Skip to content

Western Digital · NAS Pro drive · WD122KFBX

WD Red Pro 12TB

A NAS drive for bigger boxes. WD doesn't cap the bay count, and it's rated for 550 TB of reads and writes a year.

Capacity
12 TB
Recording
CMR
Speed
7,200 rpm
Warranty
5 years
Workload
550 TB/yr
Rated for
Any bay count
Failure rate
No failure data

Good for

  • Any size of NAS
  • Busy arrays (550 TB a year)
  • RAID, SHR and ZFS rebuilds
  • 5 years' warranty

Not for

  • A desk or bedroom (7,200 rpm is the louder class)

Updated 27 Oct 2026 · Method 2.0

Who the WD Red Pro 12 TB is for

It earns the extra once you're filling a big box or hammering the array with Plex and backups around the clock, as the 550 TB a year rating leaves plenty of headroom. WD backs it for five years, which is a long time in drive terms. CMR, thankfully. SMR and parity rebuilds don't get on.

Watch out for

It's a 7,200 rpm drive and you'll hear it working.

There's no Backblaze data worth quoting here. WD's datasheet puts it at 34 dB idle and 39 dB seeking. Power draw is 6.1 W idle and 8.8 W working on WD's figures, or 53 kWh a year if it spends the whole year idling. Four of them in SHR or RAID 5 give 36 TB usable, or 32.7 TB once Windows has done its binary maths on it.

Specifications

Each value links to the Western Digital page or datasheet it came from.

WD Red Pro 12TB specifications
Drive type NAS source for Drive type (documents.westerndigital.com, opens in new tab)
Capacity 12 TB source for Capacity (documents.westerndigital.com, opens in new tab)
Spindle speed 7,200 rpm source for Spindle speed (documents.westerndigital.com, opens in new tab)
Recording technology CMR source for Recording technology (documents.westerndigital.com, opens in new tab)
Cache 512 MB source for Cache (documents.westerndigital.com, opens in new tab)
Interface SATA 6Gb/s source for Interface (documents.westerndigital.com, opens in new tab)
Form factor 3.5in source for Form factor (documents.westerndigital.com, opens in new tab)
Max sustained transfer 267 MB/s source for Max sustained transfer (documents.westerndigital.com, opens in new tab)
Workload rating 550 TB/yr source for Workload rating (documents.westerndigital.com, opens in new tab)
MTBF / MTTF 2,000,000 hours source for MTBF / MTTF (documents.westerndigital.com, opens in new tab)
Rated for any number of NAS bays Yes source for Rated for any number of NAS bays (documents.westerndigital.com, opens in new tab)
Warranty 5 years source for Warranty (documents.westerndigital.com, opens in new tab)
Power at idle 6.1 W source for Power at idle (documents.westerndigital.com, opens in new tab)
Power in use 8.8 W source for Power in use (documents.westerndigital.com, opens in new tab)
Noise at idle 34 dB source for Noise at idle (documents.westerndigital.com, opens in new tab)
Noise when seeking 39 dB source for Noise when seeking (documents.westerndigital.com, opens in new tab)

Sources: documents.westerndigital.com