Western Digital10TB WD Black Performance Internal Hard Drive HDD - 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 256 MB Cache, 3.5" - WD101FZBX

This drive has been great. I used a guide on the internet and this drive replaced the 2TB drive in an older Apple Time Capsule router. so I could continue automatic and easy backups with my computers getting ever-larger. With a couple laptops and a desktop I find the built-in Apple solution on their own router the easiest for backing up and it's been working wonders. I have 5x the space and better speed of backups. I also put a couple of folders on there for storage of files that I don't often access or want all the computers in the house to have access to.I'm a year in and the drive is responsive, seeks quickly, and data transfer is speedy when connected directly to the router and over the wifi network. I notice the noise but only when the drive initially kicks on and starts the backup process or accessing files after it's been idled. Sometimes during the backup it'll make a few misc. electronic working noises. This is nothing like the days of yore though and for a 10TB, 7200rpm drive I find it acceptable. This is a great solution to needing more space from the older equipment. WD has always been reputable and I'm glad I spent a little extra on this drive. If I ever go to a NAS or other directly connected storage devices I'd considering a couple of these for their performance. Hoping for longevity.

I am using this hard drive to play FLAC and WAV files on a KDlinks A400 media player. I consider myself to be something of an audiophile and I love good quality audio. The hard drive that I had been using prior to purchasing this WD Black was the Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM006 (A 2TB hard drive). The Seagate was solid and reliable for roughly two years and I had no complaints.The reason I decided to upgrade to the WD Black 6TB hard was because it was specifically made for multimedia and I wanted to ensure I was futureproof with regards to available hard drive space, so I decided to splurge on the WD Black.When I initially installed the hard drive in my A400, I was disappointed, because the sound was bright and shrill sounding. However, I heard all sorts of detail in my music that I never heard before and overall, the volume was louder as opposed to how the Seagate sounded, so I was a bit conflicted. I had to change the settings on my receiver (Pioneer SC-79) to try to remove that bright and shrill sound. There were a few factory settings on the receiver (Upsampling, Hi-bit32 are what I remember) that I had to turn off or to the lowest setting because they were processing the sound and making it sound artificial along with it sounding bright and shrill.These changes made it sound better, but it was still bright and shrill. I was really disappointed in the WD Black, but I remembered that some electronics require a break in (especially for audio purposes), so instead of giving up and returning the hard drive I figured I'd keep it and hope that it would break in.After about 90 days (not 90 days straight without shutting it off, but just playing it whenever I had time to listen to music or wanted music playing in the background), I noticed a magical thing.One morning, I sat down and turned it on and I noticed for a few hours that I did not get up because my music was sounding especially good. My music was extremely clear, the music had excellent detail (far more than the Seagate) and the volume was louder than the Seagate. The sound coming out of my speakers was something I was not prepared for (in a good way).I figured maybe I was just in some sort of a good mood and wanted to listen to music. Well, I made it a point to turn on my system for the next few days as time permitted and it sounded so much better (as opposed to Day 1) to the point of not wanting to get up and move on with my day.Another observation I noticed after the break-in is that the music has a "darker background". it's hard to describe what I mean but think about it like this. If you know what "white noise" is in the background, this hard drive seems to deliver less of that sort of sound. You hear more of the artist and instrumentation.It even made the difference between FLAC files and WAV files less pronounced. What I mean by this is that some albums I have ripped in both FLAC and WAV. WAV is the absolute best sound (between the two), but FLAC is close. it was far more noticeable on the Seagate drive, but less noticeable on this WD Black.In closing this review, if anyone is buying this for audio purposes, I suggest exercising some patience with the break in and if you are using a receiver, turn off anything that is processing the sound (similar to what I mentioned above). The audio output from this hard drive is pure. Read the owners manual and find any audio processing settings that are turned on as a default. There may be some things you leave on and you may also have to do some EQ adjustments, bass, treble, etc. but the result is well worth it. Exercise some patience with your receiver and you will be rewarded. As for my A400, there are some settings on that for optimal audio output that I'll be covering in my updated review on that whenever I get around to it. It is seriously a good piece for music.I did NOT expect anything special from a higher end hard drive other than available storage space, but I have been pleasantly surprised and I no longer regret my purchase as I did on Day 1. I highly recommend this hard drive for audio purposes. in fact, I cannot recommend it enough.Hope this helps with your purchase decision.

I've had two WD Blue drives fail on me, one laptop HD within 11 months ciritically and losing everything. I really hate losing data and admittingly don't backup anymore, per se. I used to run DLT4 backups daily on all my systems, but now I just clone drives when a drive sounds like failure is setting in. I also use gSMARTcontrol to monitor my drives. Yup, I could also drop files to thumb drives to backup as well and do that with truly important files.Anyway, the whole point is, I have a somewhat blind trust in these WD Black drives. They have a 5-year warranty, so I know they are expected to live longer than Blue, so why not pay the few extra dollars to possibly get a far better drive which probably has a far lower failure rate?I currently have two WD Black 1TB drives, and the older one seems to run hotter. Mind you the system these are in is an antiquated and not well set up box. Also, my office is ridiculously hot in the Winter, currently 85 degrees, and stays that way for about 2 months out of the year, since here in the South, Winter is really short and freezing cold days are sandwiched between Summer like days.Here are the SMART figures on my old and new WD Black drives:Item: Old and NewRaw Read Error Rate: 0 and 0Spin-Up Time: 1291 and 1875Start / Stop Count: 349 and 97Reallocated Sectors: 0 and 0Seek Error Rate: 0 and 0Power-On Time: 45140 and 7466 (5 years, 54 days, 20 hours) and (311 days)Spin-Up Retry: 0 and 0Calibration Retry: 0 and 0Power Cycles: 347 and 97Head Retract Cycles: 170 and 46Load / Unload Cycle: 349 and 55Temperature: 49C/120.2F and 37C/98.6FReallocation Events: 0 and 0Everything else: 0 and 0So, basically, the old WD Black drive have been going for over 5 years and has never had a bad sector or read error, even though it has been on the edge of boiling up. It, for some reason, is always running hotter. I've swapped where these drives are installed and the results were the same.The old drive runs hot, but it still is going. I have been noticing a bit of a whine from the drive occasionally, but currently it is sounding normal. The newer drive which is about a year old has consistently been running about 10 degrees cooler. I'd suspect it is time to replace the old drive, so I might just order another one of these today. If not a WD Black, I'll probably go for an HGST (a WD company) which according to some public information from cloud service providers has some of the lowest failure rates.I'm also cautious about getting larger size drives, worried about failure rates spiking due to pushing limits. But that doesn't seem to hold water, I've seen reports of the 2TB having a far greater failure rate than the 3TB or 4TB.