Q: What is the rotational speed?

Hi Daniel, In the entire Red series, there is no rotational speed rating given. WD instead simply says it's speed is "IntelliPower*" and give the maximum transfer rate. The 6TB has the fastest in the Red series so far at 175MB/s. * A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance. For each drive model, WD may use a different invariable RPM. In simple terms, WD is not going to tell you!!!

Q: Do these work with the NETGEAR ReadyNAS 4220?

I am using them on a Synology NAS but best thing to do is check Netgears site for compatibility.I see no reason they wouldn't work

Q: Is this good for RAID array?

This item would be perfectly fine in a RAID array.

Q: I cant get these drives(I have 4) to be seen by windows 10 or windows 7. I have tries to different machines with different configurations. How can I get Windows to see the drive?

Hi, you don't mention how you have tried to connect your drives, i.e., via sata or USB, but if USB adapter, yours may be too old to support the larger size drives. If that is not the issue and you have connected via sata, then on your W10 machine open "file explorer" and look for "This PC" and right click on it. Then go to "Manage" and click on it, then down to "Storage" and finally to "Disk Management". Once in the disk management window you should be able to scroll down and find your new drive and highlight it by clicking on it. It should then say something about "initializing" the drive and will give you a couple options, one being "GPT". If you are just planning on using it as storage, use "GPT". It is the same for W7 except it says something other than "This PC". Once you have completed this process, you should be able to see the drive in either machine.

Question 1

What is the speed of this WD WD60EFRX 6TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" NAS Hard Drive Bare Drive?
5400 or 7200?
Thank you,
Brian Patterson

Accepted Answer

I have mine in a single drive enclosure attached USB3.  Most of my data is movies and music and I can say it works great for that, but it's not a high performance application.  It took a long time for a full format which I always do on a new drive, but that's to be expected with a drive that size.  I just ran a very informal test copying a Blu-Ray movie.  Reading from the drive to an SSD ran about 160 mb/sec until the buffer filled then 100 or under for the rest.  Writing from the drive to the SSD was more consistent at around 100 more or less.  I want to mount 4 or 5 of them in an external enclosure with built in raid to make the smallest package to take off site of a large block of data.  The vendors have verified it should work.  I would call it big with average speed and special Raid features.  Plan on taking over a day to fill it over a 1G LAN.

Question 2

Is it necessary to update the firmware in these drives? I haven't found a utility to do it yet. I would think there would be updates every once in a while.

Accepted Answer

Updating firmware on a drive is not something that is done as a regular maintenance process.  Unless the vendor told you that it would correct a specific disk problem I would leave it alone.  I've been doing this since the 60's and only did that maybe twice and I have 100T on line right now.

Question 3

will this work with a drobo 5d?

Accepted Answer

I have 8x of these in a QNAP NAS for > 6mos now, they're working fine.  QNAP specifies specific drive model numbers on their compat list, this drive was on that list.  I checked drobo compat list, seems a bit more vague, but still seems to me this is on drobo's list?  I've got 2 8x QNAP NAS running now, and over last few years have had bad experience with WD Black, and medium experience with both WD and Seagate green, with respect to drive failures.   In addition to the 8x6TB, I'm using smaller WD reds to replace failed drives on my smaller of my NAS...all are working great.  Not a single problem with the WD reds yet.

Question 4

I am a photographer with a lot of images and have several & separate External Drives - mostly WD brand. I use a 27" iMac and looking for more & better storage capabilities.

1). Are the WD and Synology NAS the same?
2). Can different size WD Red NAS Drives be used in the same Multi-Bay enclosure?
3). Can Different WD drives (Red, Black, Green) as well as 2, 4, 6 TB storage capabilities be used together?
4). Can the WD NAS storage system be used in conjunction with a WD 4TB Personal MyCloud drive, which I also own?
5). Can drives be added any time to a WD NAS system if not all bays are utilized when first starting out?

Thank you.
Tom C.

Accepted Answer

1: I have both. They are both very reputable with different levels of functionality.

2: The Synology I have is 1513+. The answer is yes.

3: Yes, but you have to make sure the drive is compatible on the NAS site.   Synology and WD both have lists but you must search by the model number.

4: I know there is a USB on the 1513+ that I can use to plug in another NAS.  so my guess would be yes.  I have a WD Single drive NAS but its plugged directly into the router.

5: Yes.   You can start with 1 and add more.   I recall the documentation stating somewhere though that if you have a drive and want to swap it out, it must be a equal or larger size then the one you're replacing.

Question 5

Given the amount of bad reviews, is this product worth buying for a desktop only used to store large amounts of music and shows? How would I find out if this product is compatible with the iMac 21.5" prior to purchasing it?

Accepted Answer

I'm not sure why the bad reviews, we have 6 of these drives running as a RAID6 on an Areca ARC-1882IX-24 and they're running great. We've experimented with various desktop and enterprise drives, and these perform the closest to enterprise with no errors. You could probably run one of these in a desktop, but you're probably better off using Green or Black instead.

As far as the iMac 21.5", I've read that the power connector might be 7 pins instead of 4. But I've also read that "Any standard SATA drive (SATA, SATAII or SATA3) will work in any iMac. It is recommended you use a SATAII as this is native to the iMac, SATA3 will derate to SATAII and SATA will run only at the drives supported SATA speed."

Question 6

I'm looking into building a custom PC NAS server, would these be the best choice for that? And do any of you have recommendations for compatible inexpensive hardware? I was thinking a very simple AMD build.

Accepted Answer

Depends on how many RAID you are going for. 1 and itll be able to handle <=6 disks. It should have more than enough lanes to add additional RAID cards (and support SAS if thats what you are going for). It doesnt have eSATA if you plan on expanding externally. As far as stability, I'll side with Jens P: its by far the most stable board I've ever owned. (beats out Gigabyte, ASUS, MSI and ECS).

Question 7

What is the rotational speed?

Accepted Answer

Hi Daniel,
In the entire Red series, there is no rotational speed rating given.  WD instead simply says it's speed is "IntelliPower*" and give the maximum transfer rate.  The 6TB has the fastest in the Red series so far at 175MB/s.
* A fine-tuned balance of spin speed, transfer rate and caching algorithms designed to deliver both significant power savings and solid performance. For each drive model, WD may use a different invariable RPM.
In simple terms, WD is not going to tell you!!!

Question 8

Do these work with the NETGEAR ReadyNAS 4220?

Accepted Answer

I am using them on a Synology NAS but best thing to do is check Netgears site for compatibility.I see no reason they wouldn't work

Question 9

Is this good for RAID array?

Accepted Answer

This item would be perfectly fine in a RAID array.

Question 10

I cant get these drives(I have 4) to be seen by windows 10 or windows 7. I have tries to different machines with different configurations. How can I get Windows to see the drive?

Accepted Answer

Hi, you don't mention how you have tried to connect your drives, i.e., via sata or USB, but if USB adapter, yours may be too old to support the larger size drives.  If that is not the issue and you have connected via sata, then on your W10 machine open "file explorer" and look for "This PC" and right click on it.  Then go to "Manage" and click on it, then down to "Storage" and finally to "Disk Management".  Once in the disk management window you should be able to scroll down and find your new drive and highlight it by clicking on it.  It should then say something about "initializing" the drive and will give you a couple options, one being "GPT".  If you are just planning on using it as storage, use "GPT".   
It is the same for W7 except it says something other than "This PC".  
Once you have completed this process, you should be able to see the drive in either machine.

Brand	WD
Series	Red Plus
Model	WD60EFRX
Packaging	Bare Drive

Features	Available in capacities ranging from 1-14TB with support for up to 8 bays 5400 RPM performance class Supports up to 180 TB/yr workload rate NASware firmware for compatibility Small or medium business NAS systems in a 24x7 environment
Usage	For NAS systems

Form Factor	3.5"
Height (maximum)	26.10mm
Width (maximum)	101.60mm
Length (maximum)	147.00mm

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WD Red Plus 6TB NAS Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s, CMR, 64MB Cache, 3.5 Inch - WD60EFRX

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