I have bought WD drives previously and have been happy with their reliability and performance. Whilst it is early days, so far I have not been disappointed with the pair of these which I purchased. I have experienced no issues as a direct result of the drives and the unit is keeping them working well.
On this occasion I have bought a pair of these 3TB drives to work in a dual drive NAS drive unit. A little over the top for the performance, but the price was very good and slightly better than the 3 GB/s option at the time. For the past few days I've been copying content to them, whilst also streaming some content from them. In preparation for these drives, I had updated the firmware on the NAS drive unit so that it can support 3TB drives before installation. You may also wish to confirm that you are using the latest firmware/BIOS/SATA drivers for you system as some older systems may have issues with the larger capacity these drives offer.
As with all SATA drives, it was a simple case of plugging them in, initialising, partitioning and formatting them. They were ready to use within an hour of arrival, but I know that formatting them for use on a PC would have taken a lot longer using the standard method (i.e. not quick format).
I have set them up using a RAID 0 configuration. This should ensure faultless HD Video streaming over my LAN, which will be their primary use. Whilst this configuration offers no data redundancy, the data isn't highly valuable. Any loss would be an inconvenience though. The unit does offer other RAID options which would support automatic data backup.
I intend to get a larger unit at a later date and would happily use these (or similar drives) if all works well in the mean time. In my case such a larger unit will make use of a better RAID system, meaning that there should be less chance of data loss. I already have my eyes on such a unit, but I will need to save up some money for everything first.
For reference, the NAS drive unit I am using is the Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 2 (Diskless) RNDU2000.
| Brand | Western Digital |
|---|---|
| Product Dimensions | 14.73 x 10.16 x 2.54 cm; 489.88 g |
| Item model number | WD30EZRX |
| Manufacturer | Western Digital |
| Colour | Grey |
| Form Factor | 3.5-inch |
| Standing screen display size | 3.5 Inches |
| Hard Drive Size | 3 TB |
| Hard Disk Description | Mechanical Hard Disk |
| Hard Disk Rotational Speed | 7200 RPM |
| Wattage | 6 watts |
| Hardware Platform | PC |
| Are Batteries Included | No |
| Item Weight | 490 g |
| Guaranteed software updates until | unknown |
