12TB WD Gold 3.5in SATA HDD (7200rpm)

12TB WD Gold Enterprise 3.5-Inch SATA Hard Drive

An enterprise-class 12TB hard drive built for continuous 24/7 operation and heavy read-write workloads.

The WD Gold 12TB (model WD121KRYZ) is Western Digital’s enterprise SATA hard drive, designed for servers, RAID arrays, NAS units and workstations that need a large amount of dependable storage. Unlike a desktop drive, it is rated for round-the-clock use and a workload of up to 550TB transferred per year, so it suits businesses and demanding home users who keep drives busy with backups, archives, virtual machines or large media libraries. Punch can fit it in a new workstation or server build as a bulk data drive alongside a fast NVMe boot SSD.

Performance

The drive spins at 7200rpm and pairs a 256MB cache with a SATA 6Gb/s interface, giving a maximum sustained transfer rate of 255MB/s. That is enough to keep up with multi-stream backups, media ingest and file serving across a busy network. Western Digital’s Rotational Vibration Safeguard uses dual sensors to counteract vibration from neighbouring drives, which helps maintain throughput when the drive is installed in a multi-bay chassis.

Reliability and endurance

The 12TB model is a helium-sealed design, which lowers turbulence and power draw compared with an air-filled drive of the same capacity. Western Digital quotes a projected 2.5 million hours MTBF, an annualised failure rate of 0.44 per cent and an operating temperature range of 5 to 60 degrees C. Average power draw is 6.9W when operating and 5.0W at idle, and the drive is rated at 20dBA idle and 36dBA seeking. It is backed by a five-year limited warranty, which is longer than the cover offered on most desktop hard drives.

Compatibility

As a standard 3.5-inch SATA drive it fits any desktop, workstation or server chassis with a free 3.5-inch bay, and connects to any SATA 6Gb/s port on a motherboard or host bus adapter. It uses 512e sector formatting and has been validated by Western Digital in a range of RAID controllers and enterprise storage systems.

Ideal for

• Small business servers, NAS units and RAID arrays that run 24/7
• Workstations that need large, reliable bulk storage for project files and archives
• Backup targets and home servers with heavy, continuous workloads

Specifications

• Model number: WD121KRYZ
• Capacity: 12TB
• Form factor: 3.5-inch
• Interface: SATA 6Gb/s
• Drive technology: Helium-sealed, CMR recording
• Sector format: 512e
• Sustained transfer rate: up to 255MB/s
• Spindle speed: 7200rpm
• Cache: 256MB
• Workload rating: 550TB/year
• MTBF: 2.5 million hours (projected)
• Annualised failure rate: 0.44%
• Power: 6.9W operating, 5.0W idle
• Acoustics: 20dBA idle, 36dBA seek
• Operating temperature: 5 to 60 degrees C
• Dimensions: 147.0 x 101.6 x 26.1mm
• Weight: 0.66kg
• Warranty: 5-year limited