WD Red 4TB NAS Hard Disk Drive Review and Its Alternatives

What Is a NAS Hard Drive

Before learning about more detailed information about WD Red 4TB NAS hard disk drive, there is a thing you need to know. What is a NAS hard drive?

NAS refers to Network-attached storage. It is a file-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network and provides large amounts of data to a group of clients.

There are many enterprises and home users using NAS system to share files among multiple computers. It contains one or more storage drives and often is arranged into logical, Redundant storage containers or RAID.

NAS hard drive is a special hard drive designed for NAS system. Some users wonder whether they can use normal hard drives in NAS system. Actually, you can do it but it is not recommended. NAS hard drives are more heat-resistant and anti-vibration, and thus they are more suitable for long-time work. Besides, they are coming with specialized firmware used in RAID.

Therefore, if you are looking for a hard drive used for NAS system, you should consider those named NAS hard drive.

WD Red 4TB NAS Hard Disk Drive

WD Red 4TB NAS hard drive is one of the best NAS hard drives you can find in 2020. Here is the basic information of the hard drive.

• Hardware interface: SATA 6.0 Gb/s
• Hard disk size: 3.5 Inch
• Item weight: 1.23 lbs
• Model: WD40EFAX
• Hard disk rotational speed: 5400 RPM
• Read speed: up to 180 MB/s
• Warranty: 3-year manufacturer’s limited warranty
• Price: $94.99 on Amazon
• Other features: NASware firmware for compatibility, SMART Command Transport (STC) support, power management support and providing BIC performance.

As mentioned, WD Red 4TB NAS hard drive is designed for NAS systems. It can be used in the NAS systems with up to 8 bays. You can choose it either for home or small offices.

WD Red 4TB NAS hard drive uses NASware 2.0 technology which improves NAS storage performance and increases compatibility and reliability. It can protect your data in the event of a power loss or disruption.

In addition, the hard drive also features 3D Active Balance Plus technology which enhances the dual-plane balance control. It indicates that the vibration and noise are controlled better. A single disk might not be so loud, but there are several hard drives put together in a NAS system. In this case, vibration and noise are likely to have influence on the lifespan of the hard drive.

You might notice that the WD Red 4TB NAS hard drive has a rotational speed of 5400 RPM only. Compared with a hard drive with 7200 RPM, the 5400 RPM drive of the same design with the same areal density would transfer data approximately 33% slower than the former one. It is a disadvantage of the WD Red 4TB NAS hard drive, but it consumes less power and is cheaper than most 7200 RPM hard drives.

In general, WD Red 4TB NAS hard drive should be in the list of what you want to buy for NAS system. If you don’t require high speed, this should be at the top of the list. If you want larger capacity, you can search from the Internet. The WD Red NAS hard drive’s capacity varies from 1TB to 6TB.

Other 4TB NAS Hard Drives

In addition to WD Red 4TB NAS hard disk drive, there are some other 4TB NAS hard drives which you can also take into consideration.

WD Red Pro 4TB NAS Internal Hard Drive

• Hardware interface: SATA 6.0 Gb/s
• Hard disk size: 3.5 Inch
• Item weight: 1.5 lbs
• Model: WD4003FFBX
• Cache memory: 256 MB
• Hard disk rotational speed: 7200 RPM
• Transfer rate: up to 217 MB/s
• Warranty: 5-year limited warranty
• Price: $139.99 on Amazon
• Other features: with NASware 3.0 technology, 3D active Balance Plus technology and vibration & shock protection

This disk can be used in the NAS system with up to 24 bays. It provides faster data transfer speed and is more expensive than WD Red 4TB NAS hard disk drive.

Seagate IronWolf Pro 4TB NAS Hard Drive

• Hardware interface: SATA 6.0 Gb/s
• Hard disk size: 3.5 Inch
• Item weight: 1.85 pounds
• Model: ST4000NEZ01/NE001
• Cache memory: 256 MB
• Hard disk rotational speed: 7200 RPM
• Read speed: up to 214 MB/s
• Warranty: 5-year limited warranty and 2-year Rescue Data Recovery Services
• Price: $144.99 on Amazon
• Other features: low power consumption, extra data protection and less noise/vibration

This one is similar to WD Red Pro 4TB NAS hard drive in performance but more expensive.

Toshiba N300 4TB NAS Internal Hard Drive

• Hardware interface: SATA 6.0 Gb/s
• Hard disk size: 3.5 Inch
• Item weight: 1.59 lbs
• Model: HDWQ140XZSTA
• Cache memory: 128 MB
• Hard disk rotational speed: 7200 RPM
• Read speed: up to 240 MB/s
• Warranty: 3-year limited warranty
• Price: $118.99 on Amazon
• Other features: Integrated RV sensors to compensate for rotational vibrations

This Toshiba N300 4TB NAS hard drive is cheaper than the first two NAS hard drives but with less cache memory. If you want higher speed with less cost, you can take this one into consideration.

Initialize 4TB NAS Hard Drive

When you get a new 4TB NAS Hard Drive, you need to initialize it before you can use it. And during the process, you have to choose a partition style for it: MBR or GPT. Generally, for a 4TB NAS hard drive, you’d better choose GPT. Otherwise, you can only use 2TB of the disk.

How to initialize your hard drive to GPT? Here are two easy methods for you.

Method 1: Use Disk Management

Disk Management is a built-in utility in Windows used to make some basic disk management. Let’s how to use it to initialize your NAS hard drive.

Step 1: Connect NAS hard drive to PC. You can plug it in the SATA port on PC or use a SATA to USB cable.

Step 2: Press Win + R to invoke Run window. Then type diskmgmt.msc in the box and click OK to open Disk Management.

Step 3: An Initialize Disk window will pop up automatically when you launch Disk Management. You just need to check your NAS hard drive and then select GPT (GUID Partition Table) for it.

Step 4: Click OK to perform the operation.

Then you just need to wait until the process is finished.

Method 2: Use MiniTool Partition Wizard

In addition to Disk Management, you can also use a reliable third-party software to initialize disk. Here I recommend MiniTool Partition Wizard, a wonderful disk manager. It can help you initialize/copy/wipe disk and create/move/resize/delete partitions within a few clicks.

The detailed steps are as below.

Step 1: Download and install MiniTool Partition Wizard by clicking the following button.

MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 2: Run MiniTool Partition Wizard to go to the main interface.

Step 3: Right-click your NAS hard drive and select Initialize to GPT Disk from the pop-up menu.

Step 4: Click Apply. There would be a pop-up window after you click Apply. Just click Yes to confirm the operation.

After initializing your NAS hard drive, you can create partitions and use it in the NAS system.

WD Red 4TB NAS Hard Disk Drive Benchmark

If you get a new WD Red 4TB hard disk drive or another NAS disk, you might worry whether it is capable to run as fast as advertised. In this case, you can do a disk performance test.

MiniTool Partition Wizard is also a nice hard drive benchmark tool. With this tool, you can measure the storage performance using variable transfer sizes and test lengths for both sequential and random read/write speeds. Besides, it can help you repair logical errors on the disk.

Here are the detailed steps to perform the disk benchmark with MiniTool Partition Wizard.

MiniTool Partition Wizard FreeClick to Download100%Clean & Safe

Step 1: Connect your WD Red 4TB hard disk drive to PC.

Step 2: Launch MiniTool Partition Wizard.

Step 3: When you get the main interface, click Disk Benchmark on the toolbar.

Step 4: Select a partition on your WD Red 4TB hard disk drive and set disk test parameters.

• You can set the data Transfer Size from 1KB to 2048KB at one time and the total amount of transferRed data (Total Length) from 100MB to 4096MB.
• Queue Number ranges from 1 to 512 and Thread Number can be set from 1 to 64.
• For the Test Mode, you can choose any one of Sequential, Random, and Sequential & Random.
• Cool Down Time is set to Reduce the hard drive temperature before it continues with the next test. If you don’t want to change it, just keep it as default.

Step 5: After configuring the parameters, click Start. Then wait for a while and you will get the disk performance test result.

To know more information about how to measure disk performance, you can read the following post: How to Measure Disk Performance Easily [Step-By-Step Guide].

This post introduces WD Red 4TB NAS hard disk drive and some other NAS hard drives. If you’re planning to buy a 4TB NAS hard drive, you can take them into consideration.Click to Tweet

Bottom Line

Is WD Red 4TB NAS hard disk drive fit for you? Here is a review for it and you can decide according to your needs. If you’re not satisfied with it, you can take the other three NAS hard drives listed above into consideration. Besides, if you don’t know how to initialize or test a new hard drive, you can also refer to this post.

You can share your experience in the following comment zone. And for any questions about MiniTool Partition Wizard, please don’t hesitate to contact our team via [email protected].

WD Red 4TB NAS Hard Disk Drive FAQ