:This drive will make audible noises when accessing the data on the drive, but it gives pretty good speed. Even with the third replacement, it makes noises, so I'll just have to deal with it.The speed is pretty great. I wish this wasn't as loud as it is now. It sometimes bothers to hear the drive making access noise whenever I launch Adobe After Effects, but I can live with it.~Simon.UPDATE 3/17/15:I received the replacement drive to find out that it has a similar (ticking sound while accessing data) symptom. I resorted to calling the WD Customer Support.The customer service representative was really helpful. He told me that the problem might be the bad cable. I switched the older SATA cable with a newer SATA cable I happened to have on the computer to find the problem still existing, so I told him about it.The support said he will send me a third replacement drive since both of the hard drives are giving me the same problems. I was a little conflicted because that meant I will have to pay for an extra return label. I voiced my concerns to the support, and the support said he will make me prepaid shipping labels--two labels--for the two (maybe not-so defective) drives I have to return.Also, the "some complicated and strict return instructions" happened to be for the people returning hard drives in a bulk. I'm just an end-user, so the support clarified that I can just return the hard drives in the original packaging.So, people, web replacement support may sound more convenient, but calling the tech support proved to be much better. At least for me and my situation.If any of you have some noisy drives, try switching the SATA cable to a newer one. Apparently, this drive works better and tolerably quieter with a newer SATA cable (thus, the two drives I have to return may not be defective).~SimonEnd of update. Old review below.== Edit Start ==Well, I think I gave a horrible rating at the beginning, but bad start is a bad start, I guess.At least the clicking drive worked. The shipping fee I have to pay for returning is around 7 dollars, which was what threw me off.Also, the billing address have to be the same as replacement shipping address. That also threw me off, deducting one whole star.Anyways, I hope no more problem exists with this new drive they sent me.== Edit End ==This drive works, but it's making abnormally loud clicking noises whenever it is reading off or writing on the disk. It's so much louder than my other (regular) hard drives I don't feel safe using Adobe After Effects with this drive.I submitted a replacement request through WD's website, but the steps there is just horribly laid out. It's not easy navigating through the website for support. Also, you have to pay the shipping fee for replacing the already defective product with WD. Also, WD is practicing some complicated and strict return instructions.I mean, come on! You shipped the clicking drive at the first place!

Western Digital HDD’s are some of the most dependable products made. I have used them over the 20 plus years I’ve worked on computers and I’ve never had one quit on me. I’ve upgraded them but none have quit me. Hank you Western Digital for the great product.