The Western Digital Red Plus is a 3.5" HDD hard drive with a capacity of 2TB and a rotational speed of 7200 RPM. This speed is recommended for all uses such as file storage, program installation, and gaming.
SATA III Protocol
Operates with the SATA III communication protocol and is recommended for home use. It is the most modern SATA standard and the motherboard must support it for the drive to function at its maximum potential. It can also be connected to SATA II ports without any problem, but it will work at lower speeds.
Installation
For installation in a desktop computer, you will need a SATA III data cable and an available SATA port on the motherboard. You will also need an available SATA power cable from the power supply.
Specifications are collected from official manufacturer websites. Please verify the specifications before proceeding with your final purchase. If you notice any problem you can
report it here.
A true tireless "porter."
Installed in a Synology NAS with eighteen hours of daily operation (Read/write) in a RAID 1 configuration, it has been functioning very satisfactorily for months and is invisible in terms of problems, malfunctions, and delays.
It seems relatively quiet (perhaps the low rotation speed helps) whether it is idle or writing/reading, but since it operates in an array of six drives, I don't have an opinion on its exact noise level. In any case, it doesn't seem to add noticeable noise to the system.
I recommend it as a NAS drive for managing large volumes of data, primarily consisting of large files.
They are simply unacceptable at WD. I bought it from Plaisio and after 1 month suddenly it asks me to format it, with files for professional use. The disk was replaced. The second time I format it and realize that it was 2TB instead of 4 (it said 4TB on the outside). I took it for replacement and again the same thing. I was probably unlucky and fell into the bad batch.
Excellent disk for NAS, installed 6 in Synology DS1821+ without any issues for a while now. Note, because it was mentioned in the comments and to avoid confusion: The disk is a regular CMR and not SMR as mentioned somewhere. WD also states this in the specs. It fully replaces the EFZX. Only the EFAX is SMR and it is not classified as a Plus.
I have a pair inside NAS. The only thing I have noticed is that they are heard at regular intervals, as if the NAS is accessing something that was not happening with the corresponding 4TB ones that were replaced
Installed in raid ZFS, it is one of the 5 disks in the array. All the other disks are old and simple, not NAS. So it is the only one out of the 5 that shows errors, it needs resilvering at least once every 10 days. Fortunately, no data is lost (yet) and there hasn't been a permanent physical damage to the disk, so I can't even ask for a replacement. It may be more suitable for simple use. Get informed before purchasing it.
Initial impressions: it is difficult to hear it in continuous operation. The temperature remained at 33 C after hours of backup (of course with the help of a fan inside the HDD case). However, I recommend the EFZX series because it is CMR. Due to lower cost, SMR will soon be the only available option. As for reliability, time will tell.
A disk for NAS at a reasonable price.
It is quiet, you can only hear the disks spinning after waking up from standby for 2-3 seconds. Out of the 10 I bought, one arrived dead, but WD replaced it with a new one within 3 days through RMA.
In terms of speed, it's fine for a 5400 RPM with only 128MB. In RAID 5 with 10Gb/s LAN Aggregation, it consistently writes/reads at around 146 MB/s. With SSD cache, it can reach up to 180 MB/s. The temperature ranges from 25 to 35 degrees Celsius, but I haven't tested it without air conditioning during the summer yet.
The only negative thing I noticed is that it takes about four hours to synchronize and build the RAID in NTFS and EXT4. For BTRFS, it took over 8 hours. I don't understand if this happens only during the initial RAID build or if every time a disk needs to be replaced it will take 8+ hours. Because if it really takes 8+ hours, then every replacement will be a heart-stopping moment, fearing that another disk might fail or that the data in the RAID will become unreadable. Despite being CMR.
Now, if someone wants to use BTRFS for RAID, they should be aware, but I guess it could also be an issue with my setup.
Edit: Now that it's summer and I've seen the temperatures, they reach around 48 degrees Celsius without air conditioning in the NAS with the same 10 disks and only the two 90mm fans running.
Edit2: The problem with the slow RAID in BTRFS turned out to be an issue with the NAS, which was resolved after a newer update was released.
In terms of durability, they haven't had any issues for a year now. They don't have problems with bit-rot or producing errors. They work properly in BTRFS with Clone, Snapshots, and Cold Backup.