Popular titles like Destiny 2, Call of Duty: Warzone, and Fortnite are all it takes to eat up a significant portion of your hard drive. The WD Black 12TB D10 game drive for XBox one takes the crown for the highest capacity solution offering 12TB in a 3.5″ desktop drive form factor. It’s also not too shabby in performance either, boasting a solid 240 MB/s read and write speed. WD says the 12TB D10 can hold up to 300 games. Value-added features include three months of Game Pass Ultimate, which gives you Xbox Live Gold and Game Pass access on PC and Xbox. Reveal more in WD Black 12TB D10 game drive for XBox one review.
Specifications – WD Black 12TB D10 game drive for XBox One
- Capacity 12TB
- Interface transfer rate 5Gb/s
- Interfaces USB 3.1 Gen 1
- Operating temperature 5°C to 35°C
- Operating humidity 20% to 80%
- Dimensions 7.68 x 4.92 x 1.73 in (195.00 x 125.00 x 44.00 mm)
- Weight 2.16 kgs (0.98 lbs)
- Color Black
Pros & Cons – WD Black 12TB D10 game drive for XBox One
Pros
- Speed 200+mb/s 255mb/s avg IMO one of the faster large capacity drives, I hear its a 7200rpm 8tb WD gold drive, with no sata capability as far as teardown.
- Cooling option Some drives lack a cooling option which IMO insures the overall longevity of the drive, of which I purchased with a warranty
- Reputable brand of which I already have a warranty account
- So for 20$ you have a bestbuy protection plan and WD brands warranty that comes with purchase.
Cons
- As some reviews have stated it does make noise at times
Price
At $199, the D10 is very well priced priced considering 8TB hard drives by themselves run between $150 and $200. Bundle that with an external enclosure which provides instant portability and easy plug and play compatibility and the D10 becomes a great value.
Package content – WD Black 12TB D10 game drive for XBox One
The box is all black with white and orange writing. The front of the box has a large picture of the WD_BLACK D10 Gaming Drive, the storage capacity of 8GB as well as the advertised speed of up to 250 MB/s.
The back of the box contains a picture of the back of the drive, where all the ports are located. Ports include: a 12V power, USB Micro-B for Data transfers, and two 7.5W USB Type-A charging ports. The WD_BLACK D10 has rubber feet on one of its sides and comes with a vertical stand.
WD Black 12TB D10 game drive for XBox One review
Design & size
The hard drive itself feels great to the touch and it’s quite heavy as expected. The WD_BLACK D10 is a bit bulky, but 8TB of storage just doesn’t come in a compact form factor yet. Despite its bulky size, the D10 is the best-looking external drive we’ve come across. This is due to its WD_BLACK branding and minimalistic styling.
Read and write speed
Western Digital says the WD Black 10 is capable of a 250MB/s read and write speed, which while not record-breaking, is certainly good enough to be getting on with. You’re not going to find many drives that go much faster at this price and with this much storage included.
7200 RPM
The drive spins at a standard 7,200rpm and comes with active cooling technology to make sure it doesn’t overheat (reassuring if you’re going to be working or gaming directly from it). That huge 8TB capacity is good enough to store 200 games on average, Western Digital says, though obviously it depends how massive your games are.
Noise
Hard drive noise is minimal, but that element is present whenever the Xbox One has to access the D10 for data, but it’s minor in the grand scheme of things and once you’ve got a game running, it’s not as if you’ll be noticing it very often. As for the actual speed of accessing games, I did run a few stopwatch tests. The D10 is marginally quicker than the internal Xbox One hard drive, but by a handful of seconds at best.
File format
On Xbox One, the D10 can only store games on it, but it won’t allow you to save 4K HDR captures unless you format it from NTFS to FAT32. Do that, and you lose the option to keep games on it.
Storage for game geek
Take all your favorite Xbox One games with you when upgrading to the Xbox Series X|S! With the WD_BLACK D10 Game Drive for Xbox, you can simply backup your Xbox One game library and immediately start playing them your new Xbox Series X|S for upgrading made easy.
Performance
I transferred around 750GB of my own game data over to the D10, which took around an hour to do. I’ve got plenty of big games locked and loaded onto my Xbox One X: Ubisoft’s offerings take up a LOT of space, The Elder Scrolls Online is no joke and Game Pass has seen me sampling a lot of content lately. Between Rainbow Six Siege, The Division 2, Wolfenstein: Youngblood (I WAS YOUNG AND DRUNK OKAY?) and more niche fair such Tembo the Badass Elephant, there was a lot to move over.
I didn’t even come close to breaking double digits on the D10 by the time I was done.
I’ve managed to use up a grand total of 4% of the D10 once I’d done some spring-cleaning, and still had room for other games that had been on my mind. Call of Duty Warzone, Destiny 2 and the current Hitman experience were all added to the mix, as were all the Yakuza games currently available on Game Pass and I still barely made a dent in that bloody lunchbox. Space, the D10 has it. End of review, 10/10 right?
