Western Digital Black 1TB NVMe Review

Introduction

If, like us, you have been in the world of computer hardware for an extremely long time then you’ll have two names flash into your mind when people start speaking of storage. Seagate, and Western Digital. Both of these companies provided high quality, reliable, mechanical drives that formed the basis of nearly all of our PC systems for the vast majority of our lives.

Western Digital drives are so famous that if ever we get a system in for review that has a mechanical drive for data storage it is pretty much guaranteed to be one of their models that has been utilised. Massive capacity, reliable performance, affordability; these have been the watchwords of the San Jose company for a long time.

A couple of years ago we saw WDC acquire the flash storage giant SanDisk in a 16 billion dollar deal and with the release of the Western Digital Black 1TB NVMe drive we’re seeing the fruits of that partnership. With Samsung very much leading the NAND charge can the might of the California company muscle into the M.2 market with something that grabs everyone’s attention? Let’s find out.

Technical Specifications

There are three different capacities available with the Black, and the usual slight speed increases as you get ever larger. We have the 1TB model in for review which hits the price/performance sweet spot and frees you from worrying if the next installation will be too much to squeeze on, particularly as games get ever larger.