Fast enough, quiet enough, cool enough, reliable enough, a solid winner

Needed a large hard drive for file sharing duty, and it had to be reasonably fast without roasting itself inside a hard drive dock. WD Red met all specs on paper, exceeded all specs in reality. Other drives in docks around my home needed a small fan attached to remain below 40 C during hot summer months, whereas the WD Red 3TB has been rock solid at 35 C without a fan, even during days exceeding 100 F outside and 80 F inside the house. It did reach 41 C once, during a 48GB write over USB 3.0, but it also reached 140MBytes per second writing that video file. Never tested in a RAID or NAS enclosure, don't need such things. Potential buyers should be aware of 2TB limit in older motherboards, necessitating two partitions for compatibility between such boards and newer ones. Usage in a hard drive dock also requires simple precautions in line with all hard drives, such as allowing the platters to spin down before removing from the dock, and allowing for air movement around the drive to prevent heat building up during long backups. WD has a winner in this line of drives. They're fast enough, quiet enough, run cool and available in very large capacities. They're not cheap, but then, with this drive, I got exactly what I wanted, for what I was willing to pay. The only real complaint I have is that I did not buy more of them, an issue I plan to rectify as soon as possible.Read full review