Western Digital 1TB WD Blue PC Internal Hard Drive HDD - 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache, 3.5" - WD10EZEX

I plan to use this WD Blue 1TB hard drive for backing up my main SSD drive with popular cloning software. I also have other SSDs which I use for the same purpose, but thought I'd also purchase this for the same use, as the price was very reasonable. The cloning process went well, except for the amount of time required compared to a SSD which was expected.This is an OEM drive, thus it doesn't come with what normally comes with a "retail" boxed drive, including SATA cable, mounting screws, instructions, etc. Since I've been building and assembling PCs for over 40 years, a retail drive is superfluous to my needs. Of course, a retail drive typically comes with a longer warranty than an OEM drive. Here's the reason why I deleted one star from the review... This drive was manufactured on January 11, 2015, thus it's over 10 years old! New, and never used... yes, but still old. And, frankly, I was very surprised by this.Drive quality seems fine, quiet, and ease of installation was a breeze as I'm using it with an external SATA dock only for back ups.I just wish I had known the drive was going to be this old in terms of manufacturing date, thus it's far, far out-of-warranty even upon receipt.

EDIT:I was disappointed and quite frankly upset when I learned more about this drive after purchase.However, it performs pretty well and I can trust it now that I've owned it for a long time. No errors or problems for several years.It outperforms my budget Samsung HDD drive which had less than 100HRs before throwing errors. This WD has thousands of hours with no issues. That's impressive.To be honest I love the drive but I am still upset it is just a rebranded green drive...whateverOriginal:ITS A GREEN DRIVE NOT BLUE(okay the label is blue and it is as advertised but if you bought WD HDDs before you know what that means)History:WD made cheap and bad green 3.5" drives 5400RPM and in efforts to boost sales they got their label changed to blue and discontinued the use of green labels #marketting SOB'sWell anyways, kinda expected that for $99 that I paid. This goes into the PS4 3.5" adapter so not a big deal if it fails.Before the facts, there is GOOD NEWS and it's listed at the bottom and the drive does work fine right now but 3 stars because I'm worried ok, it makes noises (probably normal noises), and it is really a cheap green drive so that worries me too.The current facts:It vibrates, it makes old and somewhat loud pc like noise (head movement) when playing games or when not playing games but transferring more than one file at same time. (downloading 2 or 3 games at once) If it is doing multi file transfer but one after another instead of all at once, then the head doesn't move much so no noise can be heard.The intensity of the noise is no louder than old drives of the 90s so I'm only half worried, as this may be the actual design of this drive.It gets warm almost too warm but not toasty. (granted it could use better ventilation and it is sitting in the adapter thing above a warm ps4)There was one BIG issue (which may have been the ps4 adapters fault) where I lost all data on the 3rd day. It would turn on and spin but ps4 could not recognize it or be able to initialize it (ps4s version of formatting)The fix was to use pc and 3rd party free-ware to rebuid the MBR. Guess something went wrong with ps4. Afterward once MBR was rebuilt it still only worked after I initialized (ps4s version of formatting) the whole drive and started resh again and that was a BIG improvement.2 weeks and 1.3 TB later it is doing ok.I still don't know what went wrong that dayTHE GOOD NEWS ( best for last eh?)No surface errors found, tested this right out the package and after I had ps4 screw up the hdd MBR (assuming it was PS4 that did it, or the adapter)Guess i'll keep track of it and re-review if i can once it screws up again and I'll do SMART diagnostics to make sure the drive is not at fault

I just returned the Seagate IronWolf Pro 12 TB because it was making a weird noise while writing. It sounds like a kid bouncing a basketball on the driveway next door. So I bought this Western Digital 12TB WD Blue Internal Hard Drive HDD to take its place. I'm extremely happy with the performance so far. I'm currently transferring data from my old drive to the newly partitioned Western Digital 12TB WD Blue Internal Hard Drive HDD and see that it's writing at around 173 MB/s. That's a pretty impressive speed.I am occasionally hearing the traditional noises associated while it's writing, but nothing to be alarmed about. I've always been a fan of WD drives, but bought the Seagate first just to save a little money. Seagate also has a good reputation, but not as good as Western Digital. I also like that the Western Digital 12TB WD Blue Internal Hard Drive HDD has a 512MB cache, versus the 256MB with the Seagate.UPDATE: I just finished transferring all of my data from the older drives to the Western Digital 12TB WD Blue Internal Hard Drive HDD with no problem at all. The WD drive appears to be performing admirably and I'm very impressed so far.