HD Western Digital WD Gold 4TB

In this article I talk about a HD Western Digital WD Gold 4TB, acquired on AliExpress, shop Kandy Hong Kong Co, It was installed on my desktop computer.

The my PC operating system is installed on a SSD, but the folder \Users of Windows, with all my personal files and settings, stay in a HD, otherwise I would need an SSD of 960GB and they are still very expensive.

One day, the HD with the folder \Users, a Seagate 2 TB, began to show signs that it might fail. More precisely, the Hard Disk Sentinel gave an estimate of only 9 days of life for him.

Hard Disk Sentinel giving an estimate of only 9 days of life for my Seagate 2 TB HD

Fortunately this estimate just not coming true. It's been a few months and the HD is still alive, now in an external case.

But as soon as I took the problem I tried to look for a new HD, After all, it's not good to be counting on luck. At first I looked for something in Brazil, for a quick replace. I just didn't want anything from Seagate, Since I already have several bodies that mark.

Unfortunately in Brazil is difficult to find non-brand hard drives Seagate. The few hard drives from Western Digital that I found were priced too high and were almost all of the model Purple, suitable for monitoring cameras, but not for desktops. I also found some of the Hitachi, However manufactured for years (2013 if memory serves me). I think that there's anything wrong with them. A lot of people who bought complained that are used.

I decided to then take a look at what was on the outside and I found the store Kandy Hong Kong Co on AliExpress. There I found several lines of hard drives from Western Digital, for much better prices than Brazil.

At first it would take something of the line Blue, facing domestic desktops, but I decided to kick the bucket soon and asked the HD Western Digital WD Gold 4TB. The line Gold is geared towards the business market. While the domestic line spins the discs 5400 RPM, the Gold line turns the 7200 RPM. The cache of Gold é 128 MB, double the 64 MB line Blue.

Another key differentiator is that the line Gold has 5 year warranty, While the line Blue has only 2 year warranty. Sustained Read rate is 201 MB/s in the HD Western Digital WD Gold 4TB, while Blue of same capacity reaches just 150 MB/s.

Of course, not everything is an advantage, the HD Western Digital WD Gold 4TB consumes of 7W (idle) the 9W (sequential read), While the 4 TB Blue consumes just 3, 4W, 3W 5. But, in practice the HD consumption is low near other items from PC, so should not make that much of a difference. The WD 4 TB Gold It is also a bit noisy: are 29dBA in idle and 36dBA in search. The Blue values are 25dBA and 28dBA, respectively.

Weighed all factors, I went ahead and made the purchase of the HD Western Digital WD Gold 4TB. The price of US $ 190,21 It was excellent, because in Brazil you pay more than that even by model Purple, that is the cheapest.

I was aware that it might take to get, but I was using the Seagate dying usually, backing up every day like I always do, and synchronizing files instantly with the NAS, not to have risk of data loss.

48 days after, the HD Western Digital WD Gold 4TB arrived. And came very well packed and sealed! Very HD I bought in Brazil came unsealed with excuse of seller pig who needs to guarantee adesivinho necklace. Well needless since hard drives have serial numbers. The Chinese were much better in this regard, delivering a sealed and manufactured in February 2017, just a month before purchase. No old stock doubtful.

Check out some photos from the HD Western Digital WD Gold 4TB:

Package with the Western Digital WD HD Gold 4 TB

Package with the Western Digital WD HD Gold 4 TB

HD Western Digital WD Gold 4TB, on its packaging

HD Western Digital WD Gold 4TB, on its packaging

HD Western Digital WD Gold 4TB, on its packaging

HD Western Digital WD Gold 4TB, on its packaging

HD Western Digital WD Gold 4TB, on its packaging

HD Western Digital WD Gold 4TB, on its packaging

See also the video of unboxing from the HD Western Digital WD Gold 4TB:

At first I put the HD in case Vantec NexStar CX, that brought Canada's in 2009. The idea was to transfer the data to the HD in case and then puts it on the PC. But, the case failed to correctly identify the HD. Probably his firmware doesn't support HDs of 4 TB.

HD Western Digital WD 4 TB Gold in case Vantec NexStar CX

I decided so by removing one of the other hard drives from my system and put the new HD to make the transfer. After the transfer, removed the Seagate HD dying man, I put the HD Western Digital WD Gold 4TB in your place and I returned the drive there was removed for your position. This operation caused a problem where the letters of the units were wrong and I couldn't log into the system. Already I presented the solution for this problem here in Skooter Blog.

Cloning the hard drive with Macrium Reflect

In these almost 3 months of use of the HD Western Digital WD Gold 4TB I can say that I am quite satisfied. Very good performance for a HD. The noise when he is doing read/write really excels, because my system is pretty quiet, but it's not enough to bother. The coolers stock of Intel and many other of the market are much more noisy than that.

After installation of the HD Western Digital WD Gold 4TB, I ran some diagnostics with the Crystaldiskinfo and using the Hard Disk Sentinel.

Hard Disk Sentinel, analyzing the newly installed HD

Crystaldiskinfo, analyzing the newly installed HD

Today, While writing the article, Redid the tests, with the HD having already 1115 hours of on-time and a count of 150 times which was connected. Everything is ok with him.

Hard Disk Sentinel, analyzing the HD after almost 3 months of use

Crystaldiskinfo, analyzing the HD after almost 3 months of use

These are the trace information, obtained on the website of AliExpress:

And these are the information obtained on the site of the station:

This is the table-summary of purchase: (TO UPDATE)

And I'm ending here the article on HD Western Digital WD Gold 4TB, with a positive evaluation of the product and the store Kandy Hong Kong Co. Share this article with your friends if you liked ;). If you also want to shop in AliExpress, directly from Hong Kong, click here and good shopping.