WD_BLACK D10 Game Drive 8TB External Hard Drive Review: Spacious Storage
Western Digital is often considered the company to beat when it comes to data storage. Even in today’s world where NVME SSDs take the spotlight due to their blazing fast speeds, there is still plenty of demand for reliable external storage devices. Today we will be reviewing Western Digital’s WD_BLACK D10 external hard drive. This behemoth 8TB hard drive is an “old school” spinning drive, so it lacks the super-fast speeds of newer NAND drives but what it lacks in speed, it makes up in sheer storage capacity.
Western Digital markets this external drive as a gaming drive and designed this beast for all platforms including Xbox and PlayStation consoles as well as PCs.
Unboxing & First impressions
The box is all black with white and orange writing. The front of the box has a large picture of the WD_BLACK D10 Gaming Drive, the storage capacity of 8GB as well as the advertised speed of up to 250 MB/s.
The back of the box contains a picture of the back of the drive, where all the ports are located. Ports include: a 12V power, USB Micro-B for Data transfers, and two 7.5W USB Type-A charging ports.
The hard drive itself feels great to the touch and it’s quite heavy as expected. The WD_BLACK D10 is a bit bulky, but 8TB of storage just doesn’t come in a compact form factor yet. Despite its bulky size, the D10 is the best-looking external drive we’ve come across. This is due to its WD_BLACK branding and minimalistic styling.
The WD_BLACK D10 has rubber feet on one of its sides and comes with a vertical stand.
This is quite thoughtful of Western Digital, allowing you to store it either horizontally or vertically, depending on location.
Features and Performance
Western Digital claims the WD_BLACK D10 can reach speeds of 250MB/s. In our tests, we experienced speeds very close to the 250MB/s mark without any stuttering or issues whatsoever. Not that this is a surprise as WD hard drives are always solid performers. Although 250MB/s may not seem like much, especially since their WD_BLACK SN750 NVMe SSD reaches speeds upwards of 3,400 MB/s, you will be hard pressed to find any alternatives that provide close to the same storage capacity at this price point.
The WD_BLACK D10 comes with its own active cooling solution to keep the drive from overheating. The drive in the D10 is a 7200 RPM model which was surprisingly quiet during transfers. In our testing, the D10 was not very loud although you can certainly hear the fan in a quiet room.
Final Thoughts and Conclusion
The WD_BLACK D10 is a great product! Games nowadays are easily pushing past 100GB per game with no signs of slowing down. Not only does this limit the number you can have installed at once but also makes it hard to simply download a game when you want to play it. That is where the D10 shines! With 8TB of storage, you don’t need to make any compromises, you can just download all the games you’re interested in and have them on a single drive. Or you can move games that you don’t play as often onto the D10 and enjoy current games on an NVMe drive like the SN750.
The fact that the D10 is an external drive means you can take it on the go with a laptop and not miss a beat. The additional USB Type-A charging ports are a nice touch and take a static device like an external hard drive and make it more of a Swiss army knife peripheral.
At $199, the D10 is very well priced priced considering 8TB hard drives by themselves run between $150 and $200. Bundle that with an external enclosure which provides instant portability and easy plug and play compatibility and the D10 becomes a great value. If that wasn’t enough, Western Digital is providing a generous 3-year warranty with the D10 unlike most drives which top out with a measly 1-year warranty. If you’re a gamer who enjoys a large library of games, the D10 is a great investment. Overall, we were impressed with the WD_BLACK D10! We easily recommend the D10 to any gamer that desires extra storage capacity for either PC or console gaming.