WD Black Game Drive
A little shipping container for your game data and media.
I say ‘shipping container’, because the rugged industrial style makes it look like one. Functionally that’s also what it does, and as far as portable external storage goes, as WD and Seagate well know – the marketing battleground is all about styling with these things.
WD has five new drives marketed as game storage for PC, PS4 and Xbox One, varying in capacity and whether it uses an SSD or HDD. The model with the highest capacity is the 12TB WD Black D10, and we’re testing the 8TB model here. We chose to look at the D10 because unlike the rest of the range, this one has active cooling so that makes it ever so slightly more interesting that the usual breed. It makes sense to cool a drive like this. At these massive capacities on a console users are likely to want to stream media as well as store games and saves, so the drive is going to spend more time spinning and reading – though, really, hard drives have been handling that without cooling for decades.
That said, the drive is a 7200RPM model and that means it does get hot. In testing the plastic shell warmed slightly to the touch, but it’s not flush with the drive itself, and there’s an abundant air gap between the drive and chassis that aids air circulation and, thus, keeps the outside cool. 7200RPM drives have a reputation for failing sooner than 5400RPM ones, and while I’m certainly not suggesting this one is particularly susceptible, these drives do live longer when they’re kept cool. It’s covered by a three year warranty.
Having a relatively fast drive means performance is relatively decent. WD claim speeds of up to 250MB/s, and in our testing we saw read and write speeds just shy of that, at 245MB/s. Connectivity is via USB Type-A, and that interface’s 5GB/s throughput is well in excess of the drive’s maximum performance, so that’s not a bottleneck. Two USB Type-A ports are provided as useful charging ports, delivering 7.5W. An external power brick is required, and it’s small enough to hide away keeping your gaming area clean.
Value is the big issue here, though. At around $380 it offers nothing that nongaming-branded external portable drives can’t handle. Indeed, you can buy a functionally identical 8TB 7200RPM WD My Book Desktop drive for just $250 and effectively have the same capacity and performance for $130 less, from the same company. It’s a ridiculously excessive premium that WD, and Seagate too, add... because gaming.
So, it all boils down to styling, then, and that this is a ‘gaming’ device, which some may be ignorantly (and innocently) led to believe is the only option. Savvy console owners have external storage scoped and know what their choices are. As far as value goes, this shouldn’t be one of them.
Verdict
Good looks, decent performance from an actively cooled 7200RPM HDD, but the value is shockingly bad.
“At around $380 is offers nothing that non-gaming-branded external portable drives can’t handle. ”