This HDD is suitable to use as a storage drive on your desktop PC. It isn't the fastest, but has plenty of space to dump your stuff on.It is now considered "End of life" as of mid-2024 and replaced by the 256MB cache variant. (The older one has 128MB cache.) ...So check before you buy!It is very quiet.It has aggressive power-down behaviour that will reduce the life of the drive (constantly powering up and down isn't healthy for any hard drive!)You can disable its aggressive power-down behaviour with WDIDLE3 (found in Ultimate Boot CD). Simply plug this drive as your only drive on your system, boot up Ultimate Boot CD and disable the power-down behaviour.

A warning if you are cloning with this drive

A reasonable price for a 2TB desktop drive that's primarily used for storage. The reason I purchased this WD drive is for the Acronis software that is bundled with it that would enable me to clone my current drive. However, the software only works if both drives are WD. Nowhere does it specify this and a call to WD tech support confirmed this. I spent significant time in locating a free utility software program that would clone the drives, otherwise I would have returned the drive and purchased a faster drive.

Bad Product, Bad Customer Sevice and Support.

Hard Drive arrived DOA. It will not turn on on, I try different comp computers, and it will not work. I called over the phone in order to replace for another hard drive, same model, but none over phone could understand what I wanted it despite my detailed explanation and the end the person over the phone said, we will send a replacement. It didn't happened. Its really disappointing.Order 0021852598, Placed: Mar 27, 2024, Total $125.19. WD Blue 3.5in PC Hard Drive - 8TB, SKU: WD80EAAZ, Cache Size:256 MB.

Drives work, Customer service at WD does not.

The drives work. The customer service is horrible. I took my case and all the back and forth conversations between myself and the CS team here. I'm using it for training of my own customer service team as, "What not to do to a client." This was a one time buy with my personal account, that I will never use again. The WD Customer service team has made it so I will only ever buy from the competition. Now, I may be just one person to WD, but the company this "one person" works for buys around 25K HDD a year on the B2B side. I'm going to do whatever I can to make sure we start buying from Seagate.

False positive for bad drive?

The customer support was great although it was by far the most obtuse route I've ever seen (if you contact them they'll have you call a number that puts you on hold that sends you a text that hyperlinks to a website that eventually puts you in a chatroom. Don't remember the full detail just that it was badly indirect even by DMV or unemployment office standards but the person was helpful). I'd thought this was a failing drive with seemingly random stuttering trying to watch an old 900p video that would then play it fine trying again later, userbenchmark benched it at 6.3%--yeah seriously. It kept acting weird too which was a shame as it was half full by then. Detected no problems with the drive, crystaldisk showed poor read and very poor write speed, but every ... MoreThe customer support was great although it was by far the most obtuse route I've ever seen (if you contact them they'll have you call a number that puts you on hold that sends you a text that hyperlinks to a website that eventually puts you in a chatroom. Don't remember the full detail just that it was badly indirect even by DMV or unemployment office standards but the person was helpful). I'd thought this was a failing drive with seemingly random stuttering trying to watch an old 900p video that would then play it fine trying again later, userbenchmark benched it at 6.3%--yeah seriously. It kept acting weird too which was a shame as it was half full by then. Detected no problems with the drive, crystaldisk showed poor read and very poor write speed, but every diagnostic tool said was fine, not fragmented, optimized, not filled with disk errors etc. Finally after going to UBM again the disk flatly wasn't even being detected anymore or giving me stats on testing it. After having to pull the drive out to find drive info for the rep and plugging it back in I think a different order or cable or something it started working fine. This is not the first review and apologies for one egg. I will say though that I'm knocking an egg off because I tried unplugging/replugging before and to this day am not sure what the problem was, or if it was truly user error and the cable wasn't seated correctly (but then why was I able to use it and it would work fine then suddenly barely work with bad transfer rates as opposed to not working at all? Or consistently working poorly?) I've seen a lot of bad reviews after all this and think it's plausible that there's a lot of bad drives out there, refurbs, idk what, but as of this writing it works fine. I've not had 10fps trying to play lower quality videos since. I still am not sure if I would put it past the drive to start acting weird again but right now it's been working for a week or two as normal and had it running for under a month although other reviews make me leery after that experience. Recommend? Eh. I mean frankly it's cheap enough and on sale enough that if you get a genuinely failed drive or DOA it is Western Digital so while you can't RMA it through Newegg after a short while the company will try to help you even if you end up paying postage or partial cost of the drive or whatever and if they didn't it wouldn't be a big loss. Don't regret the purchase, happy now.

Great Data Backup option!

Big decisions on going all non-spinning or spinning... WD hard drives have always been very reliable. This 4Tb is replacing a 2Tb dated from 2012 that is still running. Obviously, non-spinning are a "million times" faster and are the best for running an operating systems, games and apps, but there is something to say about the good ole tried and true WD blue hard drives. In my case, I am using this as storage for backup data so there is no constant usage day-to-day. These are SMR drives but my usage works well with that writing technology as opposed to CMR. And the price is right! Also, no issues about noise, pretty quiet. I also just read where spinning hard drives can be more power efficient than ssd. Anyway, until I can figure out a better long term solution to ... MoreBig decisions on going all non-spinning or spinning... WD hard drives have always been very reliable. This 4Tb is replacing a 2Tb dated from 2012 that is still running. Obviously, non-spinning are a "million times" faster and are the best for running an operating systems, games and apps, but there is something to say about the good ole tried and true WD blue hard drives. In my case, I am using this as storage for backup data so there is no constant usage day-to-day. These are SMR drives but my usage works well with that writing technology as opposed to CMR. And the price is right! Also, no issues about noise, pretty quiet. I also just read where spinning hard drives can be more power efficient than ssd. Anyway, until I can figure out a better long term solution to backup data, these drives are a great value.

Not just a whopping amount of data storage space,

I do a lot of video editing... a LOT. My PC's 2 TB hard drive was constantly filling up and as a result I have been struggling to remove enough files to have sufficient space for more editing, and have over a dozen external hard drives, in many cases with redundant files.It was time for an upgrade, and the solution was to add a second internal drive, this time a whopping 4 TB of data, to the PC. This would not only give me the space to keep files I need handy, but also to start sorting thru the externals and removing duplications and freeing up THAT space as well.Western Digital is a name I've used with confidence for many years, and when I saw the extremely reasonable price for this hard drive I was VERY happy. Now I am stress-free and my data management has ... MoreI do a lot of video editing... a LOT. My PC's 2 TB hard drive was constantly filling up and as a result I have been struggling to remove enough files to have sufficient space for more editing, and have over a dozen external hard drives, in many cases with redundant files.It was time for an upgrade, and the solution was to add a second internal drive, this time a whopping 4 TB of data, to the PC. This would not only give me the space to keep files I need handy, but also to start sorting thru the externals and removing duplications and freeing up THAT space as well.Western Digital is a name I've used with confidence for many years, and when I saw the extremely reasonable price for this hard drive I was VERY happy. Now I am stress-free and my data management has room to breathe while I use downtime from editing to clean up more space.Very highly recommend this drive.

WD80EAZZ - Quality cold storage drive.

Very nice HDD for "cold storage".I bought this 8TB in Nov-22 for $120.I already have a fast pc and fast storage. I have a 1TB of arguably the fastest PCIe4x4 nand SSD, a 960GB Optane SSD, and a cold storage 3TB Seagate HDD and they were getting filled with stuff I didn't actively use and didn't want to redo or redownload. My long term backup method to optical(or M-disc) takes too long for anything but the most valuable data, and an 8TB SSD costs too much to justify.This 8TB drive will give me a lot more space to keep what I want. It also does sequential R/W in Crystaldiskmark of over 200MB/s compared to the 140MB/s of the other smaller HDDs I have and 5x as fast as my 340Mb/s cable internet download speed when the internet is perfect.My drive came straight ... MoreVery nice HDD for "cold storage".I bought this 8TB in Nov-22 for $120.I already have a fast pc and fast storage. I have a 1TB of arguably the fastest PCIe4x4 nand SSD, a 960GB Optane SSD, and a cold storage 3TB Seagate HDD and they were getting filled with stuff I didn't actively use and didn't want to redo or redownload. My long term backup method to optical(or M-disc) takes too long for anything but the most valuable data, and an 8TB SSD costs too much to justify.This 8TB drive will give me a lot more space to keep what I want. It also does sequential R/W in Crystaldiskmark of over 200MB/s compared to the 140MB/s of the other smaller HDDs I have and 5x as fast as my 340Mb/s cable internet download speed when the internet is perfect.My drive came straight from WD and was manufactured in Oct-22.And like most that buy them it ran perfectly and I expect it to last as long as the still running WD Blue 1TB in my daughter's PC that I picked up in 2011.Also it is not clicky like the old Velociraptor HDD I have in the office.It is often slow for things like games, and isn't the best choice for continuous reading and writing, but that isn't what I got it for. If I store a modded game on it and I want to play it for more than a few hours I will likely drag that folder to a faster drive. If I want to backup my phone's photos/videos the WD can hold them until I save them permanently. If I have a video project that is taking too much space, to the WD it can go.Tons of space that is fast enough for cold storage.

Warning: Sub Par Model, Dead on Arrival

Device came new in decent packaging, direct from Western Digital. However, I noticed immediately that it was the EZAZ version which is SMR (Single Magnetic Recording) version. This means it is significantly slower writing large files than other Blue products I have owned. I was just using for storage so even though I was disappointed, I tried to use it. The drive would not initialize. It would throw IO errors across multiple known good power and sata connections. Shady to list it as a Blue product when its obviously a sub par model, this means I can no longer trust the companies own performance branding to give me the product I want from ANY vendor. Compound this having it be DOA from the factory, makes me question using WD products anymore. I have been an advocate ... MoreDevice came new in decent packaging, direct from Western Digital. However, I noticed immediately that it was the EZAZ version which is SMR (Single Magnetic Recording) version. This means it is significantly slower writing large files than other Blue products I have owned. I was just using for storage so even though I was disappointed, I tried to use it. The drive would not initialize. It would throw IO errors across multiple known good power and sata connections. Shady to list it as a Blue product when its obviously a sub par model, this means I can no longer trust the companies own performance branding to give me the product I want from ANY vendor. Compound this having it be DOA from the factory, makes me question using WD products anymore. I have been an advocate of theirs for 20 years until this. I will be attempting to return. Will see how well they handle this

You get what you pay for

This hard drive is the worst thing I have ever thrown in my pc. I am so upset with my purchase its unreal. This thing is a SLUG. I dont care if it lasts a decade, I am six months in and I am replacing it as a primary drive, probably going to eat the cost of a fully functional HDD because I can not handle a 20 minute boot. Thats just the boot. If you need this for ANYTHING other than basic stuff, its not worth it. Its taken minutes to load microsoft edge home page when fully booted and nothing else running (a thing that should take seconds). This kind of performance is only acceptable on an external drive, or at least a secondary drive. This absolutely can not handle being a primary boot drive. It absolutely is worth the extra few bucks for a higher end drive as a ... MoreThis hard drive is the worst thing I have ever thrown in my pc. I am so upset with my purchase its unreal. This thing is a SLUG. I dont care if it lasts a decade, I am six months in and I am replacing it as a primary drive, probably going to eat the cost of a fully functional HDD because I can not handle a 20 minute boot. Thats just the boot. If you need this for ANYTHING other than basic stuff, its not worth it. Its taken minutes to load microsoft edge home page when fully booted and nothing else running (a thing that should take seconds). This kind of performance is only acceptable on an external drive, or at least a secondary drive. This absolutely can not handle being a primary boot drive. It absolutely is worth the extra few bucks for a higher end drive as a boot drive and I wish I did that. I wanted something cheap, and I got it.Though, I guess I can give it a star for not failing yet. It does seem to at least be reliable.