Question 1

Can you stream video from this in a plex system?

Accepted Answer

We use our drive for video storage and have no issues with stuttering or dropouts on our pretty vanilla AMD desktop. Do pay attention to your USB I/O - try to put the drive on a interface chip that's not loaded down with other 'jabbering' devices like WiFi & Bluetooth adaptors, RF Mice and Trackballs, and some keyboards with poorly written drivers. Many of these peripherals can make a drive look sluggish as they steal USB bus bandwidth.

Question 2

Is this a Shingled Magnetic Recording or Conventional Magnetic Recording drive?

Accepted Answer

Inside you will find a "white" labeled WD drive, which is the equivalent of a WD - RED NAS drive

Question 3

Can I reformat this for Mac?

Accepted Answer

Yes.  Go to applications/utilities and click on Disk Utility.  Select the new drive (make sure you select the correct one) and hit "Erase".  Enter new name of drive and Mac OS Extended (Journaled for general use.

Question 4

What drive is in this external?

Accepted Answer

WD Red with 12 TiB at 5400 RPM. 
Model number: WS120EMFZ-11A6JA0
Some of these need to have their third power pin covered if you plan on shucking them. I bought 6; 4 of them needed this treatment (all four have a serial number beginning with "Z2", but the other 2 did not (both have a serial number beginning with "9H").

Question 5

Will it work with a MAC?

Accepted Answer

The box says it will work with a mac yes

Question 6

Can I use this hard drive as a backup storage?

Accepted Answer

The product description states that the WD Elements 12TB USB 3.0 Desktop External Hard Drive is suitable for high-capacity add-on storage, which can include backup purposes.

Question 7

how many rpms?

Accepted Answer

The WD Elements spin at around 5400 RPMS.  They stop spinning when they don't get a read/write request for several minutes, and there is a brief pause after they are idle until they spin up.  For a mechanical drive with very large storage sizes, this can mean a longer life until unavoidable failure.  I had 2 drives with 7200 RPMS La Cie and Seagate, and neither lasted an entire year, I have 2 of these for over 10 years still running, a 4 Tb and 6 Tb Elements.

Question 8

Is this an SMR drive?

Accepted Answer

Apparently...as least as best I can determine from the manufacturer tables and info available, 
It does not appear to be CMR.

Question 9

Is this drive based CMR or the inferior SMR technology?  Why am I asking:  Go to Google News and search "Western Digital Red Drives"

Accepted Answer

according to the articles I read, only the 2TB-6TB RED drives have used SMR
I believe anything >= 8TB would be using CMR

Questions & Answers