The overwhelming majority of laptops these days use solid-state drives, which is why the event of recent, higher-capacity 2.5-inch arduous drives has all however come to a halt. Or quite, it virtually has. It appears that the two.5-inch kind issue has a bit extra life left in it in any case, as immediately Western Digital has launched a slate of recent exterior storage merchandise primarily based on a brand new, high-capacity 6 TB 2.5-inch arduous drive.
WD’s new 6 TB spinner is getting used to supply upgraded variations of the corporate’s My Passport, Black P10, and and G-DRIVE ArmorATD transportable storage merchandise. Notably, nonetheless, WD is not promoting the naked 2.5-inch drive on a standalone foundation – no less than not but – so in the meanwhile it is totally reserved to be used in exterior storage.
Consequently, WD is not publishing a lot in regards to the 6 TB arduous drive itself. The most learn pace for these merchandise is listed at 130 MB/sec – the identical as WD’s present externals – and write efficiency goes unmentioned.
Notably, all of those 6 TB units are thicker than their present 5 TB counterparts, which strongly means that WD has elevated their storage capability not by bettering their areal density, however by including one other platter to their present drive platform. This, in flip, would assist to elucidate why these new drives are being utilized in exterior storage merchandise, as WD’s 5 TB 2.5-inch drives are already 15mm thick, which is the very best customary thickness for a 2.5-inch form-factor, and already incompatible with a good variety of transportable units. External drives, in flip, are the one place these even thicker 2.5-inch drives would match.
WD’s specs additionally gloss over whether or not these drives are primarily based on shingled magnetic recording (SMR) know-how. The firm was already utilizing SMR for his or her 5 TB drives in an effort to hit the required storage density there, so it appears very doubtless that they are persevering with to make use of SMR for his or her 6 TB drives. Which is probably going why the corporate is not publishing write efficiency specs for the drives, as we have seen SMR drives backside out as little as 10 MB/second in our testing when the drive must rewrite information.
Depending on the precise drive mannequin, all the exterior storage drives use both a USB-C connector, or the very quaint USB Micro-B 3.zero connector. Though whatever the bodily connector used, all the drives function a USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps) interface, which is greater than ample given the drives’ physically-limited switch speeds.
Wrapping issues up, based on WD the brand new drives can be found at retail instantly. The WD My Passport Ultra and WD My Passport Ultra for Mac with USB-C each retail for $199.99; the WD My Passport and WD My Passport for Mac are $179.99; the WD My Passport Works With USB-C is $184.99; the gaming-focused WD_Black P10 Game Drive sells for $184.99, and the SanDisk Professional G-Drive ArmorATD is $229.99. All of Western Digital’s exterior storage drives are backed with a three-year restricted guarantee.
