WD - Red Plus 8TB NAS Internal Hard Drive

I bought this WD Red Plus 8TB drive as part of replacing some of my older hard drives I had moved into my new desktop PC earlier this year. I have accumulated a lot of photos, documents, and other files over the years, so I wanted to move away from some aging drives and have more reliable storage without giving up a huge amount of capacity. I chose the Red Plus because I wanted a 3.5-inch SATA drive with a reputation for being dependable, and the 8TB capacity gives me plenty of room without having to keep adding smaller drives. Installation was very straightforward. I installed it internally in my desktop, connected the SATA and power cables, and Windows recognized it without any problems. After initializing and formatting the drive, I was able to get it set up for the type of storage I needed. I also assigned it the drive letter I wanted, which was important because I use some programs and backup workflows that expect the drive to be in a particular location. My first big test was copying a large amount of data onto it using Robocopy. This wasn't a small test with a few files. I moved a substantial amount of data, including 1000's of large photo raw files, so it gave the drive a pretty good workout for several hours. The transfer performance was what I expected from a 5400 RPM 8TB hard drive, and more importantly, the drive stayed surprisingly cool throughout the process. I was keeping an eye on temperatures while it was working hard, and heat wasn't an issue. Another thing I really like is how quiet it is in my desktop. I have several drives, and some hard drives can make themselves known with clicking, vibration, or a constant hum. This one has been very unobtrusive. I can tell it's working if I put my ear near the PC, but it isn't something I notice during normal use. I also checked the drive with CrystalDiskInfo and SeaTools during and after the large copy, and everything checked out fine. The drive passed the testing I ran, and there were no SMART warnings or other problems showing up. Obviously, my testing can't guarantee how a drive will perform years down the road, but it was reassuring to see everything looking good after putting it through a fairly substantial initial workload. So far, I'm very happy with this drive and have no complaints. The installation was easy, the setup in Windows was painless, it has plenty of storage, it performed well for my needs, and it runs quietly and at reasonable temperatures. For someone looking to replace an older internal hard drive or simply add a more storage to a desktop, this has been a very good fit for me.

The WD Red Plus 8TB is a CMR drive rated for 24/7 operation and 180 TB/year, and it delivers exactly that: quiet, steady performance with consistent read/write speeds under multi-user load. Installation was painless, the drive was recognized immediately by my NAS, formatted cleanly, and has run without a single hiccup since. It stays cool and nearly silent in the chassis, which matters in a multi-bay array. The 8TB capacity is a sweet spot for media libraries and backups, and the price per gigabyte is hard to beat. If you want a dependable, low-maintenance NAS drive, this is it.

I went with these over the 10 terabytes just to save on some energy and noise. These have turned out to be fantastic drives and have been running non-stop the last year with no issues.

Ordered these 8th WD Red Plus drives for my home security cameras. I upgraded my system to 16 channels from 8 channels. The 8 channel NVR had (2) 4tb WD Red Plus drives I previously purchased, for well over a year with no issues. Did a full scan on them and no bad sectors or issues running 24/7. Looking forward to the 8th drives to produce the same expectations as the 4tb drives did.

Works great with my NAS! I love western digital drives!