WD today announced the expansion of its WD Black and WD Red Pro lines of hard drives up to 6 TB capacity. Shipping now, the 3.5-inch, 7200 RPM WD Black drives are designed for gamers and professionals in need of high-performance desktop systems and workstations.

WD Black hard drives combine 7200 RPM spin speed, 128 MB cache, dual stage actuator technology, SATA 6 gigabits per second (Gb/s) interface, and an integrated dual processor. The WD Black 6TB is up to 29% faster than the previous WD Black 4TB version in maximum data rate throughput and 10% faster in PCMark Vantage.

WD Black 6 TB hard drives feature the following:

• StableTrac Technology (2 TB and larger models) secures the motor shaft inside of the hard drive to increase reliability and help reduce impact due to system-induced vibrations from other components. By stabilizing the platters inside, the WD Black drive results in more accurate tracking in a particular sector during read and write operations, optimizing performance and reliability.
• Increased DRAM cache - The Dynamic Cache Technology improves caching algorithms in real time to allocate and optimize cache between reads and writes. This movement of cache for read data helps to reduce congestion and increase overall performance.
• WD Black drive is covered by a five-year limited warranty. Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) for the WD Black 5 TB drive (model # WD5001FZWX) is $264.00 USD and the WD Black 6 TB drive (model # WD6001FZWX) is $294.00 USD.

WD also expanded its WD Red Pro hard drive line with the release of 5 TB and 6 TB capacities. The WD Red Pro family has been designed for NAS (network attached storage) systems having up to 16 drive bays .

Shipping now, WD Red Pro 5 and 6 TB drives leverage an enhanced design and 128 MB cache to deliver data transfer rates of 214 megabytes per second (MB/s). WD’s NASware 3.0 features technology promoting data protection, high NAS performance and reliable integration.

Equipped with a multi- axis shock sensor, the drive automatically detects subtle shock events and, along with dynamic fly height technology, adjusts each read-write function to compensate and protect the data, further protecting the drive in large 1- to 16-bay NAS environments.

Available now, the WD Red Pro drive has a five-year limited regional warranty, respectively. Manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP) for the WD Red Pro 5 TB drive (model #: WD5001FFWX) is $269.00 USD and $299.00 USD for 6 TB (model #: WD6001FFWX).