Western Digital's 4 TB WD4001FAEX Review: Back In Black

Western Digital has a new 4 TB flagship. Its WD4001FAEX is part of the company’s Black family of performance-oriented drives. Spinning at 7,200 RPM, it might seem at home in a high-end desktop, but our numbers suggest it might fare better in a server.
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.
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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.
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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							http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wd4001faex-4tb-review,3368.html