Customer Ratings & Reviews

Great little memory. Not expensive at all for a 2Tb memory and it has a cool design.

Needed extra storage for my Xbox. Easy to use and easy setup.

Great product, easy to install and very good quality

I am a member of Best Buy’s Technical Insider Network, TIN for short. Reviewers in this invitation-only program are provided products for the purpose of writing honest, unbiased reviews. Note: The Black rectangles in the photos are deliberately placed in the images, by me, to remove personal information, activation codes, and serial numbers. == Why Western Digital? == Reliability! Period. I have owned many WD drives, including Black drives, over the last 20 years. I have never had an issue with WD digital performance, longevity, quality, or reliability. They just work and they work for a long time! I own 2 WD Red 2TB NAS drives that have been under constant operation since 2013. I also have a WD Passport X USB 3.0 drive that has been my Xbox external mainstay since 2015. If my goals are affordability, reliability, and capacity then the WD P10 Black is a no-brainer for me. == Why a Mechanical Drive in this day and age? == Cost. I can get a lot of storage at a reasonable price with a mechanical hard drive. I can get the same capacity for ¼ the cost of an SSD. That matters to me. If you are like me then you do not have an unlimited gaming budget. == The Drive == The Western Digital Black P10 2TB drive is not Western Digital’s fastest offering. It only offers a maximum read throughput of 130 MB/s according to WD’s spec sheet (140 MB/s according to the box art). My best guess is that the P10 is a 5400rpm drive. Why do I think this? First, WD doesn’t state in any of their marketing material the spin speed of the P10s. The P10’s throughput lines up nicely with other 5400 laptop HDDs that I could find online. Second, the D10s, WD’s super capacity external Xbox HDDs, are advertised as 7200rpm with a top throughput of 250 MB/s. Keep in mind that the P10 line covers from 1TB to 5TB of storage. The D10s are 8TB and 12TB respectively. The P10 is slim. The case is a few centimeters larger, on all sides, than the actual hard drive housed inside. Please see included photo. The case is secured with very strong adhesive strips along all four sides of the clamshell. And then further secured with four screws. The clamshell is made up of hard plastic. The seams separating the clamshell would be imperceptible if not for the contrast between the white cover and the black body. The shell looks like it will do a good job of protecting the drive during travel or if accidently dropped. The sides and top of the hard drive are secured inside the case by strategically placed shock absorbers. They look like little bits of stiff foam that are secured to the drive and the inside of the case by the same adhesive tape as the clamshell. The shock absorbers do such a good job that I had to hold the drive in my hand before I could feel any drive vibrations. And even then, the vibrations are slight even under heavy usage. The drive interface is USB 3.2 Gen 1. This is fully backwards compatible with Xbox One’s USB 3.0 interface and USB 2.0. Maximum theoretical throughput for USB 3.0 and USB 3.2 Gen 1 are the same: 5Gbps (625 MB/s). At full speed, the P10 will never saturate the bus. == How did it perform == All measurements were captured on my Xbox One S console. I measured several games for this review but chose to focus on Star Wars Battlefront II and Titan Fall 2. Battlefront II is the most annoying game, in terms of load time, that I own. Any improvement in this space is a deal sealer for me. I did test other games, but these are the two that stood out the most to me. Keep in mind that the inclusion of the Passport X is because this has been my mainstay since 2015. Battlefront II From Xbox home screen to Sign in Screen: - WD Passport X to splash screen – 1.16.80 minutes o Note: It took an additional 30 seconds to go from splash screen to game menu. - WD Xbox to Splash screen - 56.12 seconds o Note: It took an additional 10 seconds to go from splash screen to game menu. Supremacy game mode. Time was measured from map splash screen to unit selection screen. This was to eliminate the time Battlefront II takes to find a multiplayer match: - WD Passport X to game screen – 55.77 seconds - WD Xbox to game screen - 47.73 seconds Titan Fall 2 From Xbox Home screen to game splash screen: - WD Passport X to splash screen – 1:26.50 minutes - WD Xbox to Splash screen – 48.12 seconds From Game menu to load campaign mission 2: - WD Passport X to game screen – 46.97 seconds - WD Xbox to game screen – (Mission 2) – 44.93 seconds The biggest improvement I experience, for all games, was loading the game from Xbox Home Screen to the game’s splash page. I did not find as much of an improvement when it came to loading maps or campaign levels. The one place where I find load times do matter the most is in Battlefront II. Supremacy is a multi-level game where stage one occurs on the battlefield. Stage two transitions to one of the two team’s space battleships. The person with the fastest load time between stages gets first pick of the special “Tank” characters. The P10 did not help me get any closer to being the first to pick a “Tank” character. If your goal is first to “Tank” then you will find the P50 the better of the Western Digital investments. == Portability == Portability is good. I own two Xbox Ones. The first is either a second or third generation Xbox One. The second is an Xbox One S. I had zero issues moving the P10 between both units. The first time running a game from the drive required some setup by each Xbox. But, after that setup was complete, every game stored on the P10 loaded up and was playable without issues. I have nothing to complain about. == Setup == The P10 for Xbox comes pre-formatted as NTFS. Out of the box, you can use this drive directly with your Windows 10 PC. Some of my screenshots are from my Windows 10 PC. You will have to do the following to use it with your Xbox: 1) Turn on the Xbox and sign in 2) Plug the drive into an available USB port 3) Follow the on-screen directions. Note: The Xbox will not recognize the drive if you plug in the drive before turning on the Xbox. This will not be an issue post Xbox format. Now, you can start loading your game library onto the new drive. In my case, I wanted to copy the contents of my WD Passport X to the P10. Xbox allows me to do this under the storage management menu in settings. I have about 1TB of games loaded on the drive. How long did it take to copy the entire contents of one drive to the other? No idea. But I did time 17 minutes for a 57GB game. Based on that figure, I turned off my stopwatch and let the Xbox run over night. Now I have two drives with identical content. One drive for each Xbox. Regardless of how slow this may seem it is still faster than re-downloading all my content off the internet which is, for me, 12.5 MB/s. USB 3.0 is 625 MB/s. If I do my math right the transfer speed of the game mentioned above was 55 MB/s. (57GB = 57000MB. Divide this by 17 minutes to get 3353 MB/min. And then to find MB/s divide 3353MB by 60 seconds to get 56 MB/s transfer. == Final Thoughts == High capacity, decent performance, and budget friendly is where the P10 fits into my Xbox ecosystem. Load times are longer than can be expected with an SSD. But that performance is going to cost you up to four times as much for an HDD of the same capacity. I have a budget to work within. Plus, unlike the Xbox Series X, my Xbox One S and Xbox One both have traditional HDDs. Getting an external high-capacity USB 3.x drive gets me more of what I already have. I can store more games and bounce the drive from Xbox to Xbox as needed. The drive is protected by a very strong case. And the physical drive is held tightly in place by stiff foam bumpers. This drive is protected better than most portable drives I have owned. And I did see a boost in performance to my load times. I would not hesitate to recommend a WD Black P10 to my friends.

The premise of the WD External hard drive is simple: provide additional storage for your Xbox without going through any hoops. In this, the WD HDD has certainly met my expectations. Speaking of expectations, one must understand that this is a hard disk drive and not an SSD, which affects its functionality on a Series S/X console. Because this is an HDD, it does not meet the bandwidth required to play Series S/X exclusive or optimized games from the drive. In order to do so, they must be transferred to the internal or extended SSD storage. However, legacy games (Xbox, 360, and One) play just fine without the need to transfer. While this may seem annoying, it’s actually not a big deal. I chose to keep S/X games internally and use the HDD for storage since transferring takes only a few minutes and surely beats downloading the game again. This also makes it incredibly easy to bring games from my Xbox One X to the Series S -just plug and play! For those who care, yes, the P10 can be used as an external hard drive for a PC, tablet, or other consoles. However, it must be formatted for use exclusively on the specific device every time. The WD HDD is built like a tank, and I am not too worried about drops. It also looks quite nice next to or on top of both my Series S and One X. It does make a bit of noise in quiet settings, but as with any HDD, this is normal due to the spinning moving parts. I do wish the included USB-A to Micro USB-B cable would be longer though. In the end, I think the WD P10 is a cost-effective option and is excellent for extending your storage capacity while providing ease of portability between consoles. I highly recommend it!

The Western Digital P10 2TB is a great supplement to your Xbox (or PC really). Billed as a high performance gaming accessory, it really is a fast external HDD with a USB 3.0 5gbps interface (or USB 3.2 Gen 1 - thank you USB consortium). This means it’s portable, fast, and large. Couple with the trial of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, it’s easy to see how these two products go hand in hand. When you first open the P10, you’ll notice that it’s about the size you’d expect width wise, but it’s very compact when it comes to height. The lid is made of what appears to be aluminum, which helps dissipate heat (I suspect), while the bottom is made of plastic with nice rubber feet which helps dissipate vibration (I suspect). The casing has a small LED light and USB 3 Micro Type B port on back. Other than that, it’s a pretty simple affair. WD Black is imprinted on the lid in a very edgey tech font, but overall it’s pretty non-description and easy on the eyes. When I plugged the drive into my Xbox, it was immediately recognized and I was given the choice to use for media or games. I chose games and activated the free trial of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which grants access to an almost Netflix like selection of games. I chose a bunch of titles I was interested in and downloaded them. I was able to sustain 300mpbs downloads and sustain writes. While I suspect the drive can sustain higher writes (that’s only about 40MB/s), it kept up without any issues and only was mildly warm to the touch. The 2TB capacity is a good pairing with Game Pass Ultimate. Essentially you can download a huge library of games that are ready to play at any given moment. To get your money out of Game Pass, you really need an external drive, because the internal 500GB or 1TB just won’t cut it alone. It’s nice that it comes with a trial, as I believe most people looking at the 2TB expansion are probably interested in this service. Playing games off the drive on the Xbox was excellent. I loaded up Doom and a few other games which played excellent and had no stuttering. In fact I noticed very little difference from the internal drive, which was impressive. The P10 isn’t a magical gaming tool that will help you frag those you see. What it is, is a competent drive with good performance, on a good USB 3.0 implementation in a compact and thoughtful design. It blends in well with the Xbox while being distinctly its own style, and it performs just like you’d expect a high performance external drive to perform. Overall I highly recommend this drive to expand your storage needs!

First, I love the form factor...this is super slim. The case is a blow mold; it made me question if this was NVME (M.2) or HDD as I just wasn't expecting it to be so slim. It is the same width as a standard portable drive, but the thickness is about half what I expect. The WD Black 2TB drive is perfect for the crazy amount of space some these games are taking up these days. It also perfect for other downloadable content to free up space on the main drive. My XBOX OneS is just the 500GB so it doesn't take long to fill it up. I haven't had any issues with the games not wanting to load or lag during play for the games on the WD drive. Can't go wrong with this amount of storage for so cheap.

With how large game files are becoming nowadays I was in search of an expandable hard drive for my xbox system. I was very impressed with how fast the read / write speeds were. This is the perfect little hard drive that is easily portable. I recommend this for anyone who is in need of a nice portable hard drive.

Love It!!!! Finally can store more than 4 games on my Xbox. thanks Best Buy and thanks mom for the gift cards!!!! Will Be be back for more Thanks again. Also love the look and the design of the hard drive.

I was able to get My XBOX Series X last year. and since there is not alot of games out for it at the moment i did not want to get the SSD hardrive yet. But I still had alot of Xbox one Digtal games so i bought this and it is great. Just pluged it in and formated it and now i dont have to think about it.

Works great on the XBox S for extra storage. Transfer of files was fast from the Xbox to the hard drive.

I needed more storage on my Xbox. This came really nice very easy to use and it’s slim

Works perfect to store and play Xbox games up to the Xbox One’s generation! It will store newer games but since it’s not ssd it won’t play them directly. My game catalog is waaaaay bigger thanks to this device. Recommended.

It's really good quality and easy to use and a plus I put up for my Xbox x and it works very well there is no problem

Excellent storage for games. Fast load times. Easy set up to transfer files

My son wanted this for extra space for video games. He raves about it & has been very busy transferring & making room for new games!

So my perfect Xbox needed a companion and this wonderful little guy is just about perfect. Small, cool, added some needed storage space to the Xbox. The only downside is that it's not fast enough to launch X/S games from, but you know, its a very small downside.

Its a amazing product it gave me extra storage so I can download some more games , so happy with it highly recommend

Bestbuy does not dissapoint with this purchase. This harddrive works perfectly and comes with a month of xbox gamepass for free. For people who want to store your games on an external harddrive, this is the harddrive to buy for an xbox console.

I have like 4 of these for different uses. Each one works great and ive had no problems using it with XBOX Series S, PS4 Pro, and PC games. I havr one that i use for general storage as well. I might never buy an sdd aside from this type ever again.