Customer Ratings & Reviews

With streaming being all the rage you might think that the days of making personal rips of your purchased media to be a thing of the past, that is until you watch Netflix, Hulu, DisneyPlus, and others on your new LG OLED 65 or 75" HDTV, all of a sudden you start to notice the terrible compression caused mainly by your internet not being able to pipe enough bandwidth to have your true 4k content look good. So unless you are one of the few people that have a 1GB fiber connection to your house you are going to be better off with purchased physical media, or even a legal personal rip of your purchased media, and where do you store that? Well on your new 12TB hard drives. As a matter of fact you better buy at least 2 as it is a common fact that the larger capacity drives (3TB+) have a much higher failure rate then previous drives and that is no surprise as the price per GB is super low compared to what it used to be so buy one drive to use and one for backup so that if either 1 fails you wont be redoing all the work again. As for quality, there is no doubt that media played from a disk that was ripped from your purchased BD or 4k BD is going to be better than streaming the same title so with that in mind, grab a few of these drives as you can never have enough storage. These WD drives are quite, mainly because they run at lower RPMs and the enclosures are actually fairly good at deadening the noise from the drive. These points give this drive a Excellent value as you can buy 2, 4 or more of these and use one as a useable drive and the other as a backup and you will be fine for the most part. Those are the Pros, now lets hit some of the Cons, you MUST be careful with these drives, one accidental knock over of the drive, even a small one can cause catastrophic damage to the platers, additionally these drives use the incredibly annoying type of USB cable that tends to get lose over time if you unplug and re-plug the cable at the drive, so I recommend unplugging from the end that plugs into whatever device you are using and leaving the end that plugs into the drive plugged in as once they get lose they become very unreliable (basically if you even breath on the cable it can shift slightly and the drive disappears from your system, jiggle the cable and it comes back again, so use the other end when unplugging to take to another system. Another points, as mentioned before, the large drives of today are more fallible and must therefore consider a duplicate drive to clone your data to in case of failure, again I knock 1 point off for Quality because these larger drives have a higher tendency to fail, but that goes for Seagate, HSGT, Toshiba and others. Finally the power connectors on these drives are extremely large and if you are using a battery backup (which you should be) then this one power connector will take up one plug and block another regardless of were you put it as the top end overlaps the outlet above it and if you plug it in the other way then the adapter not only blocks a 2nd outlet but the power wire coming out of it can block even a third outlet so consider getting some small 1.5 foot extension cables to help eliminate this issue. The large power plug makes ease of use a bit frustrating so I knock off a point for having to do some creative wiring in order not to block half my outlets. I hope this helps, as for performance, I transferred a 27GB test file from one eternal drive to another in around 2-3 minutes which is pretty impressive and thus you should have no problems with playing your shows or even using it as a game drive. VipersHardware

I have had excellent performance with all my WD external drives. Over time I am finding the need for more and more storage space and these externals are easily filling that need. This recent purchase is basically "plug and play". Very easy to plug in, format to my Mac and begin using. Best Buy had a really great sale and I happened to be looking for another larger external. The 12tb is going to be a great addition and help for storing and accessing my files, photos and raw video. I strongly recommend WD external drives if you're looking to store and access data. Their reputation and customer reviews speak volumes.

This is my second 12GB external drive from Western Digital. I figured since the first one is holding up so well i'd bite it and buy another. After the drive goes to sleep it takes about 10 seconds to wake up to list the contents of the drive. This doesn't bother me but some people are very Impatient so i thought I'd mention it. I'm using this under Fedora Linux, it is formatted with EXT4 and works like a charm. The transfer rates seem fast enough although I've not benchmarked the drive. This drive is a great value when you catch them on sale. The 12GB seems to be the sweet spot for price to capacity.

I've purchased 9 of these models over the course of the last 6 months and not one issue with any of them. I've shucked some of them (thank you WD for making disassembly super simple) and will do the same with the remainder. They work well and the performance is great. I get ~190MB/sec read/writes on these drives. I'm very happy. Hoping another sale pops up and I can pick up 3 more to complete my 12-drive RAID group.

Good performance as usual, just increase the capacity. Hope to get a full-power 7200RPM drive as description, but only found out the actually rotational speed still 5400RPM as usual.

I've had this WD 12TB external drive for almost a month now and I'm satisfied with my purchase. It's the most quiet external drive I've had. File transfer from the 6 external drives (one at a time) was quick.

If you’re wanting a huge drive at a budget price to shuck and use in a NAS, this is it chief. For folks that are looking for specific model info about the drives inside, both contained a 12tb WD120EMFZ. Bought 2 of these for $179 each and shucked them (removed the drive from the casing) right away. I set them up in a NAS using RAID 1 (mirrored) because they are budget drives that aren’t designed to run 24/7. I wanted to minimize, as much as possible, my concern about data loss. For folks that are shopping for a NAS as well, I’d recommend a Western Digital MyCloud EX2 Ultra. Very cheap (about $150), easy to setup, has a TON of features, and supports these drives!

Just like all Western Digital products we have had this works beautifully! It backs up all of our data. This drive is used as the backup drive for our Xbox One S. Games play without any lag, and download to the drive without any issues. Much cheaper alternative than the hard drives marketed as gaming hard drives.

Excellent cost per GB of storage (was $199.99 when purchased). Internal drive is WD120EMFZ, which is a WD 5400 RPM white label drive made in Thailand. Can be easily removed from the included enclosure. If utilizing the internal drive outside the enclosure connected to a different power supply or backplane, be aware the 3.3v pin may present issues. Do a quick search online for WD 3.3v pin mod for more information.

Bought 2 (12TB) of these on sale for 180 Pulled them out (White Label) put them in a WD EX4100 Nas. Worked no problem no issues. Drive info WD120EMFZ (Date 02 OCT 2019) Thailand

Purchased the drive last year (November) and has been working fine since. Good drive for use in NAS setups. However shucking them (which many do) for use in NAS boxes may void the warranty. Note: When purchased, the internal hard drive was NOT a WD Red. Rather a white label HGST drive.

Fast HDD for cheap! I got lucky for getting the 7200RPM version of the drive for this 12TB and 2 of my WD Easystore 18TB models. Read and Write speed is about 224MB/s according to CrystalDisk Benchmark.

Best Buy Advertises the 12TB WD - Easystore as a 7200RPM Disk Speed. If you order this, make sure you check with CrystalDiskInfo because I ordered this and its 5400RPM. I returned and exchanged for a 7200RPM. They are clearly stocking both, which means, they are intentionally trying to stock the cheaper 5400RPM and see how many folks will pay for the 7200RPM, its unethical. This will display as 10.9TB but it is 12TB,

This is a great for the price Hard Drive! Easy to set up, and be seen by our entire office network both MAC and PC.

It's great item and very usefeul for me. fancy and beautiful design. I really like it. This is enough space and memory. I'll buy it again if I have a chance.

Great for what I need as a storage hub for my xbox games. Haven't had a problem with it.

I take a lot of pictures of lighthouses and Zoo animals. I use up quite a bit of space so this is perfect for my needs.

I got this on sale so for me, this was a huge bargain for a 12 TB external Hard Drive. My only issue s that it takes a minute for the drive to kick in and open the folders I have stored on it. Other than that it works perfectly. Once it's warmed up and running I have absolutely nothing bad to say about this unit. The only reason for the 4 stars is the initial start-up. Overall I am very pleased with this purchase and would buy another if needed.

I was looking for decent external hard disk. This one seems a perfect fit. Almost 11TB usable space. Worth the money!!!

Drive was used a total of two times. The thing won’t even turn on anymore and I have had it literally for about a year sitting on a desk. Never damages or anything. Absolutely junk.