A couple of months ago, WD announced two new capacity for their popular WD Black lineup, the WD Black 6TB (WD6001FZWX) and WD Black 5TB (WD5001FZWX). Not only that these two new drives offer larger storage capacity, but they also offer faster read/write speeds compared to the lower capacities. The new WD Black 6TB and 5TB hard drives are primarily geared towards gamers and creative professional. They are also used in the new WD My Book Pro external storage. Today, we are going to review the WD Black 6TB (WD6001FZWX) high performance hard drive featuring increased reliability, double DRAM cache, efficient dual processing and a 5 year limited warranty. Are you in the market looking for a high capacity and high performance hard drive for your PC? Please continue reading our WD Black 6TB review below.
WD Black 6TB Hard Drive Review
The WD Black hard drives need little introduction already. This is one of the company’s most popular hard drives and has been in the market for many years. WD simply continues to expand the capacity and increase its performance and reliability, from one generation to another.
Basically, the new WD Black 6TB (WD6001FZWX) hard drive features 128 MB cache, dual stage actuator technology and integrated dual processor. It’s also a 72000RPM hard drive with SATA 6 Gbps interface, and it’s more or less up to 29% faster than the previous WD Black 4TB version in maximum data rate throughput and 10% faster in PCMark Vantage.
WD Black 6TB hard drives feature the following:
- Increased Reliability -StableTrac Technology (2 TB and larger models) secures the motor shaft inside of the hard drive to increase reliability and help reduce impact due to system-induced vibrations from other components. By stabilizing the platters inside, the WD Black drive results in more accurate tracking in a particular sector during read and write operations, optimizing performance and reliability.
- Increased DRAM cache – The Dynamic Cache Technology improves caching algorithms in real time to allocate and optimize cache between reads and writes. This movement of cache for read data helps to reduce congestion and increase overall performance.
- Efficient dual processing – A dual-core processor offers twice the processing capability as a single-core processor to maximize drive performance for faster read and write speeds.
- Industry-leading 5-year limited warranty – Compared to standard hard drives, the WD Black drive endures more strenuous and aggressive internal testing over a longer period of time, resulting in it being backed by an industry leading 5-year limited warranty.
Below is a specification table of the WD Black 6TB and 5TB capacity, including the 4TB and 3TB for comparison. Click for a larger and clearer view of the table. After that, let’s take a closer look on the drive itself.
WD Black 6TB WD6001FZWX Specifications
WD Black 6TB Review – Closer Look
The WD Black 6TB is a standard 3.5″ internal hard drive. Despite having a larger capacity, the dimensions of the drive is basically the same with other hard drive capacity. In fact, the 6TB model pretty much reminds me of the WD Re 4TB Enterprise hard drive. The design of the aluminum enclosure is almost similar, in both front and back.
The WD Black 6TB measures 26.1mm in height, 147mm in length and 101.6mm in width. It weighs approximately 1.58lbs or 0.72 Kg. Most, if not all, heat producing components are in direct contact with the aluminum enclosure. The enclosure itself acts as a heat sink and keeps those components cool.
Upon removing the PCB at the back, we see a couple of foam pads placed between the enclosure and the PCB. The foams dampen the vibration produced by the spinning disks and helps protect the components on the board.
Upon closer inspection of the circuit board, the WD Black 6TB hard drive features an LSI controller. Just near the LSI controller is a NANYA 128MB RAM Cache.
Now let’s see how does the WD Black 6TB performs on the test bench on the next page.
