WD Se Datacenter HDD

As most people have noticed, the ratings for this product are very skewed and for extremely poor reasons. I can't believe two stars for no locking clips. Why are locking clips even that important? Are you always fiddling around with stuff inside of your computer, while it is running, and therefore risk unplugging the SATA cable while the drive is running? Or perhaps you aren't managing your cables very well and there is tension on them? You need to get a better computer case/practice better cable management if this sounds like you. Locking clips are of minimal importance on the features list of any hard drive. There should be no excuse why such a feature would be top on your priority list - enough to warrant a three star loss if excluded. I have practiced cable management long before I had a case which made it easy - the Coolermaster HAF X. Before, I had an Antec 900, the original version, which had no such routing mechanisms for cables. Still, I zip-tied everything down and out of the way, and installed SATA cables first - mind you, this was before locking SATA cables were created. I learned my lesson that data cables are very important when I stupidly pulled an IDE from a running hard drive and lost everything.As for shipping, Amazon has never shipped me a dud or otherwise floating-around-in-an-empty-box drive. This is why I migrated away from the 'Egg, because too many reviewers were reporting poor shipping practices and were receiving DOA hard drives. And they also fiddle with their MSRP prices whenever they have "sales" to appear to have deeper discounts, but that's a story for another time.[/rant]This drive is fantastic. Here is my experience with it so far over four weeks of ownership: (disclaimer: I do not work for WD, just a huge fan!)I have a Synology DiskStation DS1812+ with SHR2 enabled. I slowly add drives to it over time reducing upfront cost. I have added three WD RED 3TB drives since I purchased the DS1812+ in April in addition to 3x2TB drives from other computers and another 640GB I had laying around. I plan to upgrade each drive to 4TB over time, and move my 3TB REDs into another unit, perhaps an expansion unit. But for now, I really needed a large 4TB backup drive to backup my most essential files stored on the DS1812+. So I decided to get this drive to cross-purpose for main storage later. Again, I am using it for backup, however, so I cannot comment much on performance. The DS1812+ is not really the rig to be conducting performance benchmarks on anyway.While I am here and talking about them, I have to say I am a huge fan of WD. I couldn't turn away a 5 year warranty, which completely justifies the cost of this drive. In fact, I would argue this drive is an absolute steal for the price, warranty, capacity, and features. Right now, a WD Black 4 TB drive is only dollars cheaper than this. Why wouldn't you get this one? Also, WD's warranty service is just fantastic. I have had to replace a few drives over the years, mostly for bad sectors near the end of their warranty period, and WD makes the replacement process absolutely painless, especially with their advance-shipment option.Back to the 4TB SE...WOW is it QUIET! I first plugged it into my desktop and left it hanging outside of the case. I could honestly not tell the drive was running until holding it to my ear. Even the seeking heads are silent! The Velociraptors heads in the desktop are like gunshots in comparison. In a large server environment though, this statistic is probably useless. I also plugged it into an external case and powered on and off the drive by itself: some of my other hard drives make ridiculous grinding noises when first powering on, the 4TB SE made no such sound - in fact, no sound period. I was worried the drive hadn't in fact turned on at all, until it comes up to speed at which makes a near-indistinguishable, very faint humming sound.Another thing I was very impressed with was RAFF - this is no marketing gimmick. The drive displays excellent control over external forces applied to it. What I mean is, when I pick up another 7200rpm drive while powered and rotate it around in the air (be very careful with this, because I have crashed the heads on an older hard drive, in fact, I recommend not doing this), I feel a rotational (like a toy gyroscope) force due to the spinning platters within. With the SE 4TB drive, however, I felt no such force. I was a little shocked by this at first. From this little experiment, I conclude that the mechanical portion of the drive is very nicely controlled for high-vibration RAID environments. We have RAFF to thank for that.This drive feels very solid to hold in your hand. I have handled many hard drives, and have grown very accustomed to how they feel. This drive is very balanced in its unpowered state; I was very impressed when I first removed it from the anti-static bag. It also seems significantly heavier than most 3.5" drives I have experienced, even other four-platter drives (edit: this is actually a 5-platter drive! Thus the additional weight! Thanks lager2010!). I was also impressed with the solid build quality. I know that how a hard drive "feels" in your hand may not sound like a quantifiable measurement, but this initial impression spoke volumes to me on the build quality of the drive: very solid, quality hard drive. I have high confidence this drive will last me years, which is furthered with WDs high claim of their extended workload testing - over 2 millennium!Temperature - This is perhaps the only other thing I can report on that would differentiate the drive from others. I does run rather warmer than the 3TB REDs. This is perhaps because the REDs are utilizing WDs IntelliPower spindle speed, ~5400 RPM vs. 7200 RPM for the SE. Other drives in the 1812+ include a 2TB WD Caviar Black and an older 640GB Caviar SE16. These two drives in particular run around 40C at 7200 RPM. The 3TB RED drives are each 35, 34, and 34C. The other drives are all 5400RPM and report similar temperatures. The SE 4TB drive, installed in the same environment as the others, is sitting at 40C. The ambient temperature in the room at the time of all measurements is 24C (74.7F). I have the drives installed in the 1812+ such that the 7200 RPM drives are sandwiched between 5400RPM for better heat distribution and, I'll admit, more by pure luck while randomly installing the drives. In summary, the 4TB SE doesn't run much warmer than your average 7200 RPM drive.So far, nothing in my DS1812+ has failed. Therefore, I cannot comment on longevity, nor compare it to other drives. The 640GB drive itself is over 5 years old (purchased in Aug 2008) and still going strong (no bad sectors, SMART checks out). Only time will tell whether the REDs or the SE are better drives. My DS1812+ is on 24/7 unless the power goes out. So, we will wait and see.I plan to purchase more of these, hopefully at a once-monthly rate. For now, I need to go rescue my banana nut bread in my breadmaker which smells delicious and is now beeping at me that it's done.Thanks for sticking with me on this long review. I like to consider myself a pro-sumer, but I will also admit I am not using this drive for its main purpose: large, cloud-based arrays (WD does mention the SE is also in the market for NAS). Therefore, I do not have the tools or resources to extensively test this hard drive, other than letting it run over a long period of time. If you feel I am off the mark on anything, let me know in the comments and I will tell you how you are wrong. Just kidding, I am open for discussion and answering any questions you may have!Thanks!

I purchased 2 of these drives in April, 2017. and registered them with WD (note there is a 5 year warranty on this drive). In January, 2020, one of the drives failed the SMART tests. I was able to obtain an RMA through WD; it took 2 weeks to receive a replacement drive. Just now (October, 2020) the second drive failed. This time WD is not permitting me to do an RMA; I tried talking with someone at WD but the guy was not knowledgeable nor accommodating with the RMA -- so I decided to obtain a drive by another manufacturer. So ... one drive failed after roughly 2 1/2 years and the other drive failed after roughly 3 1/2 years. Since they have a 5 year warranty, I expected both drives to last at least for the duration of the warranty - I also expected WD to honor their warranty. I am very disappointed in WD and cannot recommend this product.

Great drive! I use the 4TB version of this drive in an external USB 3.0 enclosure for backup and archiving. Zero problems, and it's a good, fast drive. I've bought Western Digital RE (server-grade) drives in the past, and they've been reliable and fast -- but the expense is a bit prohibitive. I appreciate WD coming out with another line that's a bit more cost-effective, while still being a notch above consumer drives on performance and reliability.Was considering the WD Reds, but it sounds like they're a bit flaky, and I like buying versatile drives that would work in a desktop or NAS. Caviar Black is good, but I like having the RAID-compliant features and the longer warranty -- and I'm happy to pay a small amount extra to get a better drive.Highly recommended, and the cost per reliable terabyte is cheap!(And one more thing: Amazon actually packages their drives correctly. I've gotten multiple drives from Newegg with only a couple layers of cardboard between the hard drive and the UPS truck floor. I'm done with them. Amazon packs the drives using the plastic "endcaps" that absorb shock and vibration in transit. Buy straight from Amazon, and you should get one that's been packaged properly, so that you're not starting out with an abused hard drive.)