Disclosure: This review unit is supplied by WD.
What keeps WD Black 5TB WD5001FZWX drive apart from other Black 7200 RPM drive is that the 5TB and 6TB variants use a larger 128MB Cache. WD Black series drives are made for a system that requires more performance. While SSDs are getting cheaper, it’s still not “Terrabytes of affordable” cheap. Naturally, a mechanical drive won’t reach anywhere near the speed SSDs provide. But for the time being, it provides a lot of space.
It makes sense for those who need quicker HDDs as a secondary solution. This way, many applications and data including games can be stored. Since I mentioned the “G” word, it shouldn’t be surprising that WD is pitching this towards all levels of creatives and enthusiasts, including gamers. But what is also a redeeming point for WD Black is that these have a five-year warranty. Five TB is a lot of space so I am curious to know how this performs. WD mentioned on its page that it uses a dual-core processor to provide better load times for games and media files.
WD also mentioned that it has something called ‘StableTrac’, something that holds its motor shaft to provide more reliability and reduces impact due to vibration from other components housed inside the case.
The specs are as follows:
Specifications 5 TB Hard Drive Type WD Black Model Number WD5001FZWX Interface SATA 6 GB/s Formatted Capacity 5 TB Form Factor 3.5-inch Advanced Format (AF) Yes ROHS Compliant Yes Performance Data transfer rate (max) Buffer to host 6 GB/s Host to/from drive (sustained) 194 MB/s Performance Class (RPM) 7200-RPM Class Cache (MB) 128 Reliability/Data Integrity Load/unload cycles 300,000 Non-recoverable read errors per bits read <1 in 10¹⁴ Limited warranty (years) 5 Power Management Average power requirements (W) Read/Write 10.6 Idle 7.6 Standby and Sleep 1.6 Environmental Specifications Operating Non-operating 5 to 55 Shock (Gs) -40 to 70 Operating (2 ms, write) 30 Operating (2 ms, read) 65 Non-operating (2 ms) 300 Acoustics (dBA) Idle 31 Seek (average) 34 Physical Dimensions Height (in./mm, max) 1.028/26.1 Length (in./mm, max) 5.787/147 Width (in./mm, ± .01 in.) 4/101.6 Weight (lb./kg, ± 10%) 301.66/0.75 ± 3% ![CDI 1]()
Notice that this HDD drive’s weight is a little bit more at 750 gms. In comparison, the previously reviewed WD drive Blue WD40E31X is a 450 gms.
Notice that the PCB has two multi-axis shock sensor. Possibly, this is one of the ‘StableTrac’ function. The PCB has a total 0f 7 Winbond 25Q80BWVIG which contains 8 MBit storage capacity per chip. Next to that is the Samsung K4B1G1646G-BCK0 DDR3 1Gb chip. The main controller is an LSI TT07143 dual-core SoC.
Once formatted, you get a storage space of 4.54TB.
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