Western Digital Black 8TB HDD Review: Not Back in Black

An underwhelming “high-performance” HDD.

WD Black 8TB HDD
(Image: © Tom's Hardware)

Tom's Hardware Verdict

The WD Black HDD has mediocre performance, and the pricing is hard to swallow. It does have WD’s full warranty and would work well for a budget gaming or storage drive, but the WD Blue is the better bet if you're looking to add storage capacity.

Pros

  • +

    WD warranty and support

Cons

  • -

    Pricing

  • -

    Inefficient

  • -

    Aside from 3DMark, performance is underwhelming

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The WD Black is supposed to be the pinnacle of consumer hard drives and resides above the WD Blue in WD's product stack, but things aren't always what they seem. That can be particularly true with storage products with differing types of componentry yet come with the same name. For instance, the 8TB WD Black we have in for review comes with less DRAM cache and a lower sustained transfer speed than another version of the drive that has the exact same 8TB WD Black naming, sticker, and branding — the model number is the only way to tell the difference between the two drives.

Our 8TB WD Black also has a smaller DRAM cache and a lower sustained transfer speed than Seagate's top-end FireCuda, so it’s not expected to go toe-to-toe with the competing flagship. However, it is still part of WD’s Black lineup, which is steeped in a reputation for being a high-performance brand, and current pricing puts it in the FireCuda’s crosshairs. That's not to mention the prominent "Gaming" branding emblazoned in the Black's product description, which also exposes the drive to competition from much faster SSDs.

However, while the faster Seagate FireCuda only comes in 4TB and 8TB flavors, the WD Black does offer a wider range of capacities, including a 10TB option, which works in its favor. Still, WD needs to also distance this drive from its own WD Blue HDD line, which is a tough drive to beat in terms of bang for your buck.

Let's see how the Black stacks up.

Specifications

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ProductWestern Digital Black HDD
Capacity8TB
Model #WD8002FZWX
Pricing$174.99
Cost per TB$21.87
InterfaceSATA 6 Gb/s
Form Factor3.5"
TechnologyCMR
RPM7200
Sustained Transfer RateUp to 238 MB/s
Cache128MB
Operating Power8.7W
Noise34 dBA
Workload Rate LimitN/A
MTBFN/A
Warranty5-Year

The 8TB WD Black hard drive costs $174.99, or about 22 cents a GB, which is almost $15 cheaper than the 8TB Seagate FireCuda at the time of review. Pricing for consumer hard drives has been volatile, so it’s worth waiting for the right price. The FireCuda was significantly cheaper when we reviewed it recently, but the closer price now makes this more of a competition.

The WD8002FZWX 8TB Black uses CMR technology at 7200 RPM but with a smaller 128MB cache and a sustained transfer rate of just 238 MB/s compared to the Seagate FireCuda’s 260 MB/s.

The Black does have a WD8001FZBX version with a 256MB cache and better performance at up to 263 MB/s, but this model is more difficult to find and generally more expensive. 

The WD Black is available in various capacities, from 500GB to 10TB, making it much more flexible than the 4TB/8TB FireCuda. Both drives come with a five-year warranty, although Seagate does include a three-year data recovery service.

This particular Black has the same 128MB cache as the WD Blue, but the Blue’s paltry two-year warranty is a big drawback if you’re weighing these two drives. Also worth consideration is the price difference, as the Blue is currently $60 less at the 8TB capacity point. It’s probably not worth the premium if you’re just looking for extra space, and avoiding the slower SMR technology of the BarraCuda is an easy decision.

Software and Accessories

Like with the WD Blue HDD, the Black will work with WD’s downloadable applications. This includes the WD Edition of Acronis True Image for imaging and cloning and also the Western Digital Dashboard, which is useful for health monitoring and updates. This is comparable to what Seagate offers with its hard drives.

A Closer Look

The WD Black has a basic, stoic appearance, the black coloring on parts of the label giving it branding distinction from the WD Blue. The Black is intended to be the high-performance line of consumer hard drives, while the Blue is more entry-level. In this case, the primary difference is the spindle rate — 5640 RPM for the 8TB Blue, against 7200 RPM for the Black. The Blue has higher latency and a lower sustained transfer rate as a result, although it also takes less power and makes less noise.

MORE: Best Hard Drives

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MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

Shane Downing
Freelance Reviewer

Shane Downing is a Freelance Reviewer for Tom’s Hardware US, covering consumer storage hardware.

  • bit_user
    I used to run WD Black drives in my backup/media RAID, but switched to WD Gold in the latest upgrade. I wonder how an 8 TB Gold drive would compare.
    Reply
  • The Historical Fidelity
    bit_user said:
    I used to run WD Black drives in my backup/media RAID, but switched to WD Gold in the latest upgrade. I wonder how an 8 TB Gold drive would compare.
    I second that comparison. Also, it would be interesting to bring out the old 10,000 rpm velociraptors to see if cache improvements/platter #/CMR (aka Rust Arrangement) beat good old rotational velocity.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    The Historical Fidelity said:
    Also, it would be interesting to bring out the old 10,000 rpm velociraptors to see if cache improvements/platter #/CMR (aka Rust Arrangement) beat good old rotational velocity.
    Yeah, it'd be interesting to see how they compare on 4k random IOPS.

    As for sequential performance, I'm pretty sure the platter density improvements of modern drives have long-ago surpassed those drives (which topped out at only 1 TB, IIRC).
    Reply
  • The Historical Fidelity
    bit_user said:
    Yeah, it'd be interesting to see how they compare on 4k random IOPS.

    As for sequential performance, I'm pretty sure the platter density improvements of modern drives have long-ago surpassed those drives (which topped out at only 1 TB, IIRC).
    Good point on platter density! Makes me wonder how fast the 10,000 rpm drives would be today if they kept up with modern tech, for that matter, didn’t they also make 15,000 rpm enterprise drives? Theoretically if performance scaled linearly, a 15,000 rpm “caviar black” would have ~550 MB/s sustained read which is basically fully saturating the SATA 3 interface.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    The Historical Fidelity said:
    Good point on platter density! Makes me wonder how fast the 10,000 rpm drives would be today if they kept up with modern tech, for that matter, didn’t they also make 15,000 rpm enterprise drives? Theoretically if performance scaled linearly, a 15,000 rpm “caviar black” would have ~550 MB/s sustained read which is basically fully saturating the SATA 3 interface.
    Be careful about extrapolating. I think they only used 2.5" drive platters, even when the drive had a 3.5" case. I know the later 10k and 15k RPM drives came only in 2.5" form factors, at least.

    With a modern drive, the peak media transfer rate will correspond to the outer tracks. Therefore, you couldn't just multiply by the ratio of RPMs to get the modern equivalent. However, if you found the actual platter diameters, I think you could just apply that ratio as a correction factor.
    Reply
  • digitalgriffin
    For reading/writing large video streams for video editing, it's more than cost effective when used with an appropriate caching system. Yes I realize NAND would be a ton faster, but when's the last time you saw a $180 8TB NVME drive?
    Reply
  • Thunder64
    I hate how everything slaps "gaming" on it. Gaming hard drive, gaming SSD, gaming RAM, etc. Stupid marketing idiots.
    Reply
  • Gillerer
    High RPM drives use smaller platters. Not only semi-modern enterprise HDDs, but also later generation Velociraptors. They were thick 2.5" drives, but had a sturdy metal adapter block allowing installing in a 3.5" slot.

    *

    A point about a difference between desktop <-> NAS/Enterprise. Their firmwares are tuned differently:

    Desktop drive:
    expects to be a stand-alone drive
    does error recovery all on its own
    the assumption is that the disk contains the only copy of the data, so it's important to read and reallocate a failed sector as soon as possible
    will keep re-trying for a long time in case of read errors
    the excessively long response time in case of errors may cause the storage pool to drop the drive as failed/unresponsiveNAS/Enterprise drive:
    expects an overarching redundant data storage system that will take care of data recovery
    will give up quickly in case of read errors
    quick response ensures that it will not be dropped out of a pool for a mere read error (the data can be read off another place in the storage system or reconstructed from redundancy data)In addition to this, there are marketing claims by manufacturers that NAS/Enterprise drives are built to be more reliable in arrays (with ranges of "recommended" array sizes per tier of drive). The idea is that vibrations from neighboring drives would normally be a large factor in failures. This can be mitigated with the drive's physical construction and the gas used to fill it.
    Reply
  • Sluggotg
    My first WD Black was the 74GB Raptor. Over the years I went to the 150/300/600GB versions. My Favorite was the 150GB with the built in Window. You could watch the drive head move across the platter. It was noisy and it was hard to mount it somewhere that allowed for viewing the Window.
    It is a bummer that the WD Black line has fallen so far. ( I even own stock in them and Seagate). The WD Black series was the Best Consumer Hard Drives available for years. Now, they are just a slightly faster version of the WB Blue drives.
    I tried to post a picture of them, but I didn't realize I would have to host them somewhere. I will resolve the hosting issue some other time.
    Reply
  • redwolf44
    The Historical Fidelity said:
    I second that comparison. Also, it would be interesting to bring out the old 10,000 rpm velociraptors to see if cache improvements/platter #/CMR (aka Rust Arrangement) beat good old rotational velocity.
    Those must be the drives Clint from LGR was referring to in his ultimate Windows XP gaming PC video. He had two running in RAID0 IIRC.
    Reply