Is this a nas drive or not

[Enquiries]

I just shucked a 12tb wd element drive and got a WD120EDGZ I want to confirm if this is a red drive or not. some google and ai chats have me worried its not. I can find a use for it if its not a nas drive. Just first time I have got a non nas drive in a wd element .
Thanks for your advice
Chris

[ed]

Thanks for the message. The WD120EDGZ you found inside that Elements enclosure is not a WD Red model. It is one of WD’s white label drives that they often use in external units. These drives are usually very close to the Red family in terms of hardware, but they do not carry the official NAS branding or warranty classification.

The good news is that the EDGZ models behave much like Red Plus in normal use. They support typical NAS workloads and have a similar performance profile. Plenty of people run them in multi bay systems without issues. The main differences are firmware tuning and warranty terms, not the underlying mechanics.

So you can safely use it in a NAS if you want, or assign it to secondary storage or backup. If you want a formally supported WD Red, you would look for model numbers like WD120EFGX or WD120EFBX, but the white label EDGZ is still a solid drive.