WD - WD_BLACK P50 1TB External USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Portable SSD - Black

This device is getting great performance connected to my Asus G15 Strix Advantage Edition laptop. The highest throughput my laptop has is USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C. This SSD achieved the appropriate speed for that particular throughput at approximately 1,000+ Read & 900+ Write Speeds. In order to hit the 2,000 Read speeds, you will need a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 computer or device, which there aren't many at the moment. Just know that when you purchase it. I can easily game with the external drive without issues. Just understand that the device is formatted for exFAT in order to be compatible with Windows, MAC and consoles. If you are only going to be using the drive on a Windows machine, you may want to reformat to NTFS. When placing PC files on the drive, your file size will likely be much much larger than the native file because of how the exFAT formats files. For example, my PC game with a total file size of a little less than 6GB took approximately 45GB of space because the particular game has a lot of little files. It really surprised me when I observed this the first time and had to read about why it occurred. Just trying to help you in case you experience something similar. I may reformat to NTFS since this drive will primarily be for my Windows gaming computer. The device looks great, is really fast, silent and doesn't get too hot. Just know the proper speeds you should be getting through your particular throughput device and consider the above drive formats. Anyhow, I think you will really like this device and it comes with a 5 year warranty for peace of mind.

This little drive is incredibly fast! I’m a professional digital artist with tons of content and late 2014 Mac Mini desktop computer which is already laden with tons of Adobe and Microsoft Office software. I did upgrade so an EVO SSD (1 tb) but still with well over 500 gigs of content I was beginning to experience some lag. I dumped it all onto this ssd the other day and it took only 18 minutes! (despite this computer having only the now somewhat outdated usb 3.0 ports) Bravo! What a great little external!

If you buy a PS5 and want to keep your PS4 games stored then do yourself a favor and grab this ssd also. The speeds with this are ridanculous just like the PS5.

Bought this drive and you really can tell a difference between this and a hdd on your Ps5. Launches games quicker. Download speeds depend on your internet not the drive. The drive has a wicked read and write speed

I really like the ssd. Id say get it if you can afford it.

I recently purchased a gaming laptop from Best Buy, and I love just about everything about it. The only thing I wanted to change was, you guessed it, more space. We have an Xbox Game Pass, and they have so many great games, and with some big releases coming in at over 30gb we didn’t want to fill up our 512gb SSD on our laptop. I considered purchasing another internal SSD but didn’t want to open up my laptop unless I needed to. Enter the WD Black P50 1TB External SSD, and we could not be happier with it. First, it is fast. I was able to move games over from my primary SSD to the WD one in very little time. We are talking about 200gb worth of info in just a few minutes. Since there are no moving parts it makes no noise, unlike the older HHD. It does get very warm whenever you are pushing it but normally is very cool to the touch. Plus, I am guessing had I went with an internal SSD that heat would have been hampering the internals of my laptop so guess it’s good that it is sitting on the table next to it instead. Size, this thing is tiny, I tried to include some images to show the size of the WD drive. Not that I plan on pocketing it, but it would easily fit in my pocket, and for sure would fit in a laptop bag without any issues. I also really like the aesthetics of it, kind of a military surplus vibe. One last thing to keep in mind. Games run great from this, I was able to move every one of my games over to it, and have experienced no performance issues. They load up super fast, no change from the internal SSD. One issue I came across was that I was having some issues installing some games from Xbox Game Pass. The problem wasn’t with the WD drive. Out of the box, the WD drive is formatted exFAT I believe. Well, some games won’t let you install it on that type of filesystem. So, I moved my info off the drive, did a quick format to NTFS, and bam back in business. I have downloaded and installed a bunch of games, Fortnite, World of Warcraft, Gears Tactics, Elder Scrolls Online, Call of Duty Warzone, etc. and they all have worked perfectly. I am very happy we went with this WD external SSD to upgrade our storage. Tons of extra space, super quick speed, and small form factor. This is an easy recommendation to anyone looking for some fast storage to increase their space, but either can’t or doesn’t want to do an internal SSD upgrade

I am happy to say that this portable solid state hard drive is better than I had expected. I have used other external hard drives in the past and can easily say that this unit is equal to or greater than any other unit i have used. It boils down to three areas which drive me to this conclusion; size, sound and build. The size of this unit is a little larger than a deck of cards. It does not require a lot of room to store. With that being said, it fits perfectly on top of my console or pc and does not look like an eye sore since its dark in color and does not draw the eye. The second reason why i enjoy this hard drive is because it is whisper quiet. Having a the 3.2 capability, 2x2 set up, alongside of a whopping 1T storage size had me questioning if there would be a potential audible aspect, as the unit is as small as it is. I am also happy to say there this unit is silent. Lastly is the durability. The hard outer shell of this solid state hard drive put my mind to rest when moving between locations. Other portable drives have a fabric or flimsy exterior. Not this one. Its exterior is built tough, even with rubber feet to assure a sound grip as to wherever it is sitting. All in all, I recommend this unit because of its design, durability and whisper quiet sounds.

Wow, just wow. I am amazed such a thing exists with such raw speed. Keep in mind, this drive is designed as a gaming hard drive for fast load times but I am sure other users can put this bad boy to great use if you require an extremely fast (20 gbps) and reliable hard drive. I tried this review on a few computers to test performance… the test computers were a 2019 MacBook Pro 15 which supports USB-C 3.1 Gen 2, a 2018 Alienware R7 which also supports 3.1 Gen 2, and an Xbox One X at USB 3.0. I thought I had a device which supports the full 3.2 2x2 speeds but with all the USB rebranding it appears my devices that are 3.1 gen 2 which is now USB 3.2 gen 2 which is extremely confusing. So as a result my devices support a max of 10 gbps. I am not sure there are any motherboards on market which currently support 2x2 speeds of 20 gbps as all vendors I researched only show the 10gbps cap even for most custom builds I could find. Unboxing: This hard drive comes in a small box which has shows the actual size of the product. The interior contains the hard drive, a USB-C to C cable, a USB-A to C cable and warranty documentation. Build quality: The durability of this product is second to none. It is not designed for portability but appears to be designed to remain stationary. I am not saying you couldn’t carry it around but most of the portable types of these drives are sealed shut, this WD Black SSD appears to have little vents on the bottom to keep it cool. It is made out of metal and feels tough as can be with ridges and WD Black branding on the top. It simply looks cool next to your PC. The USB cables are a little short and on my desktops the hard drive was kind of hanging a little bit, luckily I had a longer Thunderbolt 3 cable sitting around which supported the full speeds needed. So I used that most of the time. Use: No setup is needed. I first tried it on my MacBook Pro which supports USB 3.1 gen 2. I used Black Magic to benchmark and initially got speeds of 952 MB/s write and 926.8 read. I was blown away already being able to transfer 8 GB files in just over 8 seconds. My initial thoughts were that this is going to be a game changer for transferring videos and RAW photos being able to use it to work off of exclusively… but I remembered it is designed for gaming so moved toward that. I installed it to my Alienware PC which supported similar USB speeds, I only got about 850 MB/s on the PC using Crystaldiskbench for some reason with the same USB 3.1 gen 2 support, but it was nothing to scoff at. After transferring Overwatch, Jedi Fallen Order, Doom Eternal and a few other games I gave it a shot. Overwatch ran smooth as can be with no loading stutters at all. The game loaded quickly but loading a level is hard to judge since there are often waiting rooms when getting into a game. Jedi the Fallen Order had similar issues since most of the loading times are integrated into cutscenes with dialog so it is hard to say if speeds were faster, but it again ran quickly and smooth. Doom eternal had noticeably quicker loading times overall. I later tried a game with huge loading times, Star Wars Battlefront II and Battlefield V. Times were still long but to me it felt like they were at least halved in comparison to the old SATA SSD they were loaded on. The drive is kind of overkill when installed on and Xbox One X. It appears it only supports USB 3.0 so it’s speed is greatly limited. You will not see drastic speed differences but loading times will be decreased. I did not see drastically different load times from my other PC I tried the games on but it was still far better than the original setup I had. I think a large limitation is the game design itself as most games integrate times for loading into the gameplay such as elevators, long hallways, slow moving dialog scenes, etc. Once these speeds are more common place perhaps games will adapt to it. If nothing else, you can be certain that game elements will load quickly, there will be no stutter when textures are cached and so on. Summary: This is a must have device for any gamer. Most computers are not able to take advantage of these speeds yet and there are no consoles ready for its ability yet. Next gen consoles like the Xbox One Series X and PS5 should support high speed interfaces so it is great for future proofing. If you have a brand new PC that supports USB 3.2 you are in for an amazing treat. Most high end PCs support 3.1 gen 2 right now and this will still give you amazing speeds (just be sure to use the right port, some are slower than others on PCs). Overall, this hard drive is worth the purchase if you are or are not a gamer. It has great potential for gamers and can be game changer for video / photo editing professionals.