The one to get if you need 4TB in a
single drive
As consumers, we have only two options when
it comes to 7,200rpm 4TB hard drives: the Hitachi 7K4000 (Verdict 8, Holiday
2012) and this bad boy right here – the WD 4TB Black drive. Seagate does not
currently offer a 7,200rpm 4TB Barracuda, but it does offer a 3TB version. For
the uninitiated, WD classifies its drive by color, and Black stands for its
drive by color, and Black stands for “high performance”, which means this is
exactly the drive we’ve been waiting for WD to deliver, as speed is our primary
concern with PC hardware. Its specs show all the signs of a high-performance
drive, too, as it offers a 7,200rpm spindle speed, 4MB of cache, dual-arm
actuators to increase precision when positioning the heads, and a five-platter
design. It even offers the same 1.2-million-hour MTBF (Mean Time Between
Failure) and 5-year warranty as the enterprise-level RE drive, which is
outstanding for a consumer level drive.
WD
4 TB Black
For testing, we compared the Black drive to
its 4TB companions and also brought in the current price/ performance champion,
the Seagate 3TB Barracuda. When it comes to the 4TB 7,200rpm drives, you can
pretty much throw a blanket over all of them when it comes to sequential read
and write speeds, as they are all extremely close.
In read speeds, the Black drive hit
127.9MB/s, the Hitachi drive upped it to 132.7MB/s, but the fastest drive was
the Seagate 3TB at 155.8MB/s, thanks to its high-density terabyte-per0platter
design. The Seagate was also fastest in sequential write speeds at 155MB/s. we
did see some variation in our Premiere test though, which writes a 20GB raw AVI
file to the target drive. The Hitachi 7k4000 was 16 seconds faster than the WD
Black, and also faster than the WD RE drive, making it a clear favorite. In the
PCMark Vantage test, the Seagate 3TB reigned supreme along with the WD RE
drive, with the rest of the contenders scoring relatively low comparatively.
Finally, we considered price, as well,
since for most people that would be the deciding factor in a drive’s
desirability. Interestingly, there’s a large disparity here, making our final
choice an easy one. The WD RE drive and the Hitachi 7K4000 are roughly $500 on
Newegg as we go to press, with the WD Black selling for just $400. The Seagate
3TB Barracuda, however, is just $140. The WD Black 4TB gets our nod then our
best 4TB drive for the money, but the best overall drive for the money is still
the Seagate 3TB.
Despite
its consumer branding, the Black drive comes with an enterprise-level, 5-year
warranty.
Verdict WD 4TB Black: 8
+ Purrfect: Spacious; lowest-priced 4TB
drive yet.
- Catastrophe: Only average performance;
can’t beat value of 3TB drives.
Price: $400
Website: www.wd.com
Best scores are bolded. All drives tested
on our hard drive test bench: a stock-cloaked Intel Core i5-2500K CPU on an
Intel DZ77GA-70K motherboard with 4GB DDR3, running Windows 7 Professional
64-bit. All tests performed using native Intel 6Gb/s SATA chipset with IRST
version 10.1 drives.
Verdict
WD4TB Black
·
Avg. Read (MB/s): 127.9
·
Random-Access Read (ms): 13.6
·
Burst Read (MB/s): 213.2
·
Avg. Write (MB/S): 129.9
·
Random-Access Write (ms): 13.2
·
Burst Write (MB/s): 336.2
·
Premiere Pro CS3 (sec): 269
·
PCMrak Vantage: 6,196
WD 4TB RE
·
Avg. Read (MB/s): 132.8
·
Random-Access Read (ms): 12.5
·
Burst Read (MB/s): 275.5
·
Avg. Write (MB/S): 131.9
·
Random-Access Write (ms): 12.5
·
Burst Write (MB/s): 291.6
·
Premiere Pro CS3 (sec): 259
·
PCMrak Vantage: 6,664
Hitachi 4TB 7K4000
·
Avg. Read (MB/s): 132.7
·
Random-Access Read (ms): 15.9
·
Burst Read (MB/s): 307.9
·
Avg. Write (MB/S): 131.1
·
Random-Access Write (ms): 15.9
·
Burst Write (MB/s): 317.3
·
Premiere Pro CS3 (sec): 253
·
PCMrak Vantage: 6,125
Hitachi Deskstar 5K4000
·
Avg. Read (MB/s): 108.3
·
Random-Access Read (ms): 19.9
·
Burst Read (MB/s): 378.3
·
Avg. Write (MB/S): 105.6
·
Random-Access Write (ms): 18.5
·
Burst Write (MB/s): 335
·
Premiere Pro CS3 (sec): 267
·
PCMrak Vantage: 6,135
Seagate Barracuda 3TB
·
Avg. Read (MB/s): 155.8
·
Random-Access Read (ms): 14.9
·
Burst Read (MB/s): 325.7
·
Avg. Write (MB/S): 155
·
Random-Access Write (ms): 14.9
·
Burst Write (MB/s): 335.5
·
Premiere Pro CS3 (sec): 263
·
PCMrak Vantage: 6,766
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