I purchased a total of six WD Red Pro 16TB drives. I have had two of the six fail within two weeks of receiving them. That is a failure rate of 33%. I sent one back on May 5, 2026. UPS shows it was delivered on May 7, 2026. WD shows it was received on May 15, 2026. The second one I purchased from WD on May 6, 2026 and received it on about May 10, 2026. The second one failed on about May 21, 2026. I shipped the disk on May 26, 2026 and UPS reported it was delivered today May 28, 2026. Now WD has the two disks ($1000+ US) in hand and I have a NAS running in a critical state because one disk and the backup disk failed. What is the best way to get WD to understand this situation and send the replacement disks or at least refund my purchase price on the second disk? At least I could purchase another disk from another party and get my NAS out of its critical state.
Warranty Replacement Number: 2607876 continues in status**:** Received / Processing with no change for 15 business days (23 calendar days).
Warranty Replacement Number: 2624890 continues in status**:** Pending Return with no change for 7 business days (10 calendar days) after UPS delivered the disk.
Finally, although there has been over 25 views of this post, nobody has suggested an effective means to get these warranty returns replaced in reasonable time frames. What is it that I do not know that I wish I did? 
Seven more calendar days (five business days) have passed since the last update I provided. There was a tiny bit of progress. On June 10, 2026, Western digital notes having received the drive of WRN 2624890 10 business days (14 calendar days) after UPS delivered the disk to Western Digital. Now the status on these two disks is:
Warranty Replacement Number: 2607876 continues in status***** Received / Processing with no change for 20 business days (30 calendar days).
Warranty Replacement Number: 2624890 continues in status***** Received / Processing with no change for 12 business days (17 calendar days) after UPS delivered the disk.
Can anyone explain why when I purchased a new disk from Western Digital, it shipped two days from the order, but it and another disk take so long to be replaced when they failed almost immediately after purchase?
Seven more calendar days (five business days) have passed since the last update I provided. Now the status on these two disks is:
Warranty Replacement Number: 2607876 continues in status***** Received / Processing with no change for 25 business days (37 calendar days).
Warranty Replacement Number: 2624890 continues in status***** Received / Processing with no change for 17 business days (24 calendar days) after UPS delivered the disk.
Seven more calendar days (five business days) have passed since the last update I provided. Some good news. the second WRN (2624890) was returned to me on June 26, 2026. Now the status on these two WRN disks is:
Warranty Replacement Number: 2607876 continues in status***** Received / Processing with no change for 30 business days (42 calendar days).
Warranty Replacement Number: 2624890 is in status***** Complete after no change for 18 business days (29 calendar days) after UPS delivered the disk to WD. It took five business days for the disk to be shipped and delivered to me once I received the email that a replacement had shipped.
WD probably has one person handling RMA returns. This is due to most disks being reliable enough to get part warranties easily.
Vegan, thank you for your reply and thoughts. You are the only person who did and I appreciate the time you took to respond.
I think we disagree on what is appropriate service. I purchased six Red Pro 16TB disks in total from different retailers within a couple weeks of calendar time. One of those retailers was WD. One of the disks from another vendor (not WD) would not initialize in the NAS. Another of those disks was from WD and it failed after two weeks of operation in the NAS. That is a 33% failure rate. The annualized failure rate (AFR) in the industry for 16TB drives according to CoPilot ranges from 0.01% to 0.6%. Overall, the AFR for large drives is 1.3% to 1.6%. The failure rate that I experienced is 2,063% higher than industry averages. I do not think that constitutes “being reliable enough” by any reasonable standard.
It seems like a company whose stock price has increased from about $66 per share to about $540 per share over the past year might need more than one person handling RMA returns for customers who experience astronomical failure rates.
Not sure but evidently the AI bubble is gobbling up hard disks for storage requirements as SSD prices go through the roof. WIth limited numbers of factories making hard disks the supply lines cannot keep up.
Yes, I agree with you. The competition for resources currently is one of the reasons the price for these drives has increased significantly during the past year. It’s also the reason why WD’s market cap is about 10-times higher now than one year ago.
I cannot check the disks I sent back to WD, but the other four (4) were manufactured during the first week of February in 2025. That was 18 months ago. Resources were starting to tighten then, but I imagine the parts were purchased a few months before that. Therefore, arguments about market conditions today seem uncorrelated.
Even so, limited resources or high demand are never reasons to compromise on quality (low AFR) nor on outstanding service. Statistically speaking, I should have been able to purchase 100 of these disks and experienced two (2) or fewer failures over their expected service life. I purchased six (6) and two (2) of them failed almost immediately. That is bad. However, it is worse to have those disks take months to repair/replace under warranty.
Remember, when I ordered the disk from WD, my order and money were taken immediately. The disk shipped within a couple of days of placing the order. The optics of that (revenue) compared to the optics of the warranty replacement (liability) should be instructive to a discerning current or would-be customer.
Even though we may disagree on some things, I appreciate your thoughts and feedback. Keep it coming.
Seven more calendar days (five business days) have passed since the last update I provided. Now the status on the outstanding WRN disk is:
Warranty Replacement Number: 2607876 continues in status***** Received / Processing with no change for 35 business days (49 calendar days).
Seven more calendar days (five business days) have passed since my last update. The status on the outstanding WRN disk remains:
Warranty Replacement Number: 2607876 continues in status***** Received / Processing with no change for 40 business days (56 calendar days).
Seven more calendar days (five business days) have passed since my last update. The status on the outstanding WRN disk remains:
Warranty Replacement Number: 2607876 continues in status***** Received / Processing with no change for 45 business days (62 calendar days).
Another seven calendar days (five business days) have passed since my last update. The status on the outstanding WRN disk remains:
Warranty Replacement Number: 2607876 continues in status***** Received / Processing with no change for 50 business days (69 calendar days).
shocking email from WD
Please allow me to inform you that the replacement drive corresponding to Model Number: WD102KRYZ is currently not available in our inventory. Due to this stock unavailability, we are unable to process the replacement request for your drive.
Yes, shocking!
Note that there are 73 for sale on the Western Digital website when I just checked (see: 10TB WD Gold Enterprise Class Hard Drive | WD). The optics are very instructive.
Note that for the disk I am waiting for, there are 1000 for sale on the Western Digital website when I just checked (see: 16TB WD Red Pro NAS Hard Drive | WD). The optics are very instructive indeed.
Did you ever get your replacement? I opened an RMA for a Red Pro drive and selected the option to pay a deposit to have them ship me a new drive first. They never did ship me anything. I have shipped back the broken drive, UPS shows they’ve received it, and I uploaded the proof of delivery to my RMA status, but it still says pending delivery.
cdef, yes, as noted in this thread for one of the two disks I sent under warranty, WD sent a replacement 29 days after I sent it in. The other one is still in the received/processing state after more than 69 days. Every indication is that eventually WD will replace the other disk. The question is how long it will take to complete that replacement. I hope it is not much longer but based on other reports it will be many more months. I have argued that this is well below the quality standard that led me to choose WD HDDs. My eyes are open now, without even mentioning paying for new HDDs that quickly turned into refurbished HDDs. I would have rather paid the refurbished HDD price for those disks!
Another seven calendar days (five business days) have passed since my last update. The status on the outstanding WRN disk remains:
Warranty Replacement Number: 2607876 continues in status***** Received / Processing with no change for 55 business days (76 calendar days).
In a similar boat. Started an RMA on a 12tb drive on June 20th. I have yet to get it back. The auto email / possible AI email just states that they are having RMA system issues and inventory issues. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s weeks if not months before I get a replacement
Probably going to avoid WD drives like the plague going forward
Steven, the Western Digital site shows 573 12TB Red Pro disks available for sale and therefore, could partially be used to deal with all kinds of shortages. WD appears to be making a choice between selling a disk for $645 of revenue and replacing a disk for $0 of revenue. One might understandably look to other brands and consider WD disks a last resort in conditions where WD warranty repair and replacement is bottom tier priority and service.
