WD Black D10 vs P10 – which is good for gaming? Both of them is high-performance HDD to optimize your console or PC gaming experience and drive your game. Purpose-built for gamers based on WD Black quality and reliability so you can play without limits. Find details in this comparative article.
Specifications – WD Black D10 vs P10
WD Black D10
- 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
WD Black P10
- WD Black P10 Game Drive Specs
- 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)
Pros & Cons – WD Black D10 vs P10
WD Black D10
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
WD Black P10
PROS
- Sturdy, compact design
- Good grippability
- Appealing gamer aesthetic
CONS
- USB Type-C cable not included
Price and warranty
The D10 Game Drive offers 8TB of storage using a 7,200rpm hard drive with active cooling and costs $199.99, where as the D10 Game Drive for Xbox One pushes that up to 12TB and includes a three-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership. It costs $299.95. Both drives include a three-year limited warranty.
Finally we have the P10 Game Drive and Xbox One variant. The standard P10 will ship in capacities between 2TB ($89.99) and 5TB ($149.99), and connects via a USB 3.2 Gen 1 port. The P10 Game Drive for Xbox One will ship in capacities between 3TB ($109.99) and 5TB ($149.99) and includes a two-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership. Both these drives include a three-year limited warranty.
Compare WD Black D10 vs WD Black P10
| WD_Black 8TB D10 Game Drive, Portable External Hard Drive | WD_Black 5TB P10-Game Drive, Portable External Hard Drive | WD 8TB My Book Desktop External Hard Drive | WD 4TB Gaming Drive works with Playstation 4 Portable External Hard Drive | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compatible Devices | Xbox one; Playstation 4 Pro; Windows 8.1, 10; macOS 10.11+ | Xbox One, Playstation 4, PC, Mac | Desktop | PS4; PC |
| Digital Storage Capacity | 8000 GB | 5 TB | 8 TB | 4 TB |
| Hard Disk Description | Desktop | Portable | Desktop | Portable |
| Hard Disk Size | 8.0 TB | 5.0 TB | 8 TB | 4.0 TB |
| Hardware Interface | USB | USB 3.0 | USB 3.0 | USB 3.0 |
| Item Dimensions | 7.68 x 4.92 x 1.73 inches | 4.65 x 3.46 x 0.82 inches | 5.50 x 1.90 x 6.70 inches | 4.33 x 0.83 x 4.33 inches |
| Item Weight | 2.16 lbs | 0.51 lbs | 2.12 lbs | 0.51 lbs |
| Memory Storage Capacity | 8 TB | 5000 GB | 8 GB | 4 GB |
| Size | 8TB | 5TB | 8TB | 4TB |
Customer reviews : WD Black D10 vs P10
Dimensions
The D10 is the bulkiest of the group, followed by the P10. The SSD Gaming Drive Accelerated is the smallest. You can find the measurements below:
- WD_BLACK D10: 7.68″ x 4.92″ x 1.73″
- WD_BLACK P10: 4.65″ x 3.46″ x 0.50″
Design
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
The P10 manages to include all parts in 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 the same dimensions for $139.99, as well 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, like the WD My Book (by comparison, 6.7 by 1.9 by 5.5 inches).
Capacity Options
The WD_BLACK D10 only comes in one capacity option although it has the most available space out of all three products. The WD_BLACK P10 comes in three size options while the WD Gaming Drive Accelerated is available in two.
You can take a look at the model number for each capacity below:
WD_BLACK D10:
- 12 TB: WDBA5E0120HBK-NESN
WD_BLACK P10:
- 1 TB: WDBA6U0010BBK-WESN
- 2 TB: WDBA6U0020BBK-WESN
- 3 TB: WDBA5G0030BBK-WESN
- 4 TB: WDBA5G0040BBK-WESN
- 5 TB: WDBA5G0050BBK-WESN
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate
The 12 TB WD_BLACK D10 comes with a 3-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription.
The 1 TB WD_BLACK P10 includes a 1-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription while the 3 TB and 5 TB versions each comes with a 2-month Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership.
Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X compatibility
Both D10 and P10 Western Digital storage drives can also be used on the Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X. You will be able to play backwards compatible Xbox, Xbox 360 and Xbox One games directly on the external drives.
You can also use the devices as cold storage for Xbox Series S and Xbox Series X games. Doing so will save you extra time from having to download and/or re-install the next-generation games.
USB Connection
The WD_BLACK D10 and WD_BLACK P10 both use USB 3.2 while the WD Gaming Drive Accelerated uses USB 3.0.
Performance Speed
The WD SSD Gaming Drive Accelerated is the fastest out of this group as it can reach a maximum speed that is 60 percent more than the WD_BLACK D10 and 208 percent more than WD_BLACK P10. You can find the speed specifications below:
- WD_BLACK D10 HDD Game Drive for Xbox: Up to 250 MB per second
- WD_BLACK P10 HDD Game Drive for Xbox: Up to 130 MB per second
- WD SSD Gaming Drive Accelerated for Xbox: Up to 400 MB per second
Operating Temperature
All three Western Digital Xbox storage drives have the same operating temperature range of 0°C to 35°C.
Storage Temperature
The products in this versus guide also have the same storage temperature range of -20°C to 65°C.
Read and write speed
The most important thing to know about the P10 Game Drive is that it’s a 2.5-inch hard drive that spins at 5,400rpm, which means that its data transfer speeds will be glacially slow compared with those of an external SSD. The P10 is rated for speeds up to 140MBps, compared with typical speeds of 1,000MBps for most external SSDs on speedy versions of USB and built on PCI Express NVMe innards. This means you shouldn’t actually load games directly from the P10, but instead transfer game files to and from your PC’s internal drive when you’re ready to play them.
Western Digital says the WD Black D10 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.
Connectors
In the P10 Game Drive’s box, you’ll find just a single USB Type-A cable and a Quick Install Guide. This means you’ll need an adapter to connect the drive to a USB-C port, if that’s your only port option. The drive itself has 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.
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 D10 vs P10 – Performance review
WD Black D10
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.
WD Black P10
The P10 Game Drive’s results on our external drive benchmark tests show that it performs exactly as you’d expect from a modern 5,400rpm hard drive. Its sequential read and write speeds, as measured by the Crystal DiskMark 6.0 test, are approximately 130MBps, not far from the rated maximum of 140MBps. The read and write speeds measured by the BlackMagic Disk Speed test are a bit lower—just shy of 120MBps—though they’re not out of the ordinary. The WD My Passport 5TB and the Seagate Backup Plus Ultra Touch 2TB recorded nearly identical results on these tests.
When it comes to transferring files to and from the drive, the P10 took 12 seconds to move a 1.2GB folder full of various file types. Its score of 1,896 on the trace-based PCMark 7 storage subtest is also 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 have tested were benchmarked well before the current version of PCMark, version 10, debuted.)
