Western Digital WD Blue PC 3TB SATA 3.5" Internal Hard Drive with 5400 RPM & 64 MB Cache

I have a veritable rainbow of WD drives (red, green, blue) between my PC, Drobo and newly built NAS and they are all real workhorses. I have yet to have any of them fail or misbehave even after 8 years. I know certain colors are best suited for certain applications, but I find the blue drives to be the best bang for the buck and most versatile. I bought this most recent 4TB blue to install in an old PC that I turned into a Plex media server/home made NAS. I've been wanting to have a dedicated media server for some time and finally had the chance to do it but needed more storage space. The PC I had has a 1TB hard drive that I wanted to remain dedicated to running software and store all of my movies, tv shows, documentaries, and kiddie crap (haha) on its own drive. I installed this the other day and loaded all my visual media on it (I keep pictures and music on yet another drive) and I still have room to spare. I immediately connected the new server to Plex through my Roku 4 and watched a movie (1080p) on the TV while streaming another to my phone and had no trouble whatsoever! I know a lot of the buffering problems stem from inadequate CPU and mine is good, but just in case you're wondering, these blue drives have no trouble streaming content from when you've got adequate transcoding power in your machine. A lot of people would tell you you need red drives but old blue does just fine in my experience and is so much cheaper!For those of you who are new to installing new hard drives, it's a piece of cake but just be aware that this drive does not come with any cables or mounting hardware, so you'll need to be sure you have your own SATA cable and an available power source cable as well as screws or whatever you need to mount it in your case. Also for the newbies, you can't just plug and use, you'll need to go in to your drive manager and name/format it before you can use it. This is also very very easy to do and only takes a few minutes and then you're ready to go!I don't use these WD drives to boot and run software anymore (it's all about SSD's for that now - buy one, it will change your life) but I use these drives to hold and back up all of my data for me and I love them! You really can't get more storage and a more reliable drive for a better price than this. And don't be freaked out because the picture shows the inside of the hard disk, this is a fully enclosed drive (see pics). Hope this helps! Happy computing! I did NOT receive this for free or at a discount.

EDIT:I was disappointed and quite frankly upset when I learned more about this drive after purchase.However, it performs pretty well and I can trust it now that I've owned it for a long time. No errors or problems for several years.It outperforms my budget Samsung HDD drive which had less than 100HRs before throwing errors. This WD has thousands of hours with no issues. That's impressive.To be honest I love the drive but I am still upset it is just a rebranded green drive...whateverOriginal:ITS A GREEN DRIVE NOT BLUE(okay the label is blue and it is as advertised but if you bought WD HDDs before you know what that means)History:WD made cheap and bad green 3.5" drives 5400RPM and in efforts to boost sales they got their label changed to blue and discontinued the use of green labels #marketting SOB'sWell anyways, kinda expected that for $99 that I paid. This goes into the PS4 3.5" adapter so not a big deal if it fails.Before the facts, there is GOOD NEWS and it's listed at the bottom and the drive does work fine right now but 3 stars because I'm worried ok, it makes noises (probably normal noises), and it is really a cheap green drive so that worries me too.The current facts:It vibrates, it makes old and somewhat loud pc like noise (head movement) when playing games or when not playing games but transferring more than one file at same time. (downloading 2 or 3 games at once) If it is doing multi file transfer but one after another instead of all at once, then the head doesn't move much so no noise can be heard.The intensity of the noise is no louder than old drives of the 90s so I'm only half worried, as this may be the actual design of this drive.It gets warm almost too warm but not toasty. (granted it could use better ventilation and it is sitting in the adapter thing above a warm ps4)There was one BIG issue (which may have been the ps4 adapters fault) where I lost all data on the 3rd day. It would turn on and spin but ps4 could not recognize it or be able to initialize it (ps4s version of formatting)The fix was to use pc and 3rd party free-ware to rebuid the MBR. Guess something went wrong with ps4. Afterward once MBR was rebuilt it still only worked after I initialized (ps4s version of formatting) the whole drive and started resh again and that was a BIG improvement.2 weeks and 1.3 TB later it is doing ok.I still don't know what went wrong that dayTHE GOOD NEWS ( best for last eh?)No surface errors found, tested this right out the package and after I had ps4 screw up the hdd MBR (assuming it was PS4 that did it, or the adapter)Guess i'll keep track of it and re-review if i can once it screws up again and I'll do SMART diagnostics to make sure the drive is not at fault

My drive works well. It is quiet and has a good transfer rate (about 175MB/sec for large files). I use this drive for storing backups. My files are about 30 to 50 GB each. I use this drive externally, in a USB 3,0 cradle. When I am done storing my backup files (and assorted other large files), I spin the drive down, remove it from the cradle and place it in a HDD storage box.For this type of use-case, I highly recommend the drive. As other reviewers have noted, check the warranty status on WD's website immediately after receiving the drive. If the status is anything less than covered for 24 months, return the drive immediately for a refund. Also, make sure you buy this from Amazon and not a third party seller. This will protect you.I cannot recommend this drive for hot storage. Spinning all the time that your computer is on, the drive may not last as long. For constant spinning, I use my WD Red drives. They are more reliable and have a longer warranty. Of course, you will pay more for them, but that is worth it to me.I have concerns about the technology in the WD Blue drives. They are more prone to data loss. For me, this is not a problem as I verify my backups immediately. But, I would be concerned if I were using them for hot storage. For cold storage, I care more about price/GB. WD Blue 4TB is hard to beat in this regard.Finally, if you are thinking of using this as a system drive, don't. Just don't. A 1TB or 512GB SSD is affordable, reliable, and fast. For this, I recommend Adata SX8200 pro. They are a great choice if your motherboard has a NVME M.2 slot.I hope this was helpful.