WD Gold Data Center Hard Drive: Every Capacity on WD's Sheet, and UK Prices

WD Gold hdd prices on Amazon.co.uk

This table holds 20 listings right now. Lowest price per TB: £31.31/TB, pounds sterling inc VAT. New and used drives share the table, so read the condition on each row. An enterprise SSD sold under the Gold name is a different product and is left out of this hard drive table.

Some WD Gold listings on Amazon.co.uk carry titles in other languages, and several older ones give no interface. The model number is the reliable part: match it against the three tables below before you click Buy on Amazon.

WD Gold 18TB to 26TB: model numbers, speed and idle power

WD's Gold data sheet, titled Enterprise Class SATA HDD, prints three specification tables: 26 to 18 TB, 16 to 8 TB, and a third from 8 TB down to 4 TB. Every model from 18 TB to 26 TB is printed as Helium. For those five WD gives these figures:

The fastest drive on this table is not the largest. The 22 TB model is stated at 291MB/s, ahead of the 26 TB at 285MB/s and the 24 TB at 279MB/s. Idle power is close to flat across the five, between 5.3 W and 5.7 W, so the larger drives cost less to keep spinning per terabyte: 0.22 W/TB at 26 TB against 0.31 W/TB at 18 TB. OptiNAND and ArmorCache read Yes at 26, 24 and 22 TB and No at 20 and 18 TB.

WD Gold 8TB, 10TB, 12TB, 14TB and 16TB

This is where the line changes build. The 12 TB and 10 TB Golds are air-filled and idle at 8.4 W and 8.3 W, with 34 dBA at idle and 39 dBA in seek, the highest figures on the sheet. One step up, the helium 14 TB idles at 5.6 W and 20 dBA. By our subtraction that is 2.8 W less at idle for 2 TB more, so if you are choosing between a 12 TB and a 14 TB Gold for a machine that runs all day, the sheet points to the 14 TB.

WD prints a power efficiency index of 0.35, 0.4, 0.7, 0.84 and 1.2 W/TB for these five. For the 8 TB WD8006FRYZ the printed 1.2 does not equal its idle figure divided by its capacity, which by our division is about 0.81 W/TB. Projected MTBF is 2,500,000 hours at 16 TB and 14 TB and 2,000,000 hours at 12 TB and below, where the 12 TB column is printed as 2.000,000. The 10 to 16 TB models carry a 512MB cache, the 8 TB a 256MB cache.

WD Gold 4TB, 6TB and 8TB: the third table

Every model on the third table is air-filled, 7200 RPM, with a 256MB cache, 2,000,000 hours projected MTBF, a 0.44% annualised failure rate, a 5-year limited warranty, and 29 dBA at idle. For two of them the printed efficiency index does not follow from the idle figure: 6.5 W over 6 TB is about 1.08 W/TB for WD6005FRYZ, and 6.5 W over 4 TB about 1.63 W/TB for WD4005FRYZ, by our division, against 1.2 printed for both. Read the idle watts rather than the index for these.

Two Gold models share each of the 4, 6 and 8 TB sizes, so a listing that says only WD Gold 8TB could be WD8006FRYZ or WD8005FRYZ. At 4 TB the WD4005FRYZ is quicker on paper, at 275MB/s, and the WD4004FRYZ draws less at idle, at 5.8 W. We have not found a 2 TB Gold on the sheet, so a 2 TB Gold listing has no figures from it.

Is WD Gold CMR?

WD says so on its en-GB product page: "WD Gold drives use CMR (Conventional Magnetic Recording) technology." We have not found a recording-technology row on the data sheet, so the product page is our source. The recording column in the table above shows CMR only where a document names the listing's part number, so a Gold row can show no recording entry even though WD's page speaks for the line.

WD Gold vs Red Pro, and WD Gold vs Ultrastar

On workload, Gold and Red Pro are rated the same: the Gold sheet gives read-write workloads of up to 550TB a year, and the Red Pro sheet prints 550 TB a year on every model it lists. Idle power is where they part. At 22 TB the Red Pro WD221KFGX is printed at 3.4 W idle and the Gold WD221KRYZ at 5.7 W, while both sheets give 20 dBA at idle. For the Red Pro range, see WD Red Pro.

Against Ultrastar, WD draws the line by deployment rather than by specification. Its product page says Ultrastar "is typically targeted at large-scale data center and hyperscale deployments, whereas WD Gold provides enterprise performance in more flexible, accessible deployments." For the Ultrastar side, see WD Ultrastar; for the two side by side, Ultrastar vs WD Gold.

WD Gold 2TB, 4TB, 8TB, 10TB, 16TB and 20TB: quick answers

• 2 TB: we have not found a 2 TB model on WD's Gold sheet.
• 4 TB: WD4005FRYZ (275MB/s, 6.5 W idle) or WD4004FRYZ (267MB/s, 5.8 W idle), both air-filled.
• 8 TB: WD8006FRYZ (275MB/s, 6.5 W idle) or WD8005FRYZ (267MB/s, 6.7 W idle).
• 10 TB: WD103KRYZ, air-filled, 267MB/s, 8.3 W idle.
• 16 TB: WD161KRYZ, helium, 262MB/s, 5.6 W idle.
• 20 TB: WD203KRYZ, helium, 285MB/s, 5.3 W idle, no OptiNAND, 20 dBA idle and 32 dBA seek.

For 6 TB, where two Gold models sit beside Exos and Ultrastar drives, see 6TB enterprise hard drives. For buying by capacity across makers, see enterprise hard drives and data centre hard drives. Exos vs Ultrastar sets Seagate's and WD's data centre lines side by side.

WD's 5-year warranty and your rights as a UK buyer

The 5-year limited warranty is WD's promise as the maker, printed on its sheet. Your statutory rights come from the seller, and they are a separate thing. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015 a consumer is an individual acting for purposes wholly or mainly outside their trade, business, craft or profession, and for faulty goods bought from a trader the short-term right to reject runs to the end of 30 days.

GOV.UK's guidance for traders adds that a business must offer a full refund if an item is faulty, not as described or does not do what it is supposed to. So for a new Gold bought from a trader you have both the seller's duties and WD's warranty to fall back on; for a used one, check what the listing says on both counts before you buy.