Western Digital · Data-centre drive · WUH721414ALE6L4
WD Ultrastar DC HC530 14TB
An enterprise drive. Don't let that put you off, as it's the same 3.5in SATA as a NAS drive and fits the same bays.
- Capacity
- 14 TB
- Recording
- CMR
- Speed
- 7,200 rpm
- Warranty
- 5 years
- Workload
- 550 TB/yr
- Failure rate
- AFR 0.54% low
Recommended inRunner-up: Best hard drive for a Plex server
Good for
- Busy arrays (550 TB a year)
- Big media libraries
- RAID, SHR and ZFS rebuilds
- 5 years' warranty
- A strong Backblaze record
Not for
- A desk or bedroom (7,200 rpm is the louder class)
Updated 27 Oct 2026 · Method 2.0
Should you buy the WD Ultrastar DC HC530 14 TB?
It's at home in a rack or a garage, where 7,200 rpm of spinning rust can whirr away all day without bothering anyone. WD backs it for five years, which is a long time in drive terms. Its Backblaze record's good too, with 0.54% AFR across 46,924 drive-years and the whole interval below the 1.38% median for the drives they report. It's CMR, which is what you want anywhere near a RAID or ZFS rebuild.
Watch out for
At 7,200 rpm it's from the louder, warmer class. Fine in a cupboard, less fun on a desk.
On paper it makes 20 dB at idle and 36 dB seeking. WD lists 5.5 W at idle and 6 W working, which comes to 48 kWh a year for a drive that idles around the clock. Four of them in SHR or RAID 5 give 42 TB usable, or 38.2 TB once Windows has done its binary maths on it.
Specifications
Each value links to the Western Digital page or datasheet it came from.
Sources: documents.westerndigital.com
Failure rate
Backblaze runs 8,548 of these (WDC WUH721414ALE6L4) in its data centres, and over 46,924 drive-years 254 have failed, an annualised failure rate of 0.54%. The 95% interval runs from 0.48% to 0.61%, comfortably under the 1.38% median for the drive models they report.
Median lifetime AFR across Backblaze drive models: 1.38%
Source: Backblaze Drive Stats, lifetime to Q2 2026. Bear in mind that's data-centre use, which is a lot harder on a drive than a home NAS will ever be.