Just received a Western Digital 4TB Red from Amazon. I always zero/wipe every sector before use, and verify the drive (takes roughly 24 hours), as it was forming part of a Raid 5 parity array.

Straight off, within the first half hour, had tapping 'dull tamborine' noises, the completion time jumping up, then reducing back. A good sign of sector read problems, short term failure. Going back.

The packaging of drives by Amazon's 'frustration free' packaging is causing me 'frustration', in that its just so poor, a single layer of bubble wrap in a single book 1"" style card envelope, while sent with other stuff in a bigger box, it was loose to be thrown about.

I only bought it to keep consistency (with other 4TB reds), but this is a software raid, and this 4TB Barracuda would have done the job for a lot cheaper (and better packaging from ebuyer). It's £40 cheaper too, though similar price on Amazon.

Preferred the time, when you just bought one general purpose drive and its name was Hitachi, where all motor spindles were manufactured to the same standard.

These ok for a NAS?

£112.68 on the link

Is saying to me that is 121£ in total... and for that price I'd rather buy a WD red....

Had a Seagate Barracuda a few years back.....Pure disaster, bricked twice. I managed to power it up by effectively turning it into a usb drive using a nokia charger and a phone battery then some coding.

Bricked again after that so it got smashed to bits, Unless they're built better now I'd stay clear.

I remember they were asking us to send the drives to Holland to be restored and the data saved however at the price of us having to postage both ways.

Lovely customer service.