Western Digital’s new, high-performance 5TB and 6TB ‘Black’ HDDs

Western Digital Corp.’s “Black” range of HDDs are about as good as hard disk drives are going to get for the average consumer.

Offering a blend of high performance and even higher capacity, they’re the drives of choice for a number of PC enthusiasts, and their WD Black drives just go that much more appealing.

Western Digital Corp. has recently introduced their new 5TB and 6TB, high performance WD Black 3.5” HDDs.

With 128MB of cache, an all-new dual-core processor and their Dynamic Cache Technology, improving caching through highly optimised and efficient algorithms, you’re unlikely to find anything faster from mechanical drives, not unless you leave the realm of 7200rpm of course.

WD’s new WD6001FZWX (6TB) and WD5001FZWX (5TB) hard disk drives are 29% faster than their previous WD Black 4TB, we’re talking data rate throughput, which is quite the improvement.

“Combining maximum system performance with generous capacity, the expansion of WD Black to 6 TB allows gamers, enthusiasts and creatives to push the boundaries of personalization without compromise,” said Cindi Grace, senior vice president of WD storage technology group. “In choosing WD Black hard drives, WD desktop customers get the best possible mix of capacity, performance and reliability to handle intense desktop computing with ease.”

Priced at $264 (R3, 401.06 at the time of writing) for the 5TB variant and $294 (R3, 787.54 at the time of writing) for the larger 6TB HDD, they have yet to be unveiled at local retailers just yet, but we’re expecting them to get the usual inflation treatment.

They’re almost certainly worth the price for that sort of performance and capacity though.