WD Expands Its Performance Level Desktop Hard Drives to 6 TB Capacity

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WD®, a Western Digital company and a world leader in hard drives, today announced the expansion of its award-winning WD Black™ line of performance hard drives up to 6 TB capacity. Shipping now, the 3.5-inch, 7200 RPM drive is the perfect solution for gamers and professionals in need of high-performance desktop systems and workstations.

WD Black hard drives combine 7200 RPM spin speed, 128 MB cache, dual stage actuator technology, SATA 6 gigabits per second (Gb/s) interface, and an integrated dual processor to deliver ultimate performance in a maximum-capacity drive. The WD Black 6TB is up to 29% faster than the previous WD Black 4TB version in maximum data rate throughput and 10% faster in PCMark Vantage.
 
I like the Black drives, but they are really pricey and kinda loud.

I went with a 4TB Black a few months ago to replace a 2TB Green, needed more space and wanted a little more performance,
WD_4TB_Black_Crystal_Disk_Mark.jpg
 
Hmm, not sure what I'd want to use the 6tb "black" version of this drive for.

Used plenty of them in the past, but nowadays stuff I use does on SSD, and the rest goes on the nas drives.

Times are a changing...
 
Yakk said:
Hmm, not sure what I'd want to use the 6tb "black" version of this drive for.

Used plenty of them in the past, but nowadays stuff I use does on SSD, and the rest goes on the nas drives.

Times are a changing...
Click to expand...

I use mine for Steam games that I don't play often but want to be able to play when I want.
 
Big drives are becoming a big problem, we are practically forced to have RAID since the amount of potential datalose is ridiculous ( and you don't back up the type of data you need 6TB for in your house)
 
Do people even care about mechanical hard drive performance anymore? That is the SSD's role now. WD can make a 10 TB drive if they want to impress me.
 
Heck I would even take a really slow drive for noise, heat, and durability issues. Like a 4200 RPM drive. As long as they can still saturate Gigabit Network (~110MB/s), then I am happy. And since you will probably have several of them in RAID, they don't even have to hit 110MB/s individually.

Also, that write 4K on that 4TB HDD is fairly impressive (for a platter).
WD_4TB_Black_Crystal_Disk_Mark.jpg
 
T_A said:
Big drives are becoming a big problem, we are practically forced to have RAID since the amount of potential datalose is ridiculous ( and you don't back up the type of data you need 6TB for in your house)
Click to expand...

I don't have use/have raid since all the drives I have were purchased over time and upgraded as I needed more space.
They started out as 250GB drives a number of years ago,
drives-1-05.jpg


and I just kept upgrading to what I have in the current machine. I do have important stuff copied across 2 or more drives as well as on externals, but the majority of it is just media that isn't important and can be acquired quite easily
3770k-drives-and-space.jpg
 
trparky said:
Great... so when the big drive dies all you want to do is weep.
Click to expand...


People have been saying this since 100MB zipdrives every time a new drive size comes out. You'll have to be the slightest bit more original.
 
DPI said:
People have been saying this since 100MB zipdrives every time a new drive size comes out. You'll have to be the slightest bit more original.
Click to expand...

I used to play games off a ZIP drive...not backup to the ZIP, but actually load from the ZIP. Those things were magical back then.
 
T_A said:
Big drives are becoming a big problem, we are practically forced to have RAID since the amount of potential datalose is ridiculous ( and you don't back up the type of data you need 6TB for in your house)
Click to expand...

I learned this the hard way, but if the data is important, the only safe method is to back it up externally, use a NAS or even an external drive or something. When my Corsair PSU died, it took all my drive along with it. So it didn't matter if I had multiple drives or even if I RAID them. Thankfully I did kept a copy of my very important documents on a DVD-R, but I realized that it didnt matter as much if I put all my eggs in one basket or not, as some failures could take them all out.
 
westrock2000 said:
I used to play games off a ZIP drive...not backup to the ZIP, but actually load from the ZIP. Those things were magical back then.
Click to expand...

I still have some Zip disks laying around somewhere, but no drive to read them.
 
trparky said:
Great... so when the big drive dies all you want to do is weep.
Click to expand...


People have been saying this since 1Gb drives were considered big....regardless what size drive your using, if its important stuff , back it up.




DPI said:
People have been saying this since 100MB zipdrives every time a new drive size comes out. You'll have to be the slightest bit more original.
Click to expand...

^^^EDIT: I'm too slow....^^^
 
Zepher said:
I don't have use/have raid since all the drives I have were purchased over time and upgraded as I needed more space.
They started out as 250GB drives a number of years ago,
drives-1-05.jpg


and I just kept upgrading to what I have in the current machine. I do have important stuff copied across 2 or more drives as well as on externals, but the majority of it is just media that isn't important and can be acquired quite easily
3770k-drives-and-space.jpg
Click to expand...

I gotta be honest, that looks like an organizational cluster%&#@. I used to do the add drives as you go thing, I finally sucked it up and put in a Raid 10 NAS. lol
 
Draxanoth said:
I gotta be honest, that looks like an organizational cluster%&#@. I used to do the add drives as you go thing, I finally sucked it up and put in a Raid 10 NAS. lol
Click to expand...

Yep, it is a pain in the ass. Most of the drives have one type of media on them, but the rest have a mix of data and I don't have it organized that well, so sometimes I'll be searching for something and never find it.
I'd like to have a Raid 5 setup.
 
Megalith said:
Do people even care about mechanical hard drive performance anymore? That is the SSD's role now. WD can make a 10 TB drive if they want to impress me.
Click to expand...

It matters. It's not as important with storage drives and backup drives, though everything can benefit from increased sequential performance of course. Drives in RAID arrays and anything with many smaller files like photos and music benefit from the faster access times of the 7200rpm drives. A lot of the new NAS devices are rolling out with quad gigabit and thanks to todays faster drives it doesn't take many in RAID to fully saturate it.
 
drescherjm said:
That is why you backup your valuable data. Remember RAID is not a backup so if you RAID make sure you also backup.
Click to expand...

RAID1 acts as a backup, unless I missing something. the same files on 2 HDDs, and you get ~2x the read speed (if you use 2 HDDs).

sure, you dont get an image or anything fancy, but its easy enough to mine the important files off the remaining HDD if the other dies.

automatic data redundancy + increased read speeds? whats not to love?
 
cinnamonandgravy said:
RAID1 acts as a backup, unless I missing something. the same files on 2 HDDs, and you get ~2x the read speed (if you use 2 HDDs).

sure, you dont get an image or anything fancy, but its easy enough to mine the important files off the remaining HDD if the other dies.

automatic data redundancy + increased read speeds? whats not to love?
Click to expand...

Yes correct, but it's not a real backup. If anything hoses the 1st drive such as corruption/virus/deletion/etc your mirrored data is equally hosed.
 
This is a nice addition, and the price is not that bad at all IMO. When Seagate first brought the 6TB drive to market it was $300 and the WD Green was $290.

I have a 6TB WD Green and I can't really game from it, so I bought a much bigger SSD to hold all my games. With the Black I could keep my 1-2 main games on the SSD and keep the rest on the HDD.
 
Yes, it's nice to see WD rolling these out, keeping the trend going.
 
Zepher said:
I still have some Zip disks laying around somewhere, but no drive to read them.
Click to expand...
I have one that's never been opened, and some disks that someone gave me. Never had one in any of my PCs though. I used an LS120 back then.
 
Blacks were the fastest OS mechanical there for awhile but are rather deemed obsolete now with SSD for boot and NAS drives for archive that are quiet and run cooler.

I still have 4 black 500 drives that are still rock solid but are slow not compared to current drives.
 
black drives still have a usage in large content creation workstations, particular raid 0 and 10. where ssds still have to catch up on size.
 
well i too have a nas, but even then i think 1 single hdd paired a ssd is at least the bare minimum for a desktop use.

i'm using

1 x samsung 850 pro 512gb
1 x hgst ultrastar 4tb 7k4000


from what i saw, there weren't any cheap reliable hdds in the 6tb range. there were the hgst deskstar nas models but their only suitable for nas only :/
 
Moogle Stiltzkin said:
well i too have a nas, but even then i think 1 single hdd paired a ssd is at least the bare minimum for a desktop use.
Click to expand...

Same here, NAS for everything but the main rig has SSD's and a single HDD for downloads. Everything needs to be spick and span before it hits the NAS. :)
 
Sizes are rising admirably but the data transfer rates are nowhere near matching them.
No matter what size RAID array you are using, every single drive takes the same amount of time to backup or restore as a single drive. Replacing a much larger drive isnt a fast process.
These advance sizes will require more downtime.
 
cinnamonandgravy said:
RAID1 acts as a backup, unless I missing something. the same files on 2 HDDs, and you get ~2x the read speed (if you use 2 HDDs).

sure, you dont get an image or anything fancy, but its easy enough to mine the important files off the remaining HDD if the other dies.

automatic data redundancy + increased read speeds? whats not to love?
Click to expand...

Its a backup from mechanical failure. But it doesn't protect you from ANY other type of data loss. Meaning accidently deleting something.
 
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