Transfer Rate Range

This chart shows you the range of platter-to-buffer transfer rates from the innermost track to the outermost track. In other words, it shows you the range of disk transfer rates of the hard drives (from minimum and maximum).

Thanks to the use of higher-density platters, the 6 TB Western Digital Red was able to edge out the 4 TB Western Digital Re, and match the 4 TB Western Digital Black at the outer tracks, even though it just spins at 5400 RPM while the other two drives are spinning at 7200 RPM!

Of course, it was significantly slower at the inner tracks, which is why its average throughput puts it below the 4 TB Western Digital Re. However, this is still very excellent performance for a 5400 RPM hard disk drive. Note how much faster it is than the 2 TB Western Digital Caviar Black, which is a 7200 RPM drive.

Platter Transfer Rate Profile

The platter profile of the 6 TB Western Digital Red drive we received was very good. There were no noticeable dips in throughput that would signify a significant use of replacement sectors. Lots of them would point to poor platter quality.

We also compared its platter profile to that of the 4 TB Western Digital Red, which uses 1 TB platters. The new 6 TB Western Digital Red drive, as we pointed out earlier, uses the latest 1.2 TB platters. The 20% greater areal density immediately gave the 6 TB drive a marked advantage over the 4 TB drive.

Even though both drives spin at the same 5400 RPM, the 6 TB drive was able to hit a maximum thoroughput of 185 MB/s, while the 4 TB drive could only do 155 MB/s. The performance gap actually widened as we moved down the platter. Even at the innermost tracks, the 6 TB drive was faster than the 4 TB drive.

Business Disk WinBench 99

Even though the 6 TB Western Digital Red came in fifth place in this test, it did pretty well, because it came in right all of the 7200 RPM hard disk drives - the 4 TB Western Digital Black, the 4 TB Western Digital Red Pro, the 4 TB Western Digital Re and the 2 TB Western Digital Caviar Black.

High-End Disk WinBench 99

Similarly, in the High-End test, the 6 TB Western Digital Red came in right behind the slipped one spot in the High-End Disk WinMark 99 test, behind the 7200 RPM hard disk drives - the 4 TB Western Digital Black, the 4 TB Western Digital Red Pro, the 4 TB Western Digital Re and the 2 TB Western Digital Caviar Black. It tied with the 4 TB Western Digital Red for the 5th place.

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