WD Gold 4TB Enterprise Class Hard Disk Drive - 7200 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s 256MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD4003FRYZ

Pros: -Takes maybe 6 seconds to spin up when it's been idle, great read/write speed (~100mb/s extracting a giant zip archive from a separate SSD) -Makes the dying cow noise when your PC shuts off which I find amusing

Cons: -Not extremely loud as some people say, however if you're doing hardcore reading/writing you can't ignore it. But aside from specifically operating on large/many files your PC is generally not making the drive work 24/7 so it'll be tiny muffled ticks that almost blend in with your case fans. I personally am not bothered at all by any of the sound this drive makes.

Overall Review: My case is on a wood base which rests on a carpet, I imagine that absorbs/muffles a lot of the vibration and ticking. If your case was resting on a non-carpeted floor or desk, hardcore file operations would probably be louder.

Pros: Nothing at all. Just buy a WD Black for the same junk product at half the price

Cons: Lol, this is the flagship drive and it doesn't even last 1 year under LOW stress. I maybe used this drive twice a week on my HTPC as a secondary drive; so even then it barely was used with the computer on... As far as the numerous complaints about WD going down the toilet in HDD quality, well, Wiki is your friend. They shut down their manufacturing plants in Japan to phase out HDD and only have a factory in Thailand... They clearly aren't interested in HDD anymore.

Overall Review: WD has taken a nose dive in quality. I used to love these drives and would (and have still never) bought a different brand. Being I have had 3 drive failures this year, I will never buy another. The warranty registration page is riddled with bugs making it incredibly annoying. Then of course you have the online support chat that says I have zero time left to wait but am 10th in the queue.

Pros: These drives provide high density capacity in a standard 3.5 inch HDD footprint. The cost per T is around the same as lower capacity desktop drives. The MTBF indicates these drives should last many years. They are pretty quiet also...and run fairly cool.

Cons: Initial expense is a mouthful. Also, depending on your build, you may have to be creative in mounting these drives. The mount points are subtly different, and while the package fits into a standard 3.5 inch bay, they are twice the height as a typical 3.5 inch desktop drive. In my build, only two of the mount holes line up, but the friction of the fit is enough to keep them in place.

Overall Review: I have three of these striped into a single, ~50TB (useable) logical drive. Access is fast, and even when they are working, they aren't very loud. This build is up pretty much 24/7, as it's a media server for the household. I've been using WD drives for 15 years now, and found them very reliable. I have had a couple fail within the warranty periods, the replacement process is pretty quick, and in one case, the replacement came back double the capacity of the original - they replaced a 2T with a 4T (and that was 4.5 years into a 5 year warranty).

Pros: Sustained 100+ MB/sec real world transfer speeds to and from this drive.

Cons: Premium price

Overall Review: I bought this hoping that it will have better reliability than desktop class drives. Time will tell.

Pros: - This is a very high quality HDD. - It offers more cache than the WD Blue or WD Black drives. I usually go with WD Black in my builds, but I decided to give this drive a try with my most recent build. So far, I like it. - This drive should offer higher reliability (MTBF) than WD Blue or WD Black drives. - It is completely silent when mounted in a drive cage with rubber bushings (Fractal Meshify C). - There were no issues in terms of being recognized by my Asrock Z370 Extreme4 motherboard. - I bought this drive because I wanted a highly reliable and responsive storage HDD for my personal computer. I do play games, but I also do actual work with my computer (MATLAB, GUROBI, Mathematica, etc) and I typically keep these programs and the files they use on my storage drive. This drive appears to be performing quite well for those purposes.

Cons: - You obviously won't get SSD levels of performance with this drive, but among standard HDD's the performance is top notch. - It is a lot more expensive than the WD Blue class, and a little more than a Black class drive. - The 2TB model offers much better overall value. If you are willing to spend a bit more, I would just go with the 2TB version.

Pros: Cavernous and speedy 6Tb drive 5 yr warranty Pretty quiet

Cons: None for now

Overall Review: Bought as a replacement for 3 HDDs on my desktop, one of them being over 10 years old. Reinstalled system on a SSD and all data is stored on this drive. No problem during installation. Data transfers were as fast as could be expected of a good mechanical drive. Specs and warranty are about the same as WD Black and cost me less. If it's built for servers why not use it as a data disk on desktop I wondered. Up to now it does a very good job. Opening and saving files is fast. Exactly what I was looking for.

Pros: I bought this for my media center (TV tuner card can record 4 high def shows at once). Data transfer to replace my old drive (I needed more room) was fast and the drive is quiet. This seems like a great fit for my needs.

Cons: None so far. Only had it for a day, but it's not DOA. If I don't write a review now, I'll forget later.

Overall Review: Seems like a great drive for the price.

Pros: 24/7 operation 5 year warranty

Cons: Price

Overall Review: I love the WD gold series. They are definitely more expensive but running a 24/7 file server with multiple users reading and writing hundreds of gigs of data they have held up extremely well. I expect the same from this and will update if anything changes.