WD_BLACK 500GB D30 Game Drive SSD - Portable External Solid State Drive, Compatible with Playstation, Xbox, & PC, Up to 900MB/s - WDBATL5000ABK-WESN

The performance.

I actually tested this on a Ryzen laptop as I dont own any consoles. Speed was as advertised, but honestly, I have tested smaller units that performed faster.

Literally made my computer slow down and made my mouse freeze

For a real-world test I took 8 gig of files on an internal HDD and copied them via USB-C to this drive. 1522 files of varying sizes. Copy time was 1 minute 40 seconds exactly. Average speed was between 73 and 80 Megabytes a second. Deleting all those files took under 2 seconds. But the drive slowed down towards the end. From an internal SSD to this drive on the same connection was 280 meg a second average, but after half way through it dropped to 111 meg a second and stayed there. At times it dropped to 17 meg a second. This was copying 20 gig of random files. It took 2 minutes and 41 seconds. So I tried a different internal drive, this time an NVME. Max speed was 280 gig a minute, but at about 30% through it dropped down to 110 meg and at times dipped to the teens! OK, time for a test. I hooked up a different external SSD I use for videos and tested it. Same files as the previous test, same connection. I had speeds over 320 meg a second, averaged 290 and never hit the sudden drop-off the WD Black had. I occasionally dropped to the 50s. My benchmark software put it at a max of 418 meg a second. Nowhere can I find data on the drives cache size, but it looks like the cache is filling up at around 10 gig of continuous transfers when transferring a lot of files and data. But do games transfer that much data at a time? After all, its marketed as a gaming drive. I moved a few games to it to see if I could notice any lag - and I could not. WWZ, Cyberpunk and Outer Worlds all were fine. For gaming its fine - and a good price. As a data drive for storing a lot of photos, video files, etc. theres better. Finally, the light is annoying. Its a slender bar thats only active during read and write. Theres no indication if its powered up. I realize not all externals have that, but I find a power light handy.

I got this for my sons computer. Hes a gamer and has his computer filled up with games already. Its only got a 250GB storage capacity so he has some games that he was frequently uninstalling and reinstalling when he wanted to play them. I got him this drive so he could store his larger games externally on the drive and free up more of his internal drive. He absolutely loves it and its been working well for him. Its fast and the data transfer is both quick and steady. Hes had no problem playing AAA games from it. It doesnt really even get warm and of course, because its an SSD its very quiet unlike my old external HDDs.

I opted not to use the Game Drive for games because I do a lot of audio and visual work that requires huge files and inordinately long transfer times. By segregating them onto the WD Black 500GB D30 Game Drive SSD, I found it easier to locate and manipulate them as needed. High-Definition music and film when played seem to exhibit incrementally increased error rates as their resolution increases, so I was especially interested in testing the WD Blacks reliability during long periods of high density use. Plugged into the standard USB 3.0 port of my Oppo BDP-205, my routine transfer rates are 128Mb/s for 4K Ultra HD Blu-Ray, obviously well below the capacity of the WD Black, but my interest is reliability so Ive been using it for a solid eight hours a day over the past week. Performance has been flawless, thus far. The WD Black is PnP and booted instantly to my PC and both my Oppos. Its size might be a bit larger than necessary, but it certainly beats all of the portable drives Ive accumulated over the years. It met all of my requirements and expectations so I can recommend it without reservation.

The read speed is perfect for consoles as they only have usb 3.1 ports so the data it can transfer caps out around 900-1000mbs per second so the D30s 900mb/s read speed is perfectly fine for consoles

Very fast

Product works fine with my PlayStation 5.

Dunno