Specifically designed for use in data centers and enterprise-class storage systems, WD Gold SATA HDD hard drives deliver the world-class performance you expect from Western Digital hard drives.
Specifically designed for use in data centers and enterprise-class storage systems, WD Gold SATA HDD hard drives deliver the world-class performance you expect from Western Digital hard drives.
in 83 offers
The lowest price for WD WD121KRYZ WD Gold Enterprise 3.5 SATA Drive 12TB 6Gb/s 7200RPM 5YR right now is $64.79.
Prices last updated 30 Nov 2025.
WD WD121KRYZ WD Gold Enterprise 3.5 SATA Drive 12TB 6Gb/s 7200RPM 5YR
Specifically designed for use in data centers and enterprise-class storage systems, WD Gold SATA HDD hard drives deliver the world-class performance you expect from Western Digital hard drives.
Specifically designed for use in data centers and enterprise-class storage systems, WD Gold SATA HDD hard drives deliver the world-class performance you expect from Western Digital hard drives.
Last updated at 30/11/2025 07:10:52
originally posted on westerndigital.com
I bought this drive because I was very mad about my lack in storage in my server, this was the best purchase that I have ever made. The drive is very reliable and has been through quite a few power outages and brownouts before I got a UPS and it's still trucking along like nothing ever happened. The performance of this drive is very quick as long as you have the system it is put into configured correctly. The only slight issue I have is the drive is quite loud while it is doing a SMART test, but I don't see that big of a problem with that because it is a standard thing that makes sure the drive is functioning correctly.
originally posted on ebay.com
I knew it was a datacenter drive when I bought it and was expecting it to be noisier than desktop drives. It turned out to be just as quiet as my two 8 TB helium drives. To date, the loudest drive I own is another 10 TB white label drive that is very noisy, unreliable and slow.. that's because it's an SMR drive. I bought this 10 TB drive specifically because it is NOT an SMR drive. It's also the fastest mech drive I ever owned. I bought this to replace a bad experience with the above mentioned SMR drive that was disconnecting after long read / write operations. If you're looking for an excellent PMR drive, this is the best one you can get. Do yourself a favor and avoid SMR drives (sometimes called "archive" drives).. they aren't very reliable and the last one only ... MoreI knew it was a datacenter drive when I bought it and was expecting it to be noisier than desktop drives. It turned out to be just as quiet as my two 8 TB helium drives. To date, the loudest drive I own is another 10 TB white label drive that is very noisy, unreliable and slow.. that's because it's an SMR drive. I bought this 10 TB drive specifically because it is NOT an SMR drive. It's also the fastest mech drive I ever owned. I bought this to replace a bad experience with the above mentioned SMR drive that was disconnecting after long read / write operations. If you're looking for an excellent PMR drive, this is the best one you can get. Do yourself a favor and avoid SMR drives (sometimes called "archive" drives).. they aren't very reliable and the last one only lasted a couple of months before becoming unstable. I highly recommend this WD Gold 10 TB drive.
originally posted on westerndigital.com
Got the Gold for the size and speed, but video files are slower to load than I'm used to. I can't figure out if that's a problem with my new computer or the HD.Another problem is the loud grinding noises it sometimes makes. Maybe because of it's size? I ran checkdsk and it said it was ok, but I can't help but worry about it now. Sometimes it's normal HD sounds, but sometimes it's sounds like metal on metal grinding.Also, I wasn't expecting the 14tb to be only 13tb, so now I regret not getting the 16 because I'm running out of room already and my new computer only has one space for a 3.5 hd.I ordered directly from WD and it was shipped quickly.
I bought this drive because I was very mad about my lack in storage in my server, this was the best purchase that I have ever made. The drive is very reliable and has been through quite a few power outages and brownouts before I got a UPS and it's still trucking along like nothing ever happened. The performance of this drive is very quick as long as you have the system it is put into configured correctly. The only slight issue I have is the drive is quite loud while it is doing a SMART test, but I don't see that big of a problem with that because it is a standard thing that makes sure the drive is functioning correctly.
I knew it was a datacenter drive when I bought it and was expecting it to be noisier than desktop drives. It turned out to be just as quiet as my two 8 TB helium drives. To date, the loudest drive I own is another 10 TB white label drive that is very noisy, unreliable and slow.. that's because it's an SMR drive. I bought this 10 TB drive specifically because it is NOT an SMR drive. It's also the fastest mech drive I ever owned. I bought this to replace a bad experience with the above mentioned SMR drive that was disconnecting after long read / write operations. If you're looking for an excellent PMR drive, this is the best one you can get. Do yourself a favor and avoid SMR drives (sometimes called "archive" drives).. they aren't very reliable and the last one only ... MoreI knew it was a datacenter drive when I bought it and was expecting it to be noisier than desktop drives. It turned out to be just as quiet as my two 8 TB helium drives. To date, the loudest drive I own is another 10 TB white label drive that is very noisy, unreliable and slow.. that's because it's an SMR drive. I bought this 10 TB drive specifically because it is NOT an SMR drive. It's also the fastest mech drive I ever owned. I bought this to replace a bad experience with the above mentioned SMR drive that was disconnecting after long read / write operations. If you're looking for an excellent PMR drive, this is the best one you can get. Do yourself a favor and avoid SMR drives (sometimes called "archive" drives).. they aren't very reliable and the last one only lasted a couple of months before becoming unstable. I highly recommend this WD Gold 10 TB drive.
Got the Gold for the size and speed, but video files are slower to load than I'm used to. I can't figure out if that's a problem with my new computer or the HD.Another problem is the loud grinding noises it sometimes makes. Maybe because of it's size? I ran checkdsk and it said it was ok, but I can't help but worry about it now. Sometimes it's normal HD sounds, but sometimes it's sounds like metal on metal grinding.Also, I wasn't expecting the 14tb to be only 13tb, so now I regret not getting the 16 because I'm running out of room already and my new computer only has one space for a 3.5 hd.I ordered directly from WD and it was shipped quickly.
I have installed and used many of these drives. Not 1 has been DOA and several have been going over a decade (Including Black HDD). Only problem is that both times I got a warranty replacement (failing smart-but still working) they replaced them with lesser drives. Granted they were close to the end of warranty, but a blue drive is NOT a replacement for an enterprise drive. I haven't had problems with the RMA process and turn around was fast, just not equal replacements.
I have 3 Synology NAS units. The 1513+, the 414 and the 1621+. Over the years I started out with WD Green drives, but had failures and they were slow. Then I moved to WD Reds, which were faster, but also had some failures. Finally I decided to replace them all with WD Gold/Ultrastar in 2016. I have not had a single failure since. NOT ONE! They make a little noise, but if it bothers you then you must be pretty picky. I have a 6 drive NAS in my movie room where we watch movies and it is about 30 feet behind our couch. I haven't ever found it to be distracting. No louder than the full height drives in Dell computers in the 90s.
I am a PC Builder, I bought a lot of [HDD's] ex. (WD Blue, WD Black, Seagate BarraCuda, Seagate IronWolf, Seagate FireCuda) in my experience, this is one of the best [Consumer level HDD] by (price to performance): 1-for the speed: it's a killer; [I GOT AROUND 205 MBps WRITE AND 220 MBps READ], it's almost half SATA SSD speed, Compared to my (WD black 130 MBps write, 135 MBps read) and both of them (WD Black and WD Gold has almost the Same Price, Same RPM [7200]). 2-you will get double cash memory for the same capacity and price compared with other [HDD's] like (WD Black). 3-YOU WILL GET A 5 Years WARRANTI. I recommend this Drive
I tried every which way to have LINUX find GRUB to boot the OS. Absolutely no such luck or is the drive incompatible with LINUX. The drive itself is working fine as a slave, but as soon as you expect it to run as master for LINUX, it does not provide boot information that is needed to start the OS. I tried LINUX MINT (based on UBUNTU) I tried DEBIAN LINUX the original. I installed LINUX MINT several times without as reported failure, including the GRUB install. On reboot, nothing! The boot sector or whatever data might have been written to it, runs right into the digital darkness of HDD space. Some Grub part was written to the drive, but it is very useless since it produces an error "attempt to read or write outside of disk hd0" As far as I am concerned, all data ... MoreI tried every which way to have LINUX find GRUB to boot the OS. Absolutely no such luck or is the drive incompatible with LINUX. The drive itself is working fine as a slave, but as soon as you expect it to run as master for LINUX, it does not provide boot information that is needed to start the OS. I tried LINUX MINT (based on UBUNTU) I tried DEBIAN LINUX the original. I installed LINUX MINT several times without as reported failure, including the GRUB install. On reboot, nothing! The boot sector or whatever data might have been written to it, runs right into the digital darkness of HDD space. Some Grub part was written to the drive, but it is very useless since it produces an error "attempt to read or write outside of disk hd0" As far as I am concerned, all data during install had to go onto this drive, the only one. Why trying to read or write outside the drive e.g. air bubble or? I wound up to take a 500GB from another computer that was running as slave. Installed the LINUX MINT without a single problem. The 1TB GOLD wound up as a slave in previous mentioned computer as storage. It seems more and more to me, that some OS manufacturer pay hardware manufacturer to make it very difficult to get their hardware working with LINUX. Sad, sad, almost like the white house.
The two WD drives replaced two drives in a G-Technologies RAID which was nearly out of space. The replacement was as easy as changing two light bulbs and the unit was easily formatted to the Apple standard. The drives are very quiet and as a part of a thunderbolt system, very quick. Over the years I’ve had a number of WD drives and have always been pleased with the service they have given.
This is my 4th WD Gold Hard Drive and I have no gripe for them so far. I have used almost all major brands hard drives. I have learned in a hard way what hard drive failure leads to. That's why it's imperative to have backup of a backup. I hope WD Gold drives are reliable as they claim. I'll recommend users prefer enterprise class drives consumer drives or performance drives. As of today(May 6, 2020) price for Gold drive 6TB is lesser than 6TB black HDD. Also, they've best MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) figures on the market today. If you ask me whether It's worth the few extra $$$ then definately. I'm a PC enthusiastic but I don't run my system 24/7. As this product is made by humans, it's susceptible to manufacturing default. However, according to my calculation ... MoreThis is my 4th WD Gold Hard Drive and I have no gripe for them so far. I have used almost all major brands hard drives. I have learned in a hard way what hard drive failure leads to. That's why it's imperative to have backup of a backup. I hope WD Gold drives are reliable as they claim. I'll recommend users prefer enterprise class drives consumer drives or performance drives. As of today(May 6, 2020) price for Gold drive 6TB is lesser than 6TB black HDD. Also, they've best MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) figures on the market today. If you ask me whether It's worth the few extra $$$ then definately. I'm a PC enthusiastic but I don't run my system 24/7. As this product is made by humans, it's susceptible to manufacturing default. However, according to my calculation if every thing goes fine, this HDD should last for 15-20 years or at max 30 years for me as my average PC run time is 4.8 hours per day(in the last 6 months). This drive hasn't produced much noise so far nor it get heats up. Literally, it remains much cooler than my Samsung 970 EVO + 2TB NVME. I dumped nearly 2TB of data at a room with a constant ambient temp of 67F and the drive temperature was 98F. However, all these data is as of today and it's been just 2 days. There's a whole life ahead and will update my review. One of the important thing for users is how much user space we get in 6TB of HDD. So, I got 5.45TB of space in a 6TB HDD. For more don't forget to check my review video above. I'm unable to post picture of this HDD as due to some reason, Home Essentials Direct has disabled picture upload and when I contacted them, I got a really weird response as here "We apologize for the inconvenience this may have caused. ? During the COVID-19 situation, we are taking steps to protect the health of our team members. As a result, there are some temporary limitations in how you can review products on Home Essentials Direct. We appreciate your understanding." One image upload option is available, I'll update the images as well.
I like the 5 year warranty as that is important to me. I want more storage space to handle my data and these drives appear to be better than the black caviars and of course offer the larger size and the HE based gas to allow larger sizes. The only problem for desktop computers is they are much noisier than a black caviar drive, but that is the drawback of using a drive meant for a datacenter and not home consumers computers.
