Western Digital Internal Use

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Revision as of 01:22, 4 April 2021 by aew>TheDragonFire123 (Fix typo)

Western Digital Internal Use is a hard drive family created by Western Digital. The family is designed only for use within external USB enclosures sealed at the factory and sold to retail, though many, especially the 3.5" drives, are popularly targeted for "shucking" for use in desktops or NASes. The 3.5" sizes are also unofficially known as Western Digital White Label drives within the shucking community, after the eponymous white label, a significant departure to the colourful labels normally used by retail and OEM WD drives.

Although any drive with a customer code of 11 or 59 is usually labelled as a Internal Use drive, they shall not be classified as such on this wiki if the drive model, without its 11 or 59 customer code, would be part of any other family. For example, a WD10SPZX-11Z10T0, despite being labelled as an Internal Use drive, would not qualify for this family, as the WD10SPZX-21Z10T0, with a different customer code, does not carry an Internal Use label.

History

The Western Digital Internal Use drives were introduced in 2018, as part of Western Digital's rebranding using the new logo. Previously, all Western Digital Internal Use models were either labelled as Blue, or not labelled in any colour at all.

Current products

3.5" drives

7,200 RPM 1.6-1.67 TB/platter CMR

These drives report as spinning at 5,400 RPM in ATA_IDENTIFY responses, despite actually spinning at 7,200 RPM. Many of these drives will require covering over the 3.3V third pin to prevent unintentional activation of SATA 3.3's Power Disable (PWDIS).

5,400 RPM 2 TB/platter SMR

2.5" drives

5,400 RPM 1 TB/platter SMR

Historic models

3.5" drives

7,200 RPM 1.14-1.43 TB/platter helium CMR

These drives report as spinning at 5,400 RPM in ATA_IDENTIFY responses, despite actually spinning at 7,200 RPM. Many of these drives will require covering over the 3.3V third pin to prevent unintentional activation of SATA 3.3's Power Disable (PWDIS). Strangely, the EZAZ-suffix models use the Blue business unit letter, Z.

5,400 RPM 1.33 TB/platter CMR

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