Endowed with a gamer aesthetic, the WD Black P10 Game Drive can function an easy , stylish repository for your massive game library at an inexpensive price. Get details in WD_Black P10 2TB Portable Gaming Drive For Console Or PC Review.
Specs – WD_Black P10 2TB Portable Gaming Drive For Console Or PC
Drive Type External Portable
System-Side Interface USB 3.0
USB Powered? Yes
Capacity 4 TB
Spin Rate 5400 rpm
Cables Included USB Micro-B-to-A
Backup Software Included? No
Warranty (Parts/Labor) 3 year(s)
Price
One of the foremost effective ways for PC gamers to stretch their budgets is to shop for a PC with a comparatively small but speedy internal SSD which will hold one or two games at a time, and keep most of the remainder of their library on a huge (but slower and fewer expensive) portable external disk drive just like the WD Black P10 Game Drive. At $119.99 for the 4TB version we tested, the P10 isn’t only cost-effective, but it’s also designed with an edgy aesthetic which will please many gamers. This makes it a superb choice for people that have dozens of titles they play only infrequently and preferring to transfer just the one they’re playing at the instant from an drive to their PC’s boot drive.
WD_Black P10 2TB Portable Gaming Drive For Console Or PC Review
The Design
The most important thing to understand about the P10 Game Drive is that it’s a 2.5-inch disk drive that spins at 5,400rpm, which suggests that its data transfer speeds are going to be glacially slow compared with those of an external SSD. The P10 is rated for accelerates to 140MBps, compared with typical speeds of 1,000MBps for many external SSDs on speedy versions of USB and built on PCI Express NVMe innards. this suggests you shouldn’t actually load games directly from the P10, but instead transfer game files to and from your PC’s drive when you’re able to play them.
In addition to being slower than SSDs, external hard drives also are typically bulkier, since they need to make space for the spinning platter, the drive head, and associated mechanical parts. Fortunately, the P10 manages to incorporate all of these parts during a relatively compact package. The 4TB version tested here measures just 0.82 by 3.5 by 4.7 inches (HWD) and weighs about 8 ounces. WD also sells a 5TB version with an equivalent dimensions for $139.99, also as a thinner, lighter $79.99 2TB model that measures just 0.31 inch thick and weighs 5 ounces. These dimensions are relatively standard for portable drives, and they’re much smaller and lighter than external hard drives built around 3.5-inch drive mechanisms and designed to be parked on a desk, just like the WD My Book (by comparison, 6.7 by 1.9 by 5.5 inches).
Features – WD_Black P10 2TB Portable Gaming Drive For Console Or PC
The most distinctive physical feature of the P10 isn’t its compactness, but its aesthetic. It’s perhaps best described as “container chic.” The P10 takes its design cues from a shipping container, something that’s clearly hip given how frequently they’re used as cover in post-apocalyptic-wasteland FPS games. The drive may be a black rectangle with ribbed sides and prominent hex screws in each corner, while alittle LED indicator on one among the shorter edges allows you to know when the drive is reading or writing data.
The P10’s branding is according to the shipping-container theme, with a stylized font and a layout that evokes a utilitarian label of contents. If you’re a lover of this styling, a couple of other WD Black products use it, including the P50 external SSD and therefore the D50 dock. The latter combines an SSD and a Thunderbolt dock for connecting other peripherals.
In addition to bringing an in-game element to the important world, the P10’s ribbed enclosure also helps protect the drive inside. WD isn’t claiming that the P10 meets MIL-SPEC durability tests, but the corporate does describe the enclosure as “durable.” The P10 comes with a comparatively standard warranty length of three years. Like most drive warranties, it applies to the drive itself, but it won’t cover data recovery if your drive malfunctions.
USB-C
In the P10 Game Drive’s box, you’ll find just one USB Type-A cable and a fast Install Guide. this suggests you’ll need an adapter to attach the drive to a USB-C port, if that’s your only port option. The drive itself features a micro-USB connector, and it supports the USB 3.2 Gen 1 interface (i.e., what was once known simply as USB 3.0). With USB Type-C connectors becoming more prevalent, the omission of a USB-C cable is an unfortunate oversight on WD’s part.
In addition to PCs and Macs, the P10 is additionally compatible with the Sony PlayStation 4 and therefore the Microsoft Xbox One. counting on their capacity needs, however, Xbox gamers may instead want to think about the WD Black D10 Game Drive for Xbox One, a 12TB 3.5-inch drive with an equivalent styling and a rather faster 7,200rpm drive mechanism.
Setup with a PC is plug-and-play simple, although advanced users can download additional utilities just like the WD Drive Utilities app and WD Security app to line passwords, check the drive’s health, and perform other maintenance tasks.
WD_Black P10 2TB Portable Gaming Drive For Console Or PC Performance review
The P10 Game Drive’s results on our drive benchmark tests show that it performs exactly as you’d expect from a contemporary 5,400rpm disk drive . Its sequential read and write speeds, as measured by the Crystal DiskMark 6.0 test, are approximately 130MBps, shortly from the rated maximum of 140MBps. The read and write speeds measured by the BlackMagic Disk Speed test are a touch lower—just shy of 120MBps—though they’re not out of the standard . The WD My Passport 5TB and therefore the Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch 2TB recorded nearly identical results on these tests. (See how we test hard drives.)
When it involves transferring files to and from the drive, the P10 took 12 seconds to maneuver a 1.2GB folder filled with various file types. Its score of 1,896 on the trace-based PCMark 7 storage subtest is additionally about what we expect from external hard drives. (We ran this older version of PCMark’s storage test on the P10 since many of the competing drives we’ve tested were benchmarked well before the present version of PCMark, version 10, debuted.)
It’s worth noting, however, that each one of those results pale as compared to what an external SSD is capable of. Take the Samsung Portable SSD T7 Touch, as an example , which completed the folder transfer test in only two seconds and recorded read and write speeds of around 1,000MBps.
With such bog-standard disk drive performance, then, the P10 Game Drive’s main strength is its unique styling. If you appreciate the gamer aesthetic, the P10 is a clear choice over more vanilla offerings just like the WD My Passport and therefore the Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch.
This aesthetic isn’t for everybody , of course, therefore the My Passport remains our Editors’ Choice for best external hard drives. The P10 is additionally a poor choice for people that have just a couple of games and decide to load them without transferring them to their PC’s internal storage. during this case, you’ll want the added speed of an external SSD.
Otherwise, the P10 is a superb option for storing your games for years to return . If you conservatively figure a mean game size of 80GB, the 4TB version tested here can hold 50 titles, serving because the stylish main repository of your collection for years to return.
