Question 1

Is this for a desktop or a 
laptop?

Accepted Answer

The size of the drive is for a 5.25" enclosure, so certainly not a laptop because it won't fit. However, the drive is designed for high-capacity storage in a a network storage array, so while it could be used for a desktop, there are more suitable desktop drives available.

Question 2

im thinking about upgrading my hard drive, how long is the boot time on this drive and is it worth spending this much on just an hdd as opposed to an ssd?

Accepted Answer

I don't use the drive as the primary boot for my OS.  The WD Red series was intended for NAS (Network attached storage), and for that purpose, it works fine.  If boot time is a consideration, I would go wiith an SSD or a WD Black series.  You could also look into a hybrid drive.

Question 3

What are the RPM's on this unit?

Accepted Answer

WD doesn't post it, but most people seem to agree 5,400 rpm or so.

Question 4

I am curious what the "NAS" element in the title refers to. Can this drive be used as a "normal" internal desktop HDD? Or is there something special in relation to NAS implementation?

Accepted Answer

NAS drives have different settings such as TLER which is set to 7s to prevent a drive from falling out of a RAID array when a sector is unable to be read. This is problematic in a standard desktop since you will not be able to recover your data. In a RAID array, the data will be recovered from the other drives in the array which is why you typically would not want to use this type of drive in a standard 1 drive configuration. You can disable this feature if you wanted to use the Red drive as a standard drive in a desktop PC.

Question 5

are these only good in nas's or can u do a nice raid 10 with reds or would i be better off buying a black edition?

Accepted Answer

I went with red for the warranty and the faster response times over the green drives and lower temps than the black. I am using them in a Windows 8.1 storage spaces mirror array. I think they would be fine for your scenario unless you need faster throughput than the reds. I get about 68 meg a second with a red 4 tb, green 2, and green 1tb drive in my storage space. The speed went up from around 36 meg a second when I added the third drive. I use the drives for recorded tv, photos and misc in my HTPC.

Question 6

i installed 4tb hdd and it only reads 1.63 tb out of the 4 
could you tell me why ?

Accepted Answer

You may have used the wrong format when formatting the drive for first time use.

Windows XP and higher and Mac OSX and Linux can all format drives as GPT.  You have to format a drive using the GPT partitioning System versus the existing DOS-based Master Boot Record System (MBR) to address volumes larger then 2TB.  You got a slightly lower density than that likely because these drives use 4K sectors instead of the assumed 512 Byte sectors.

If you want to boot off this drive you HAVE to be running a 64 bit Operating System booting using EFI (or UEFI).  If you have this drive installed as a secondary drive just to store movies and such then you can run any of the OSes in 32 bit or 64 bit mode I mentioned above.

Do a Google Search for: format GPT   I'd give you a link I found but Newegg prevents me from putting in this response...

The basic jist is that you need to "Initialize" the drive using 64-bit OS GPT support, then you can create a partition and format it as you normally would otherwise.  In other Windows OSes the default initialization assumed booting a 32 bit OS which meant MBR partition format which means it cannot handle these drives correctly.

If doing the above doesn't solve your problem please check that your motherboard/OEM system supports LBA48 or LBA64 SATA addressing so the controller can even address this entire drive.

3TB and 4TB drives are relatively new and mainly designed for brand new 64-bit system purchases.  You can certainly utilize them on 32-bit OSes (not for booting if showing entire density), you just need to know how to properly prep the drive and Windows assumptions won't be correct for older Windows systems (anything Vista or higher should automatically tell you about this stuff but still might no in some cases).

Question 7

could this hard drive be converted to external?

Accepted Answer

It could be put into an external case easily - however the Red series drives were designed primarily for use in RAID setups with identical drives.  If you're looking for a hard drive to put into an external case, you might consider the Green (or another) series and save a few $$$ in the process.

Question 8

Does it come with the LAN cable? as well as the power cord?  So I can use the NAS right the way.

Accepted Answer

This item is only an internal hard drive rated for use in a NAS. You would need to purchase a NAS separately.

Question 9

Can this drive be used in a desktop setup to store my movies? I have about 2.75 TB of movies that I am storing on WD Black 1TB 7200's at the moment, that I would prefer to be using for other applications.

Accepted Answer

Short answer, yes. It is attached to your PC via SATA, just like any other SATA device you may have used before. Your OS will recognize it as a drive and you will partition and format it as you would any other. Just make sure your motherboard BIOS has no issues with large drives and 4TB is a lot of data to have in one place, you should consider at least RAID1 or some other backup system.

Question 10

is this one of the new helium packed drives?

Accepted Answer

WD Red Updates
Even though 6 TB drives have been around (HGST introduced the Helium drives last November, while Seagate has been shipping Enterprise Capacity and Desktop HDD 6 TB versions for a few months now), Western Digital is the first to claim a NAS-specific 6 TB drive. The updated firmware (NASware 3.0) puts in some features related to vibration compensation, which allows the Red drives to now be used in 1 - 8 bay desktop NAS systems (earlier versions were officially sanctioned only for 1 - 5 bay units). NASware 3.0 also has some new features to help with data integrity protection in case of power loss. The unfortunate aspect here is that units with NASware 2.0 can't be upgraded to NASware 3.0 (since NASware 3.0 requires some recalibration of internal components that can only be done in the factory).

Brand	WD
Series	Red Plus
Model	WD40EFRX
Packaging	Bare Drive

Interface	SATA 6.0Gb/s
Capacity	4TB
RPM	5400 RPM
Cache	64MB

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 4TB NAS Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6Gb/s, CMR, 64MB Cache, 3.5 Inch - WD40EFRX

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