Not dead yet: WD is launching new 2.5-inch 6TB external hard drives

The vast majority of laptops today use solid-state drives, which is why development of new, higher-capacity 2.5-inch hard drives has all but stalled. Or rather, it nearly has. It seems that the 2.5-inch form factor has a little more life left in it after all, as today Western Digital has released a range of new external storage products based on a new 2.5-inch 6TB high-capacity hard drive based.

WD’s new 6TB spinner will be used to offer updated versions of the company’s My Passport, Black P10 and G-DRIVE ArmorATD portable storage products. What’s worth noting, however, is that WD isn’t selling the bare 2.5-inch drive individually – at least not yet – so for now it’s reserved exclusively for use in external storage devices.

As a result, WD doesn’t release much about the 6TB hard drive itself. The maximum read speed for these products is listed as 130MB/s – the same as WD’s existing external devices – and write performance goes unmentioned.

Notably, all of these 6TB devices are thicker than their existing 5TB counterparts, strongly suggesting that WD is increasing its storage capacity not by improving their areal density, but by adding another platter to its existing drive platform has. This in turn would explain why these new drives are being used in external storage products, as WD’s 5TB 2.5-inch drives are already 15mm thick, which is the highest standard thickness for a 2.5-inch form factor already incompatible with a significant number of portable devices. External drives, on the other hand, are the only place these even thicker 2.5-inch drives would fit.

WD’s specs also gloss over whether these drives are based on SMR (Shingled Magnetic Recording) technology. The company was already using SMR on its 5TB drives to achieve the required storage density there, so it’s very likely that it will continue to use SMR on its 6TB drives. This is likely why the company doesn’t release write performance specs for the drives, as in our testing we’ve seen SMR drives hit a low of just 10MB/second when the drive needs to rewrite data.

Depending on the specific drive model, all external storage drives use either a USB-C port or the very original USB Micro-B 3.0 port. However, regardless of the physical port used, all drives feature a USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps) interface, which is more than sufficient given the drives’ physically limited transfer speeds.

In summary, WD says the new drives are available in retail stores now. The WD My Passport Ultra and WD My Passport Ultra for Mac with USB-C are each $199.99; WD My Passport and WD My Passport for Mac are $179.99; the WD My Passport Works With USB-C is $184.99; The gaming-focused WD_Black P10 Game Drive is priced at $184.99 and the SanDisk Professional G-Drive ArmorATD is priced at $229.99. All Western Digital external storage drives are backed by a three-year limited warranty.