Western Digital WD4000F9YZ - WD SE 4TB 3.5 SATA 7200RPM HDD

.On purchasing a Synology 713+ I decided that I would install two WD Se drives using the Synology SHR hybrid RAID with 1-disk redundancy, instead of my normal choice of WD Red drives as there was just £40 cost difference in price and for the reasons I have outlined below. The drives installed and formatted very quickly, a lot quicker than the 3TB WD Reds in my 1813+.My other reason for going with Se over the Red series is outlined here: I managed to attend IP EXPO at Earls Court 2013 and managed to speak with senior Western Digital people about the WD Red NAS drives, and they have confirmed what I have read on the WD website - that you should only have between 1 to 5 drives in anyone single NAS unit. If you, let us a say, have a unit like the Synology 1813+ (an 8 bay unit) you are strongly advised not place any more than 5 WD Reds in the unit. As clusters of above 5 drives will give vibration issues that can lead a drive to believe that it has `failed'. For that reason I am reducing my WD Reds in the 1813+ Now I know, on the internet, there is some debate out there in the `forums' and blogs about this issue and its `validity' of the five drive maximum- but this is what I have heard from WD and thought best to share, however, it has influenced my decision.WD Se is a low-cost version of WD Re enterprise drive, which is very popular in the marketplace. The WD Se gives a MTBF (mean-time before failure) of about 800,000 hours.These drives addresses the fast-growing SMB to mid-range network-attached storage (NAS) market that gives you 24x7 work horse of a drive. What you get is a robust enterprise-class design and higher workload capabilities, add the fact you get a 5 year warranty on top made this drive a good choice for me.Some more of the Technical Stuff:Type: Hard drive - internalCapacity: 4 TBForm Factor: 3.5" x 1/3HInterface: Serial ATA-600Data Transfer Rate: 600 MBpsBuffer Size: 64 MBSpindle Speed: 7200 rpmFeatures: Native Command Queuing (NCQ), Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF), Time-Limited Error Recovery (TLER), dual actuator technology, StableTrac, NoTouch ramp load technology, dual processor, Multi-axis shock sensor , S.M.A.R.T.Dimensions (WxDxH): 101.6 mm x 147 mm x 26.1 mmWeight: 750 gIn terms of temperature of the drives well they seem to vary now, from 40c to 38c. For me noise has not been an issue at all. Well it is still `early days' and I shall update this review if things change, be they positive or negative. One last point, please check around as prices can really vary for this drive. To get the best price on these drives best to shop around.-------------------Review Update--------------------------17/03/2015Wanted to confirm that my NAS unit is only "populated" with the WD4000F9YZ (WD SE 4TB) drives.Since installation the whole setup has been running 24/7. There have no issues whatsoever.I wanted to ensure uniformity of hard drive in the unit so the WD Reds have been utilised by a colleague..-----------------Review Update---------------------------03/05/2015However, what can I say? On the 3rd of May 2015, drive 7 on my 8 bay NAS failed - just died! I had it for less than a year in the new system, exceedingly disappointed – therefore, my amended rating for this drive. I do appreciate that I may have acquired a one off “bad” drive. That said I thought best to share as these drives have a premium price point and hence my rating.

I purchased 10 of these WD BLUE Enterprise drives back in 2014, for use in a Synology Hybrid RAID 6 configuration.Synology and Western Digital had stated that the use of more than 5 of the WD RED drives in one enclosure was inadvisable, as the cumulative vibration from the REDs would potentially compromise their integrity. The Enterprise range of WD drives were built more robustly to withstand the vibration issues, and are more durable in general.I've had these WD BLUE drives for about four years now (as of 2018), and they have performed flawlessly. I would highly recommend them.**Note: Only minor drawback is that they have increased in price for £191 (2014) to £260 (2018)