WD 6TB 3.5" AE Datacenter Archive SATA III 64 MB Cache Enterprise Hard Drive (WD6001F4PZ)

These archive datacenter HD's have worked reliably and well for larger internal storage on a pair of power-edge mini-servers. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them for reliable data storage.

I use this drive to backup (weekly) a media server for on-site backups. Although it's not the fastest drive in the world, it does what it does. I can't speak for the longevity for the drive as I've only had it for a few weeks, but for the price- can't go wrong. Great drive for archiving.

I put 4 into a NAS box for a backup device. Still under warranty, and they do seem inclined to honor that. But 2 of them have started to throw bad sectors at a steadily increasing rate. They are about 2.5 years old. It's not unheard of, but that's a high failure rate for a drive that I'm way over-paying on capacity for that warranty, basically. At this point, I can get much cheaper alternatives and literally buy more of them for less than this "enterprise" solution costs, and evidently there is nothing special about the reliability of these drives. Why buy a warranty when I can literally just buy another drive for less, keep it on-hand, and swap it in immediately when I need to? Especially if the non-"enterprise" drives will, for my small sample size, hold up at least as well anyway. UPDATE: After 4 years, one of them died hard. A second died during RAID10 rebuild after I replaced it. I reviewed the Backblaze data, and am going with another brand, and not bothering with any sort of "enterprise" designation.

Purchased item through "fulfilled by Amazon" seller that was marked as "New". Item arrived in generic packaging and sealed like new. However, the drive model is dated 2015 (ordered November 2017), and the SMART data shows Power-On Hours to be at 16,272 (two years!) after I turned on the drive. The warranty on Western Digital's website shows that it is still valid (3 years remaining) but the power on hours are suspect. The drive benchmarks fine and works fine. Copied 1 TB to it without an issue. Very quiet. Will be used as a LUKS+ext4 backup drive in a USB 3.1 gen 2 enclosure. I don't think WD sells this model new anymore and any (all) drives may be refurbished.

Oct 2017: Had bought a set of 5 of these drives for a Mobius backup RAID array. Within the first 12 hours of use, one drive failed. I went to Western Digital's website and entered the serial number, and the system identified the drive, noted it was in warranty, gave me an RMA. (Note: the RMA was not prepaid, so I had to pay the shipping to send back the failed drive.) Within 2 weeks an identical replacement drive arrived. The point of using an enterprise drive for a backup array is to have as much reliability as possible with continuous use over a period of years. For such a drive to fail after 12 hours is disappointing, at best. Perhaps it was just bad luck. To Western Digital's credit, the replacement process was easy. Frankly, however, if a drive fails within the warranty, WD should arrange to have it returned prepaid.

Bought this in July 2017, and still going strong. I do only use it for offline backups though, so it is not constantly spinning. No bad sectors, no warnings, just proper functionality.

Drives work great. Super for backup storage. Save some electricity and buy these drives for cold storage.

I'll never buy another Western digital hard drive again! Failed after 3 months of use. I lost 120,000 scanned photos!!!!

Le disque dur était annoncé comme neuf alors qu’il a déjà bien plus de 300 jours d’utilisation. Aucun retour du vendeur suite à la remarque

Compre este disco en el 2017, hice un respaldo de 1.5 TB en él y ya no lo volví a usar hasta hace unos días (2020) que quería hacer otro respaldo. Para mi sorpresa ya habían desaparecido las particiones del disco y se congelaba la computadora al querer accesar a él. Luego empezó a hacer un ruido como un silbido y dejó de funcionar por completo. Muy decepcionante WD. Lo único que puedo hacer ahora es no volver a comprar de esta marca: WD.