Review: WD_BLACK D10 12 TB External Drive

So this is going to be more of an overview or mini-review than a multi-page story because I ain’t got time for that.

First Look


Ew, Xbone. Also take note of that 250 MB/s claim for later.


The plastic shroud isn’t much better. Quality is good (nice ABS job), but the branding is cringe.


Probably the best view of the device, the back.


The charge ports are useful I guess. But that data connector. Micro USB 3 is the spawn of Satan and WD should feel bad for using it. For goodness sake USB C has been around for years now.

Need for Speed

So I test drive speeds with ATTO and CrystalDiskMark on my desktop.


I’ve always found CDM to read a little higher than ATTO. I don’t know why, but it does. Anyways, as you can see by the numbers above the drive does hit the 250 MB/s claim. It’s a bit tight, but it does. Being a mechanical drive you can also see that it is atrociously slow at random read/write.

Chuck it in the Shuck it Bucket

The real reason why I acquired this drive was the various internet reports of it being an HC520 in disguise. I wanted a larger 7200 RPM data drive anyways, so I said chuck it in the shuck it bucket.

And I did

I don’t actually have pictures of the shucking process, but it’s a bit more complicated than the Easyshucks. You’ll want

  • PH1 or PH2 screwdriver
  • T10 (?) screwdriver
  • Needlenose pliers
  • Spudger or similar

Steps to shuck are

  1. Remove the four black T10 screws on top of the enclosure, be careful, they are shallow!
  2. Carefully work a spudger or similar around the seam near the outer edge on the top of the enclosure. There are like nine clips and two hooks keeping the top of the enclosure on.
  3. With the top off carefully unplug the fan connector from the PCB near the ports.
  4. With the pliers remove the four black plastic clips that are holding the hard drive to the mounting points. From the top they just look like glossy black plastic rectangles. I found it easiest to kind of just commit to it and rock them off one side.
  5. Pull the hard drive out, the PCB will come with it.
  6. Remove the screws on the bottom of the PCB.
  7. Remove the screws and rubber pads from the side of the hard drive.
  8. Do everything in the opposite order if you want to swap in another drive to use the enclosure.

Yep, it’s an HC520, AKA an enterprise grade helium filled Western Digital Ultrastar.

nice

Gotta Faster and Slower

So time to throw it in a PC! You’ll want to make sure the drive doesn’t get 3.3V otherwise it will promptly not work.


You may notice something here.

The top speed went down, but the speeds at smaller sizes went up. Running the test multiple times came up with the same general result. It’s still close enough to 250 MB/s, as does it fall near the data sheet’s 255 MB/s.

Conclusion

The TL;DR is that if you want an enterprise drive for cheap get one. If you don’t then don’t. I’ve already repurposed the enclosure for an older drive.

9 Likes

Good to know this has a nice drive in it. This seems to be more expensive then a 12tb easyshuck or elements, but I think those do not have quite as nice a drive.

I splurged a little on ths drive, but my education discount at WD took 15% off the sticker price which helped a lot.

I’m also just kind of tired of mechanical drives in general, so I figured I’d go for the cheapest fastest spinning rust I could get. I’m also hoping that 256 MB cache will help out.

For a NAS or something I have zero doubts one of the other shuckable drives would make more sense.

2 Likes

Awesome post! I dont know how exactly xbox would fill that particular drive (uncompressed images for faster loading?).

Curious why you covered the serial number with your thumb? It is something I should cover as well if I post anything HDD related? How exactly can that info be exploited if I was to attack you?

Media file sizes are getting absolutely massive nowadays. I have several games that are near or above 100 GB each, and with each passing year they are only getting larger. If you have a large game and media collection I have zero doubts you could fill this pretty quick.

I cover serial numbers purely out of habit at this point. I still have habits from when I first started using computers. I guess you could use the serial number to exploit or mess with my warranty, but I’m not sure how that would be worth it for you.

1 Like

I wonder how this pans out really. The Xbox external with its case and other connecting bits is ~$280, the ultra star alone is ~$300 all the way up to ~$450

This would most likely be in the same boat as the other shuckable drives from WD. WD probably either makes hefty margins from bare drives, or WD is using the external drives as loss leaders. Although I’ve seen people claiming that the external drives are indeed enterprise drives, albeit ones that have failed quality control for one reason or another, which would make sense.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 273 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.