Western Digital's 4 TB WD4001FAEX Review: Back In Black
Western Digital recently added a new model to its Black family of performance-oriented hard drives. The new disk, technically referred to as WD4001FAEX, sports 4 TB of space. It spins at 7,200 RPM, employs a 6 Gb/s SATA interface, and includes 64 MB of cache.
Although the company won't divulge how many platters this behemoth uses to hit its capacity ceiling, our benchmark/power data suggests the magic number is five. You can’t tell by simply looking at it; the drive is 26.1 mm-thick, just like many other 3 and 4 TB repositories.
As a general rule, the more capacity a hard drive hosts, the longer it takes to benchmark. Western Digital's WD4001FAEX is certainly no exception. It took us 19 hours of testing to get a complete picture of its performance. Fortunately, the company kept this in mind when it sent out samples, providing us with some much-needed sugar. It's too bad that you don't get chocolate as part of the disk's standard bundle. When you spend $330, a bare 4 TB hard drive is all you get.
Technical Specifications
| Manufacturer | Western Digital |
|---|---|
| Family | Black |
| Model Number | WD4001FAEX |
| Form Factor | 3.5" |
| Capacity | 4 TB |
| RPM | 7,200 |
| Other Capacities | 500 GB, 1 TB, 2 TB |
| Platters | Unknown |
| Cache | 64 MB |
| Interface | SATA 6Gb/s |
| Operating Temperature | 0-55° C |
| Power Consumption at Idle (Manufacturer's Specifications) | 8.1 W |
| Power Consumption at Idle (Measured) | 7.9 W |
| Maximum Allowable Shock Level (2 ms, read) | 65 G |
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Benchmark System
| Benchmark System Hardware | |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i5-2500K (Sandy Bridge), Stepping D2, 32 nm, 4C/4T, 3.3 GHz Base Clock Rate, 3.7 GHz Maximum Turbo Boost, 4 x 256 KB L2 Cache, 6 MB Shared L3 Cache, HD Graphics 3000, 95 W TDP |
| Motherboard | Gigabyte Z68X-UD3H-B3, Revision: 0.2, Chipset: Intel Z68 Express, BIOS: F3 |
| RAM | 2 x 2 GB DDR3-1333, Corsair TR3X6G1600C8D |
| System SSD | Intel X25-M G1, 80 GB, Firmware 0701, SATA 3Gb/s |
| Benchmarked Hard Drive | Western Digital Black WD4001FAEX, 4 TB, 64 MB Cache, SATA 6Gb/s, 7,200 RPM |
| Controller | Intel PCH Z68 SATA 6 Gb/s |
| Power Supply | Seasonic X-760 760 W, SS-760KM Active PFC F3 |
| Benchmarks | |
| Benchmark Software | CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 h2benchw 3.16 PCMark 7 1.0.4 |
| I/O Benchmark Software | IOMeter 2006.07.27 Webserver Benchmark Database Benchmark Fileserver Benchmark Workstation Benchmark Streaming Reads Streaming Writes 4K Random Reads 4K Random Writes |
| System Software and Drivers | |
| Software and Drivers | Details |
| Operating System | Windows 7 x64 Ultimate SP1 |
| Intel INF | 9.2.0.1030 |
| Intel Rapid Storage Technology | 10.5.0.1026 |
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