Game downloads, updates and patches are bigger than ever. It was only last week that I had a Modern Warfare update that was circa 50GB, bringing the total space requirement on my PS4 to 160GB. I only have 500GB storage, I had to delete a game and at some point, I won’t be able to manage the storage anymore and will be limited on what I can play. Thankfully there is a solution and WD have delivered. Add on hard drives, external drives that can be plugged into your console or PC to give you increased storage.
WD or Western Digital have released a new range of drives, specifically for gamers, in the form of the P10 Game Drive range. The range includes 2, 4 and 5TB drives, they’re portable and on paper, appear to offer decent speeds. We got sent one to try out, so let’s do just that.
Within the box you get the hard drive, a USB A to micro B cable and a quick install guide. The P10 range is based on 2.5″ drives and looks very much like something a gamer would us. It’s got a black casing, with a minimalist military design to it and dare I say it, looks like a mini version of your typical bomb-defusing kit you find in Call of Duty or Siege. The drive sits on four small rubber feet, which really helps it stay put on your desk. There is a single micro USB B port and an indicator light at one end of the drive.
As stated before, it’s a 2.5″ drive, so you can gauge the size of it if you’re familiar with drives but it’s handheld, relatively lightweight and can be easily carried or transports with ease. Actual size is 118L x 88W x 13-20H mm. It’s worth mentioning the drive comes with a 3 year warranty, although this is limited in some way.
It’s a plug and play drive, no need to set up but you format it if desired before using. The drive is compatible with PS4 & PS4 Pros (OS version 4.5+), Xbox One, Windows 8.1 / 10 and Mac OS 10.11+. WD state that with a 5TB drive, this equates to roughly 125 games but that means each game is only 40GB, which in reality, is not the case. Quick math, you could get 33 copies of Modern Warfare on the 5TB version.
What more is there to do than run the tests and check the results:
The results from the benchmark test are very positive and beat the stated speeds slightly with 135MB/s read, 125MB/s write. Disappointing results on the larger 4K files though. I should also add this is a 5400RPM drive, which has its pros and cons compared to a 7200RPM drive found in some competitors drives. In a real-life test, speeds drop a little but not by much and I was able to copy a large video file very quickly at 120MB/s. I did plug this into my PS4 too and transferred some game files over and it appeared to be reasonably quick but it’s hard to tell via the Playstation OS.
The 2TB version retails at £80.99, 4TB at £96.99 and the 5TB at £123.99. The speeds are respectable, the drive is compact, it looks good and that is a hell of a lot of storage for the money. WD is renowned for their quality drives and coupled with that 3-year warranty, you can be sure your games or content will be safe on this drive.
For more info, head over to the official WD P10 Black webpage. It’s worth checking out the other products in their black range, NVMe and standard SSD’s, plsu larger capacity drives from the D10.
