WD - Blue 3TB Internal SATA Hard Drive for Desktops

I figured this might be an SMR drive, even though WD lied for months about which drives were SMR. They finally released a list after I had this installed and running for a while, and of course this is on it. It's fine for a backup drive, which is my use for this one, because it doesn't have to be fast. Three stars because it's cheap and quiet, and does what I need.

I purchased the hard drive with no problem. Works like charm. I highly recommend it. The price is very reasonable.

I wish that Best Buy would actually label these Western Digitals with their actual product color IE: WD Black: Fastest of the bunch, built for performance WD Blue: Middle of the road in terms of speed and performance WD Green: Energy saver+ slowest in seek times and performance WD Red: Built for NAS use only so not applicable here This drive is the WD Green which I had no way of knowing until I got the product home and unboxed it. I would also like Best Buy to become more competitive on pricing, not labeling what this drive truly is doesn't allow the consumer to actually see if they are getting a value or paying the same price for what a different series drive would go for elsewhere. I understand the convenience factor of being able to walk into a store and pick the product up off the shelf but there are a lot of eTailers out there that offer next day delivery for practically the price of tax of the item so that's not really a selling point. All in all, the drive works as intended I just feel at the price that I paid it should've at least been a Blue series drive.

Hard drives are a pain to shop for. Because of the nature of mechanical drives and because of the volume of sales even the best drives are going to be absolutely littered with negative reviews complaining about premature failure, DOA, or other problems. This can be very discouraging if you are shopping for a new hard drive as you simply want something reliable but there are really only a few companies that even make them. Well, stop looking and obsessing and comparing. These drives are fine. WD has some of the lowest failure rates of the mainstream drive makers (and no, I don't just mean that outdated Backblaze study), and they have decent warranty service. Is it guaranteed your drive won't fail? No way. This is still a spinning piece of metal and it's still a freaking miracle these things even work to begin with. They're incredibly sensitive devices and they're being shipped and handled more than they ever have in history. Every 6 foot drop off a conveyor belt is another added chance you get a dud. It's just part of the beast. That's why we test. Before you put ANY data on the drive. Test it. Run dskchck or some other storage testing program and look for any bad sectors. Run a SMART test and look for any stats that are out of range of where they should be. If you see a problem, return the drive. You won't even have to roll the warranty dice, just take it back to the store and get a new one. The chances of you getting two failed drives are even lower than getting one (not that it's impossible, some people have been struck by lightning more than once). I have 3 of these drives now and so far they're all working along just fine. Now, I'm not running a data center off them or absolutely hammering them on a daily basis, they mostly just store movies and games, but I still haven't noticed any issues. They're quiet, they run cool with minimal cooling, and they hold my data just fine. Wish they came with a cable but I had some around.

I was really looking to purchase a larger drive when one of mine died, but they had this drive for $79 and I just could not pass it up (actually went back and got 2 more). But, this is a standard Western Digital drive. As with all new hard drives, the quality has been really bad the past few years. I have drives that have been running over 10 years still going strong, and every drive I have purchased in the past 2 have already that died. I expect this drive to last about 2 years (until right after the warranty period is over) and die a painful death. But, this is probably one of the best drives out there at the moment.. Sadly, Best Buy has decreased the store stock where they have less than a fourth of the drives they had just 2 years ago, only Western Digital in bare drives. Nothing Seagate, Toshiba, Hitachi, etc... Looks like I will have to start shopping elsewhere since Best Buy is looking like they are closing up their retail stores. I couldn't even find a phone case to fit my phone there and had to get one at Wally World.

HD was the easy part. In a Windows MBR environment, it can only address 2.2TB of the 3.0 TB. Users must have a motherboard with UEFI R2.0 capabilities. If the 3.0 TB HD is to be the system (C:) drive, then it is a total re-install with Win 7/8 so it can install the UEFI R2.0 boot manager. If the desktop had already been UEFI R2.0 compliant and the WD hard drive is only a data disk, then plug it in like any other time. There is now oodles of space for photos and image editing software now so purchase of a WD 3.0 TB and subsequent UEFI MoBo was necessary. I would recommend this drive to anyone however they must be aware of its requirements to make full use of it.

Pro, 1. 3gb of course. 2. Great for storing movies, pictures, home videos and backing up software, games and other data, 3. Reasonable priced. 4. Fast enough for 4K movie playback. Con, 1. At 5400rpms it's not ideal for gaming, you're better off spending more and getting a 1tb SSD since they've come down in price. 2. It's doesn't have the best read and write speeds. 3. It uses more power than an SSD. 4. Not ideal as a Windows boot drive at all. For my purposes of storing my DVDs, Blu-Rays and 4K Blu-Rays this drive is great, for games and other programs I use my SSD drives.

It's a 3TB drive; you really can't say much about it, and WD generally makes good hardware. However, WD Blues were all 7200 RPM for a long time, and this one is not. It's not a deal-breaker, but the lower rotation rate results in a significant performance loss, especially in sequential read/write workloads. Be aware of this when buying. For cheap bulk storage, it's fine, but selling a 5400 RPM drive as a Blue is something I have a serious problem with. There are cheaper internal 3TB drives out there, too, and you can also shuck a larger WD Easystore that costs less money and get a similar drive for less money. Still, I'd generally recommend it because the listing is honest about the rotation rate if you bother to check, and many people probably don't care about speed so much as capacity for the dollar.