Western Digital WD Black² Dual Drive Review

[section_title title=”Closer Look”]Closer Look

A quick glance at the packaging reveals that  Western Digital have gone with a professional looking black minimalist aesthetic with the packaging. The box has WD Black² logo on the front, with a picture of what appears to be a HDD spool wheel spinning and shooting off flames.  It is certainly eye catching and looks very attractive albeit a little muted for a retail environment.

The back of the box pretty much follows the same design as the front, except for the large stealthy number 2 and the yellowish lines.  There is however corporate information in the small print at the bottom of the box. Overall a very clean look in terms of the box packaging.

After taking the inner box out of its card housing and opening it up, we are greeted with a quick install guide, the WD Black² USB key which I will talk about more later and a warranty information leaflet.  Even the inside of the box looks and feels like a premium product and, for a penny shy of £250 I wouldn’t have expected any less.

Also included with the WD Black² Dual Drive, is a dual USB 3.0 cable which allows you to connect the drive externally to your PC.  Each cable accesses a different part of the dual drive, one cable for the SSD part of the drive and the other for the HDD part of the drive.

Overall the packaging looks good and has plenty of accessories but I am slightly dumbfounded as to why there is no disc to install any of the software from.  Although the software is available from the Western Digital website for download, I think for £250 it could have been included within the box packaging.

The WD Black² dual drive comes packaged in an anti-static bag which protects the drive from ESD (electronic static discharges) which can potentially damage and kill electronic components like SSDs and HDDs  during transit or due to improper handling.

Once the anti-static bag has been removed, we have the WD Black² dual drive itself in all its glory.  If first looks could tell you about a product, this tells me that it’s a top quality product; it looks absolutely great and I’m tempted to give it the design award straight off.  The all black casing with the embedded PCB, to the WD Black² logo in the bottom right corner in gold, it certainly looks the part.  This is also a 2.5” sized drive making it a perfect fit for AIO PC’s and laptops alike.

Taking a look at the SATA connection, the 120GB SSD and 1TB HDD both share the same SATA 6GB/s port meaning that this will probably have a slight performance hit over independent drives but my testing later will actually answer that.  The end of the drive is open also and has the possibility of being a little dust magnet so the open end is something to be a little wary of if one is installing into a case that may have high airflow and no dust filters.

On the flip side of the drive, we have the 2 PCBs, 1 for the SSD and the other for the HDD.  I do think it would have looked a lot better if it had been fully enclosed with an aluminum casing like most SSDs/HDDs especially given the price, but due to the construction of the Black² Western Digital probably had a good reason to leave the PCBs open to air.  The drive has the same mounting holes as any 2.5” SSD/HDD does making it a perfect upgrade for those wanting combine the 2 types of drives into one space, such as a laptop.