By: Jonathan Kwan

November 27, 2015

A few weeks ago, I went to eat with a bunch of people after church. As we approached the restaurant, one of my friends decided to open and hold the door to let me in first -- so I did. As I walked through the door, I heard my other friends say, in a not very subtle manner, "What a douche!" Why would they make such a comment? Well, the person who held the door open for me was a girl. But before you dismiss me as some misogynist man living in the wrong era and continent (This is 2015 North America, after all), let me give you a bit of context. I am the kind of guy who normally holds the door for everybody, male or female, every day of the week. I also agree it is pretty weird -- and "douchey", so to say -- when a girl opens a door for a guy, but this is a bit of a special case. There has been a long running joke between us about how she always like to open doors, and because she does it every time we are together, I eventually gave up, and just let her do her thing. What we can see here is, despite the fact some people say chivalry is dead nowadays in Western culture for whatever reason, many of us still share some common values and social protocols when it comes to things like these. I do not believe this is too different when compared to the results of the SSD revolution that began near the end of the last decade. The role of a hard drive switched from being the primary storage medium in your computer to a complementary component that works in the presence with a solid state drive; where the SSD is used to store your operating system and programs, and the HDD is used to store large files and folders. Does this mean performance HDDs are irrelevant nowadays? I do not think so, and neither does Western Digital. Equipped with a dual core processor and 128MB of cache, the Black WD6001FZWX 6TB aims to be at the forefront of speed and reliability for professionals and enthusiasts alike. Just like how we do not normally expect girls to open doors for guys, the purpose of this product is not to be your boot drive, but rather to give you a bathtub of capacity to store your entire library of videos and photos without slowing down your workflow. Will it live up to our expectations? Read on to find out!

Like last month when we reviewed the Western Digital Blue SSHD WD40E31X 4TB, the company sent us their latest hard drives using UPS Express from their American headquarters in Irvine, California, USA. Yes, I did say "hard drives" in plural form, because a couple of other massive 6TB drives -- the Red Pro WD6001FFWX and Red WD60EFRX -- also tagged along for this trip. We will cover those models in the coming weeks. But in case you are wondering about their performance, the results will be posted in today's comparison charts. As always, everything arrived in excellent condition to us here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada for our review today. Without too much chit-chat, let us crack open the box to check out what 18,000GB of glorious magnetic storage looks like in the real world.

Inside the medium sized, brown corrugated cardboard box was a smaller box, securely placed in the presence of bubble wrap to fill up any remaining space. If you have ever sent Western Digital products back for warranty return, then the small box inside should be quite familiar to you. These flap top boxes open via two tabs on the side, and the meat of it is clipped between two black plastic shells to ensure they travel safely and securely inside. The Western Digital Black WD6001FZWX 6TB was placed inside a sealed anti-static bag for additional protection. To be honest, I have never purchased a hard drive that is not in OEM packaging in the past, so this should be nothing new to most people.

Before we move on, let us take a look at the features and specifications of the Western Digital Black WD6001FZWX 6TB, as obtained from the manufacturer's website:

Specifications

Model number: WD6001FZWX

Interface: SATA 6 Gb/s

Formatted capacity: 6 TB

Form factor: 3.5-inch

Advanced Format (AF): Yes

RoHS compliant: Yes

Performance

Data transfer rate (max):

- Buffer to host: 6 Gb/s

- Host to/from drive (sustained): 218 MB/s

Rotational speed (RPM): 7200

Reliability/Data Integrity

Load/unload cycles: 300,000

Non-recoverable read errors per bits read: <1 in 10^14

Limited warranty (years): 5

Power Management

Average power requirements (W):

- Read/Write: 10.6

- Idle: 7.6

- Standby/Sleep: 1.6

Environmental Specifications

Temperature (°C):

- Operating: 5 to 55

- Non-operating: -40 to 70

Shock (Gs):

- Operating (2 ms, write): 30

- Operating (2 ms, read): 65

- Non-operating (2 ms): 300

Acoustics (dBA):

- Idle: 31

- Seek (average): 34

Physical Dimensions

Height (in./mm, max): 1.028/26.1

Length (in./mm, max): 5.787/147

Width (in./mm, ± .01 in.): 4/101.6

Weight (lb./kg,): 1.58/0.72 ± 3%

Page Index

1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications2. 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