The 4 TB Western Digital Black (WD4003FZEX)

The Western Digital WD4003FZEX is the second-generation 4 TB hard disk drive in the WD Black family, the successor of the WD4001FAEX. They are identical in every way but one - the newer WD4003FZEX features the Advanced Format Technology, while the older WD4001FAEX does not.

Like many other 3.5" desktop hard drives, the Western Digital WD4003FZEX has a label on the top plate and an uncovered PCB on the underside. The label has a lot of important information, like the hard drive model, store capacity as well as its date and place of manufacture. This particular drive was manufactured in Thailand on 28th October, 2013. Interestingly, Western Digital also added a QR code so you can scan it using your smartphone to learn more about the WD Red Black hard disk drive.

While this is an Advanced Format drive, there is no warning on the label about using WD Align with older operating systems like Windows XP. This is because this drive does not support older operating systems like Windows XP. You can use this drive in Windows XP or even Windows 98, but you will be limited to the first 2.1 TB.

Connectors & Jumpers

This is a Serial ATA hard drive, with native support for SATA 6 Gb/s. However, it is backward-compatible so you will have no problem using it with older SATA 3 Gb/s controllers.

The SATA 6 Gb/s interface is necessary for optimal performance since this WD Black hard disk drive boasts a maximum sustained internal (platter-to-buffer) transfer rate of 171 MB/s and a large and fast DDR2 SDRAM cache.

Like all Serial ATA drives, it comes the standard SATA data (left) and power (right) connectors and is hot-pluggable. That means you can connect and disconnect this hard disk drive to your PC while it's still running. To the left of the SATA connectors is the jumper block.

From what we can tell, Western Digital ships some drives with a jumper and others without a jumper. Since our OEM unit did not come with one, it is likely that only retail drives come with the jumper.

According to Western Digital, jumpering pins 1 and 2 enables Spread Spectrum Clocking (SSC). Placing the jumper across pins 5 and 6 will force the drive to use the slower SATA 3Gbits/s transfer speed. This is only necessary for certain SATA controllers that do not properly implement the SATA 6 Gb/s speed negotiation.

Breather Holes

The 4 TB Western Digital Black (WD4003FZEX) hard disk drive does not have any clearly-marked breather holes on the top plate. The underside has a breather hole (see picture on the right) near the top of the drive. This hole must not be covered.

Breather holes allow condensation inside the hard drive to escape. They also equalize the hard drive's internal pressure with the ambient air pressure. The hard disk drive needs them to function properly, so please make sure you do not occlude the holes!

Peeking Under The PCB

Western Digital has a penchant for keeping all surface-mounted components on the reverse side of the PCB - to prevent static damage and to allow for better cooling. With the PCB out of the way, you can see the two white thermal pads which help to transfer heat from the controllers to the hard disk drive chassis.

The 4 TB Western Digital Black Gen. 2 (WD4003FZEX) shares a lot of similarity with the 4 TB Western Digital Re (WD4000FYYZ) enterprise-grade hard disk drive. They have uncanningly similar specifications, and as you will see below - they use the same components too.

The WD4003FZEX drive uses the Marvell 88i9346-TFJ2 drive controller, which is the same controller used in the 4 TB RE (WD4000FYYZ), and is also used in the 3 TB Red (WD30EFRX) and the 1 TB VelociRaptor (WD1000DHTZ). This is a dual-core processor, which would boost its ability to handle multiple transactions simultaneously. It also uses an customised ST Microelectronics motor drive controller (WDHC8TD), which features the proprietary Smooth Drive pseudo-sinusoidal digital drive technology. Smooth Drive allows the hard disk drive to minimize torque ripple to reach a higher track density as well as reduce noise levels.

Western Digital also used the Samsung K4T51163QJ-BCE7, which is the same memory chip used in the 4 TB Western Digital Re (WD4000FYYZ). This is a 64 MB DDR2 SDRAM chip, with 4 memory banks and an operating speed of 800 MHz DDR. While this is the same operating speed as the DDR2-800 memory chip used in the 4 TB Western Digital Red (WD40EFRX) hard disk drive we recently reviewed, the Samsung K4T51163QJ-BCE7 has faster 5-5-5 timings (instead of 6-6-6).

Western Digital does not tout any special firmware for the Black family of hard disk drives. However, the WD4003FZEX actually ships with double the flash memory capacity of the 4 TB Western Digital Red (WD40EFRX), which features the NASware 2.0 firmware. Western Digital used a Winbond 25Q80BLVIG in the WD4003FZEX, which has a storage capacity of 8 Mbits (1024 KB) and a continuous transfer rate of 200 Mbits/s (25 MB/s).

Finally, the 4 TB Western Digital Black hard disk drive features two shock sensors, just like we saw in the 4 TB Western Digital Re. Surprisingly, this "multi-axis shock sensor" feature wasn't mentioned in the list of key features.

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