WD Black 6TB Performance Hard Drive - 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 256 MB Cache, 3.5" - WD6003FZBX
- Desktop performance hard drive
- Performance storage available in up to 6TB capacities
- 2X DRAM cache up to 256 MB for faster read operations
- Designed for creative professionals, gamers and system builders
- 5-year manufacturer's limited warranty
Alejandro Suez
Video Review of Sound and Speed Test (170MB/s)! (Review Updated)
1:10 0:00 This video is not intended for all audiences. What date were you born? JanuaryFebruaryMarchAprilMayJuneJulyAugustSeptemberOctoberNovemberDecember12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031201920182017201620152014201320122011201020092008200720062005200420032002200120001999199819971996199519941993199219911990198919881987198619851984198319821981198019791978197719761975197419731972197119701969196819671966196519641963196219611960195919581957195619551954195319521951195019491948194719461945194419431942194119401939193819371936193519341933193219311930192919281927192619251924192319221921192019191918191719161915191419131912191119101909190819071906190519041903190219011900 Submit Adobe Flash Player is required to watch this video. Install Flash Player I decided to replace my primary drive in my Windows 7 PC with a 500GB SSD. I had two 1TB factory hard drives currently in my machine and I was using the SSD as my C Drive. To go along with the SSD, I wanted to replace my old factory drives with a single 2TB drive so that I had equivalent space. I had recently purchased two Seagate 2TB Drives (ST2000DM001 - Fast 2 Platter Version) for external backups and media drives. They were fine, but I was looking for a more reliable drive for my internal drive that would get a lot more use. I decided on the WD Black 2TB and opted for the newest WD2003FZEX model. Upon reading several reviews, it seemed like the drive was fast and overall a good drive, but there was a question of how noisy the drive was. I decided to test out the drive in a USB 3.0 Docking Station to see how fast and how loud it was. Attached to this review is a video of my results. In the video, I am running a speed test and recording the sound with my iPhone 5 to see how loud the drive is. During the speed test, which has sequential and random tests, I move the phone closer to the drive to be able to hear the sound better. At the end of the video, I show two CrystalDiskMark speed tests. The test on the left is of the Seagate 2TB Drive and the test on the right is of the WD Black 2TB Drive. Speed Test Results - As you can see from the video, the speed of the WD Black Drive (test on the right) is pretty amazing with results of 170MB/s from a USB 3.0 Hard Drive Dock using a 500MB test size. When compared to the cheaper Seagate Drive (test on the left with a respectable 148MB/s), the speed is significantly faster, so you really get what you pay for in this case. Sound Test Results - I didn't experience any abnormally loud sounds from the drive sitting right on my desk. You could hear it, but it was not any louder than the any other drives that I have used. When I get close to the hard drive with my phone, it gets a lot louder as you would expect, but I am essentially about 1 inch from the drive at that point. Once I put this drive into my computer case, I doubt I will hear it at all. In my opinion, while this drive isn't silent, it is no louder than any other 7200 RPM drives that I have used, and the sound is more than acceptable for the extremely fast speeds. Overall, I am extremely impressed with this drive based on my initial tests. The speed is amazing and the sound is just fine. That, along with the 5 year warranty, makes this drive worth the extra money in my opinion for a primary drive that will get a lot of use. As with all hard drives, reliability and longevity is a concern, so I will update this review as I continue to use the drive. ========================= UPDATE (12/27/2013): So after Christmas, I finally got around to doing my system reconfiguration, which consisted of replacing my two factory installed Seagate 1TB hard drives with a Crucial M500 480GB SSD and this WD Black 2TB WD2003FZEX Hard Drive. Hardware installation was a snap. After I installed the drives and installed Windows 7 via an HP Recovery Disc, I copied all of my media and data to the WD Black drive and got really fast speeds and no problems when transferring well over a terabyte of data. I have an older HP Elite PC with an SATA 3GB/s interface, so I am not getting the fastest speeds, but a speed test of the WD Black Drive shows 137MB/s while installed internally. The previous test was via USB 3.0 which apparently has a faster throughput on my machine. Just to give you an idea of the speed increase that I am experiencing, my old factory installed Seagate drives had speed test results in the 80-90MB/s range, so I'm easily getting a 50-60% speed increase. On top of that, my Crucial SSD is showing 270MB/s speeds and 30 second Windows 7 reboots. Pretty amazing. In addition, the sound of the hard drive seems completely normal to me now that it is installed in my computer case. If you are interested in injecting some new life in an older Windows 7 PC, I highly recommend this combination of SSD and WD Black drives. One tip that took me about 3 hours and a lot of pain and suffering to figure out. If you use a factory recovery disc to install your operating system onto your new hard drive and after install, you can't get Windows Update or Microsoft Security Essentials to work, you may need to update your hard drive controller driver like I did. I searched high and low to figure out how to fix this and even did a Windows 7 reinstall. There were a ton of people having the same problem and after several frustrating hours, I figured out that I needed to update my Intel Rapid Storage Technology drivers. Five minutes later, everything is working perfectly. What a huge waste of time. So if you are having problems like I did, give that a try and hopefully save yourself some headaches. Long story short, this is a great drive so far and I am extremely happy with its performance and pairing it with an SSD. Highly Recommended! ========================= UPDATE (01/26/2014): One month using this setup and I love it. The WD Black drive is a great workhorse drive that I do most of my saving to while my Windows 7 OS runs off of the Crucial SSD. Everything is really fast and reboots that used to be a chore are no hassle at all anymore. I wish I would have done this a long time ago, but now that SSD prices are dropping, I would do it again in a heartbeat. If you are looking for a nice boost of speed, I recommend getting a good SSD and pairing it with this WD Black Hard Drive. Just make sure to backup, backup, backup. While these hard drives are great so far, I trust no hard drive and have redundant backups locally on an always attached USB 3.0 Hard Drive Docking Station, plus a second copy that I update occasionally in a fire safe, and an Online Backup solution using CrashPlan. ========================= UPDATE (05/08/2014): I have now been using this SSD with WD Black Drive configuration for about four months now and everything is still working perfectly. The speeds continue to be great and I have had no reliability issues with either drive. I churn Terabytes of media files through this WD Black Drive and it handles everything without a hitch. It really makes a great workhorse drive to combine with an SSD. I really love the setup and I doubt I would ever go back to a non-SSD configuration ever again, especially considering the continual price declines of SSD's. It is still early in the life of the drives, but so far, so good. Still Highly Recommended! ========================= UPDATE (11/08/2014): Just a quick update. I have been using this 2TB WD Black Drive and this setup with the SSD for 10 months now and everything is still working perfectly. No complaints and still loving it.
Lilia Soriano Castillo
Solid and working well, as expected for a WD 3.5" drive
I recently lost a PC, and am going through a technology upgrade cycle, and wanting to have data redundancy and convenient clones of hard drives to test under various scenarios (different PC's, docks, cloning hardware and software, OS's, etc.) So, I recently bought four of these (One from Amazon, and three from another PC vendor). All four worked as expected right out of the box, taking nearly a 1 TB of Windows 7 OS and user data from other PC's via various drive cloning processes, and then showing up as expected and letting me acess and update the data just fine. The drives seem to run reasonably cool, and are fairly quiet (considering I'm running them in external open SATA docks for now), and the speed is fine. Just what I'd expect from a modern WD drive. I don't take chances with my data, so am happy to pay the premium for the WD black technology and reputation vs., say the WD blue. I can't report on reliability/durability yet, since I've had these drives less than a week. If I have problems worth noting, I'll plan to post updates. In my experience (from memory), over the past 20+ years, I've had a LOT of experience with roughly 30 WD drives. All consumer drives, size ranging from about a GB to 4 TB. I've had only two problems. One was completely my fault. Back in the day when they sealed the drives with some kind of rubber gasket, I tore a small section of that removing a drive from a desktop case the first time. (Not a HW guy -- didn't know what I was doing). That drive crashed in a few days -- which again was COMPLETELY my fault as air (with hair, dust, etc) got in there for awhile. I had another drive start making noises and refusing to accept a full hard drive clone via Partition Magic version 8.X -- probably in the early 2000's. Again, not wanting to fool around with my data, I quit using that drive. The main reason I've stuck with WD is the drives seem to be very solid and perform consistently. I've use lots of both bare OEM and full retail kit WD drives, depending on prices/convenience.
Alicia Flickinger
Super fast HDD, easy to install in PS4. Night and day difference between stock hard drive.
I replaced this HDD to upgrade the stock HDD in my PS4. Easy to install. PS4 had no problem initializing and formatting the drive. PS4 was up and running within 10 mins. As a tip, make sure you download the large 900mb PS update file, if you miss that step the HDD will NOT initialize or format. Performance: The drive seems to be performing wonderfully. The PS4 is not over heating, more than normal. What I love I'd that games, installs, and loading times are shortened. This is due the enhanced performance of the drive over the stock PS4 drive. Recommend this high speed drive to anyone seeking to get more space for their PS4...or laptop, since it doesn't fit laptops as well.
Andy M Johnstone
So far, so good! Improved speed!
Being a Dell owner for more than 14 years, when that machine finally died, I bought a brand new Dell Inspiron 5758 in November 2015. The hard drive crashed in March 2016 under warranty, and then the Dell warranty replacement crashed in September 2016. At that point, I bought two stock Seagate basic drives at a local electronics store -- one to use and one to keep on hand -- and the first crashed in December 2016. The second of the two has been running for 7 months, but has gotten sluggish and we found drive errors (bad sectors) last week. At the time of the December 2016 crash, I purchased the WD Black as our backup replacement drive. I installed it yesterday, and the speed is noticeably better.than both the Dell drives (which I believe were Seagate) and the store-bought Seagate drives. Granted, the specs are better and it *should* be better than both of those drives, but some reviewers are saying it's not and/or not a noticeable difference. For those wondering "what the heck are they doing that their hard drives keep crashing?!" ... this laptop sits on a desk all day. It may be taken to a client's office once every few months. It runs Windows 7 and MS Office, Adobe, and Corel programs mostly. It runs maybe 12 hours most days, but it doesn't overheat. No harsh treatment and not even any gaming. We run "checkup" programs regularly. Dell claims it's fine and can't/won't tell us why it keeps crashing. We backup files (robocopy) to our own cloud (NAS) and a WD external drive daily and run a system image on the first of every month. FYI: If a system image won't finish, it could be a sign of bad sectors -- run chkdsk [at your own risk] to confirm your file and drive integrity is in good order. If your system is running slow, you should defrag and run chkdsk (which really should be run regularly), as well. It's only been 24 hours, but so far, we're pleased with the speed. We'll check back in and let you know how many months we get out of this one. :)
Robbie Martinazzi
Nearly As Fast as Desktop Drive, Faster Than Older Model
This is a very good hard drive, for this size and form factor. I was curious what speeds it got in read/write and could not find any benchmarks out there, so decided to run my own. First though, there are a few things about hard drive speeds: in general, 7200 rpm is faster than 5400 rpm drives, and larger drives tend to be faster than smaller drives (1tb faster than 500gb, all else equal) and desktop drives (3.5") tend to be faster than notebook drives (2.5"). However, as I'll show, this is very fast for a notebook drive. It is nearly as fast as my 1TB 7200 RPM 3.5" Seagate Barracuda. This drive is interesting because it appears to be an updated version of the WD5000BPKX (http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Black-Notebook-WD5000BPKX/dp/B00DSUTWMQ/) which only released in January, 2015. It is $6 more at time of review, but has double the cache (32mb vs 16mb). I ran benchmarks on all my drives here http://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/171711 Here are the results (given as averages): Western Digital 500GB 7200RPM 2.5" Read 164 MB/s Write 142 MB/s Mixed 141 MB/s Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7200RPM 3.5" Read 171 Write 153 Mixed 151 So it's nearly as fast as the Seagate, but what about compared to the older molder, the WD5000BPKX? That drive is benchmarked here: http://hdd.userbenchmark.com/SpeedTest/3355/WDC-WD5000BPKX-75HPJT0 Though results vary, probably depending on the age of the drive, it seems pretty clear this version is much faster. The reports there seem to show the older model is closer to 110 MB/s. I'd recommend this as a new drive, if you can't afford a SSD (which, of course, would be faster). And I think the extra cost over the older model seems worth it, too, since it seems to be faster. This may be due to the increased cache size.
Jody Carney
WD > Seagate
Once upon a time I made the mistake of trying out the cheaper seagate sshd desktop models because it promised faster speeds and more storage for the price of wd black. Currently going through the tedious rma process of that drive which was used in a machine extremely infrequently until anything I tried to save on it kept giving me a disk read error. Switched back to wd black which Ive used for years in other desktops to replace that. Id rather stick to the 7200rpm black model and used a ssd for a boot drive than touch another seagate again. I didnt want to believe all the issues people said about seagate but wow they were not kidding.
David Kennewell
READ: 1 TB and 750GB are different reviews. 750 Great drive in both servers and laptops!! I own 17 of them.
WARNING: Reviews for both the 750GB WD Black and the WD Black 1TB Performance Mobile are apparently going to the same review text. So beware what you read might not be what you are getting unless the reviewer was more specific. They are NOT the same drive and have different characteristics! I'll list both here. RE: The WD Black 750 GB Drive - 5 stars: I've purchased about 20 or so of these - some from Amazon and some from a local computer store. They work well and have not seen one failure in 3 years. One server has 10 of these as a Raid array. Plus they won't cause problems with fake thermal runaway if you install them in an HP Proliant DL380 G6 / G7 server like many drives will. I'd give you a pointer to an article I wrote on that except Amazon doesn't like external URLs in the reviews. All this and the WD Blacks are 5 year warranty, this is a 7200 RPM drive, and ... well, you just can't go wrong with this drive in your laptop or server! RE: The WD Black 1TB Performance Mobile Hard Disk - 3 stars This is far from a 1 TB version of the 750 GB. It is a different design, consumes WAY more power, and is NOT compatible with the various HP servers without causing thermal run-away. It also runs much warmer (which is not why the thermal run-away, it is because of the temperature value(s) reported by the drive)
Arslan Chaudhary
these are fast and hold a lot
i have ordered two of these and use both for external backup. the first one worked so well i ordered another. both are housed in the RSHTECH Hard Drive Enclosure. yes, they come unformatted. install the drive in an enclosure of choice and connect to computer then in windows 10 pro, right click on start menu and click 'disk management'; look for the drive that is indicated as unallocated and not formated. right click in that stippled space and follow instructions to format. honestly, i already forgot how to do it beyond this point but instructions to use disk management to format a new drive abound on the net. the trick to remember: above 2tb a different formatting system has to be used. not a big deal but this product 100% has to be formatted. regarding the discussion of wd or another brand - at the end of the day i went with wd for their reputation and because i have not had problems with them previously. regarding the 'black' level of the product - it has the specs i want for my application at this memory size which is speed and cache. i am reluctant to go with a larger size hd preferring 2 smaller sizes such that in case of failure not all my eggs are in one basket. i also use the cloud for storage and have other items dispersed in dual backup amongst various ssd's and memory sticks - my conclusion being one can never be too cautious about having multiple copies of saved files in the digital paperless world. i always plug in thru a surge protector and manually turn off when not in use. so far so good with wd and i will continue to buy again from them; fyi, they now own sansdisk which is another product line that has performed well for me over the years.
Eric Jay Sanders
I only purchase WD Black Hard Drives (for 12+ years) and have never had a problem or failure yet.
I oversee technology for an entire school and have done so for over a decade. For my professional and personal usage I only purchase the WD Black Hard Drives and I have literally never had a problem or failure with any of them during that entire 12 year period. So, that's all I continue to buy. I used to purchase another brand name drive but we had problems with them. There's nothing worse than having a hard drive crap out taking all the data with it. Granted we usually have back ups but there's always the gnawing feeling that something gets lost when restoring from backup no matter how frequent the backups. Plus there's the stress, frustration, and lost productivity while the unit is offline. Yes, these drives are more expensive than many other hard drives. However, when you factor in the dramatically improved reliability and longevity, it has been my experience that they are more than worth the extra money. To be sure, there's no doubt that there may be an occasional bad unit or one that just fails, but, so far, in my experience we have never encountered one. Plus, they have a 5 year warranty and a high MTBF rating both of which, of course, are very reassuring. Side note: if you're not backing up your data to some sort of disconnected storage device and you lose data that's not the fault of the drive or the malware that took out your data. In my experience, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who have lost data and those who will lose data.
Beth Conklin
Fast, Reliable, Cool
When any of my friends or family need a laptop, they usually ask me to find something for them. This is the hard drive I almost invariably pick. The computer I'm writing this review on is sporting a WD7500BPKX. I give this hard drive 5 stars, but in reality, I would like to give it 4.9. While close to perfection, the drive does fall short in one area: noise. More on that later. I hadn't been with WD since the ATA Scorpio days, but a few years ago, I found this drive on Passmark's charts as the fastest mechanical 2.5" drive that runs reasonably cool. Thicker enterprise 2.5" drives can be quite quick, but aren't always appropriate for laptops because they run hot and obstruct airflow. Pros: Speed: This drive is quite fast. Most 2.5" drives are painfully slow. While this drive is still a mechanical drive, you'll get a noticeable performance boost. Reliability: I've installed about a dozen of these, to the point where I know the model number off the top of my head. No failures or SMART flags set to-date. I don't turn some computers off, I've had these drives stand up to years of use. Durability: I try really hard not to drop laptops, but it does happen. I haven't broken one, none of my customers have yet either. Not a scientific test, but no glaring issues observed thus far. Temperature: After hours of use in an HP Probook 6735b, the drive remains at 38*c. The same drive in a Lenovo T500 rarely passes 34*c. This is the ideal operating temperature for a laptop hard drive. Over 40*c is getting warm, while over 50*c can be a concern. Interestingly, if you’re up on hard drive technology, temperatures under 30*c are also associated with issues. This drive keeps it right between the buoys at 34-38*c in most system. Cons: Noise: Bearing noise is quiet and consistent, but you'll hear a 'white noise' or ‘shudder’ sound when the drive is seeking heavily. Not disruptive at all in a productivity setting, but with two computers running these in front of me now, I can most definitely hear them both. You will also occasionally hear the head load/unload noise as a subtle click. Again, nothing disruptive, most will not even notice. This drive is likely a little louder than your laptop’s fan. Overall: This is a very well-engineered drive. Noise is the only place where these drives fall short. You will know you have them whenever you're working in a quiet space. However, they seem to be reliable, and they're definitely fast. I’ve attached a screenshot of the Crystal Disk Mark results of this hard drive versus a standard OEM drive (probably like the one your computer came with). The results speak for themselves: the WD7500BPKX is significantly faster in many respects. UPDATE: Nov 2016 - I've put many, many of these into service now. This is still my favorite hard drive. Many of the units have years of service on them now. Still ZERO failures. Woo hoo!