WD_Black gaming HDD and SSD look like shipping containers
This week the folks at Western Digital released a new collection of WD_Black series hard drives (HDD and SSD) with radical new industrial designs. When you're buying a hard disk drive or solid-state drive, especially an external HDD or SSD, you'll first look at the capabilities of the drive – mostly innards. Then you'll look at the external bits – the way the case looks, the bits you'll be seeing every time you access your gaming machine. Because of this, Western Digital went the extra mile (in the right direction) with their latest round of WD_Black.
Western Digital previously released the WD_Black SN750 NVMe SSD – and it was truly well made. Again, not only because it worked the way it was meant to work, but because it looked pretty awesome. Now Western Digital is aiming to expand on their success with the first wave, bringing five new external drives to the gamer masses.
These drives bring a variety of storage capacities to the gaming machines you've got in your living room, basement, or bedroom. These include the new WD_Black P10 Game Drive, P10 Game Drive for Xbox One, D10, D10 for Xbox One, and the boss of them all: the WD_Black P50 Game Drive.
The P10 Game Drive is an HDD that works with up to 5TB space, USB 3.2 Gen 1, has a 3-year warranty. The Xbox One version of the P10 has "high-performance to help optimize the Xbox One gaming experience" – and it includes a two-month membership of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.
The D10 Game Drive is also an HDD with up to 8TB space with speeds up to 250MB/s, rated at 7200RPM, and it's rolling with active cooling tech inside. The D10 also has a three-year limited warranty. The Xbox One version of the D10 has up to 12TB space and includes a three-month membership of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. NOTE: All of these drives have a three-year limited warranty save the P50, which has a five-year limited warranty.
The speediest of the batch is the WD_Black P50 Game Drive. This block has an SSD with "first-to-industry USB 3.2 gen 2x2 port for a game drive" that'll deliver what Western Digital says will be speeds up to 2000MB/s. This drive has up to 2TB of space for games and game data storage.
Users will find these drives available soon. The WD_Black P10 Game Drive will be released in capacities from 2TB to 5TB and will cost anywhere from $89.99 up to $149.99 MSRP USD in the USA. This drive should be available ASAP – it might even be at your local retailer right this minute. The WD_Black P10 Game Drive for Xbox One will be rolling with data capacities from 3TB up to 5TB. It'll cost anywhere from $109.99 up to $149.99 MSRP USD in the USA.
The WD_Black D10 Game Drive (8TB capacity) will cost approximately $200 USD in the USA. The WD_Black D10 Game Drive for Xbox One (12TB capacity) will cost approximately $300 USD in the USA.
The WD_Black P10 Game Drive for Xbox One, the WD_Black D10 Game Drive and the WD_Black D10 for Xbox One will be made available in stores "this quarter." The only drive that won't be out until the last quarter of this year is the WD_Black P50 Game Drive, a drive which also currently has no quoted price.