Page 2 - A Closer Look, Test System
As always, with our storage reviews, before we move on to the benchmark results, let us briefly discuss the physical attributes of this hard disk drive first. The Black WD6001FZWX 6TB is your quintessential 3.5" hard drive from Western Digital; all you have at the top is bare metal with a dull silver finish, and a large label placed across the middle. It weighs in at 1.58lbs each. As a differentiating element between product lines, the top and bottom of the sticker is printed black in color, because, well, it is part of the Black series designed for desktop computers. The label also says "WD Black Desktop Hard Drive" at the bottom, just in case it was not clear already. On the label, you will also spot information like its 6TB drive capacity, SATA interface with 128MB cache, WD6001FZWX model code, manufacturing date on May 29, 2015 for our particular unit, and that it is a product of Malaysia. A QR code is prominently displayed as well. Once scanned, it will bring up Western Digital's product page for you to learn more about this particular hard drive. The Western Digital Black comes with a five year limited warranty, which is quite generous, and expected from the company's lineup of flagship performance models.
Turning the Western Digital Black WD6001FZWX 6TB around, and you will see a green printed circuit board that interfaces between its SATA 6Gb/s interface and the physical mechanical components. Mechanically, the Western Digital Black WD6001FZWX 6TB is a 7,200RPM drive with five 1.2TB platters inside. These are very high density platters, and should translate to great performance in our benchmarks. You will see 5.45TB in Windows. The rated power consumption is 10.6W under load and 7.6W idling, which is pretty high; the Black is a performance drive that does not even pretend to save power. Meanwhile, it is specified to consume 1.6W standby.
As far as electronic components are concerned, the Western Digital Black WD6001FZWX features a LSI TT07143 dual core drive controller. Pins can be set to force backwards compatibility, in case you have a system that does not correctly negotiate interface speed automatically. The motor is controlled by a WD Pike driver. A large Nanya NT5CB64M16FP-DH 128MB DDR3-1600 IC acts as the cache for the drive. The drive firmware is stored on an array of seven Winbond 25Q20BWVIG ICs. Multi-axis shock sensors, which are more commonly found on enterprise class than consumer grade HDDs, also made its way to the WD6001FZWX. What it does is it actively measures subtle shock events, and with dynamic fly height technology, it automatically compensates head positioning to ensure each I/O operation will not induce excessive physical wear on the disk components. Western Digital Black models 2TB or higher also features StableTrac, which stabilizes drive platters by securing the motor shaft to reduce vibration caused by the system for increased reliability.
Our test configuration is as follows:
CPU: Intel Core i7-3770K @ 4.6GHz
CPU Cooling: Noctua NH-D15S (Single fan)
Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 WS Revolution
RAM: Kingston HyperX Savage HX324C11SRK2/16 2x8GB
Graphics: Gigabyte G1 Gaming GeForce GTX 960 4GB
Chassis: SilverStone Temjin TJ04-E (Noctua NF-S12A PWM, Noctua NF-P12 PWM)
Storage: OCZ Vector 150 240GB; Crucial MX200 500GB
Power: PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III 1200W
Sound: Auzentech X-Fi Bravura
Optical Drive: LiteOn iHAS224-06 24X DVD Writer
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 8.1 Professional
Compared Hardware:
- Western Digital Black WD6001FZWX 6TB (Hard Drive)
- Crucial MX200 500GB (Solid State Drive)
- HGST Deskstar NAS 4TB (Hard Drive)
- Seagate Desktop SSHD ST4000DX001 4TB (Hybrid Hard Drive)
- Seagate Laptop SSHD ST500LM000 500GB (Hybrid Hard Drive)
- Seagate NAS HDD ST4000VN000 4TB (Hard Drive)
- Western Digital Blue SSHD WD40E31X 4TB (Hybrid Hard Drive)
- Western Digital Red WD40EFRX 4TB (Hard Drive)
- Western Digital Red WD60EFRX 6TB (Hard Drive)
- Western Digital Red Pro WD4001FFSX 4TB (Hard Drive)
- Western Digital Red Pro WD6001FFWX 6TB (Hard Drive)
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 3.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0
7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 4.60
8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 8.0
9. Benchmark: PCMark 7
10. Conclusion
