I have for my external fantec housing ordered 4 pieces of it and tested it immediately upon receipt extensively. This seems today to be necessary, so that one can manufacturing defects noticed early enough and return it immediately before you flash your own data (keyword: bathtub curve).
All relevant SMART data (esp. Raw Read Error Rate and Write Error Rate) are also after the test still to 0, which for the time being the 5 star justifies. I can therefore keep all 4 plates with a clear conscience. We'll see if it will be after 1 year exactly.
The read and write performance, I would like here though / specify an average 160 to 180 MB s, but is actually not particularly relevant.
WD has also not brought this great performance right away to conditions, as can be read in the various forums. Only with Firmware Version 82.00A82 (indicated by the model number extension -68MYMN1 instead of -68MYMN0) it reaches the normal rate even with 4K blocks. Plates with the old firmware should no longer be on the market.
The 3-year warranty justify the price difference to the Green series, indicating just 2 years for WD. I assume that, although the production process for the mechanical parts for all "colors" (series red, green and purple) is the same, but the quality control decides which it will "color" and the firmware parameters are recorded.
The size of 6TB seems nowadays to be well controlled without special measures. Is that the price per TB nevertheless remained in the frame, you have to WD credit for. Other techniques, such as the filling with helium or writing the tracks without clearance (SMR = Shingled Magnetic Recording) are either not fully developed or unreasonably expensive in my opinion enough.
A word on the SATA cable. WD itself has taken up the subject of shaky SATA cable and in his support forum a post titled "The SATA cable lock is unstable if it is connected to a WD hard drive" written. My tip: before you suspected a defect in the drive, you should try to replace the SATA cables first of all. Following this advice, I myself, Amazon and WD already saves some unnecessary returns.
