Western Digital Ultrastar DC HC550 18 TB Hard Drive - 3.5 Internal - SATA

If you want a data center class drive that will last forever and a day WD/UltraStar/HGST is the way go to. I literally dropped this several times swapping it between bays and it spun up afterward like "wut?" Only thing I would suggest to a prospective buyer is GET HDD LLF and do a full drive surface low level format before anything. It's just a safety measure to make sure any bad clusters are marked out (though I've never gotten a bad cluster on an HGST). Then when you format it use make sure to use something more advanced than windows built in format. You want the drive to be GPT and you want to format it as NTFS with maximum cluster size (64kB) this will reduce seek latency because max cluster size reduces MFT reference/seek time. And again, you want to do this is as a deep format, not a quick format; the LLF and deep format on the 16TB took me about 16.5 Hours for each operation; the drive does maintain a steady state sequential read and write speed of 256MB/s. (and in case you're like "where's my full 16TB?" when they say it's 16TeraBYTES they literally mean 16 trillion bytes, which works out to 14.55 proper TB [this is completely normal: 16,000,000,000,000 Bytes /1024 /1024 /1024 /1024 = 14.55TB]

Like others have stated, this is being sold as a new drive but is not. While there are no bad sectors and all tests came back fine, it's power on time is at 1,114 days. I bought the exact same drive for my NAS 3 years ago from Amazon and that one just barely has more power on time since loaded into my NAS March 2022 (1,121 days).

As others have mentioned, these drives are not from the US and when registered within the US will show "Out Of Region."I contacted WD support, and got this message - "Please to inform you that I have checked with my team and they informed that the warranty of the drive is validated as per the proof of purchase. So I would request you to keep the proof of purchase safe with you. Also you can ignore the out of region part as we are the one who will assist you if you need to claim warranty replacement for the drive."He reassured me that the warranty will be honored for the expected 5 year window, although the status "Out Of Region" will remain.That being said, these things are LOUD. Most of the time they’re reasonably quiet, but several times per hour they’ll unleash floor rattling clicking for several seconds at a time that I can hear through a wall.One of six drives experienced 3 CRC errors in the first day, it’s been about a month and nothing since but I will keep an eye on them.

Have been using this 16TB hard drive since 2021. Very happy with it. Very dependable, will buy another one soon for my new build. Western digital builds very good drives.

Ordered 4 of these drives from Maestro Technology LLC. One had 5 bad sectors, and the other 3 had over 20,000 power on hours. They are clearly not new and nowhere on the product page does it state that these are used or refurbished drives.

I don't often write reviews, but I took a chance on this one so I figured I'd help some other shoppers out. I had similar concerns about warranty / gray market / etc. I purchased a set of these from Oceanside and the drives came individually well packaged and in good condition. Serial numbers checked out on WD/HGST support site. I even went so far as to contact them via chat to confirm. All is good and they carry the 5 year warranty. I've been using them for a month in a Synology NAS and they seem great.Only con is they are quite loud when reading/writing but I think that's just the nature of the beast. Reason for my review is that the info is sparse and I figured this may help someone. It was between these drives and the Seagate EXOS x18, but I'm a long time WD fan so wanted to try these out.

This drive is one of the most reliable disc drives out that.That being said, the drives being shipped today are highly unlikely to be new or have a warranty.The drive I purchased was sold by Maestro Technologies.Per the serial number, what arrived was an OEM drive without any warranty from Western Digital. The date on the drive was 2021. The disc utility check showed 18000+ hours of power on time or a bit more than 2 years of operating time.I kept the drive because of you really can't get one of these that isn't used anymore. However, be aware that what you are highly likely to get is a used drive. If that isn't for you, you should get a different drive.

First - the drive itself is a good drive - Backblaze Drive Stats rates the DC HC series highly, and they are solid high-capacity CMR drives. They make a little noise, but it's not unpleasant, and I've gotten used to it. I put them in Synology NASes, and they work well there.The last set of 2 I ordered were fulfilled by Amazon and shipped out in their little shipping boxes loose in a plastic bag like you get a t-shirt in, and they had obviously been through some stuff. One was DOA, I returned both because I had no faith that the other one would last. The replacements came the same way, but at least stacked so they didn't bang around on each other.The last two sets here I've ordered are either out of region or OEM no warranty. The warranty thing is an interesting call - if the drive is bad enough to require a warranty replacement, what are the chances I'd be able to wipe it before exchange, and would I exchange an unwiped drive? For $300 I might not risk it, so a warranty on a bad drive turns out not to be much of a warranty in practice anyway.So great drives, but purchasing this way has compromises, and go in with your eyes open...