Western Digital announces a trio of gaming-focused WD Black SSDs

Bottom line: Western Digital had several new storage products to announce at its recent Flash Perspective event. These include three WD Black-branded SSDs, namely the console-focused portable D30 Game Drive, its Xbox-branded variant, and the SN750 SE NVMe internal drive for PCs. WD also announced over a dozen storage devices for its new SanDisk Professional brand, which is made up of the company’s existing Ultrastar, G-Drive, and G-RAID products, as well as new modular card readers, media cards, and docking stations.

The new WD Black D30 game drive with its max 900MB/s transfers won’t be augmenting the internal capacities of the PS5/XSX for playing latest-gen games, but it should make for a speedy, affordable archiving solution for when your game library starts choking your newest-gen console.

On the PS4/Xbox One, however, this drive offers both space and performance benefits over the consoles’ SATA III mechanical HDDs. The portable USB-C (USB 3.2) drive is compatible with Windows 10/8.1 PCs and Macs (macOS 10.11+). It also has a slightly costlier Xbox-branded version, which is identical in terms of hardware specs but comes with white color accents and a one-month trial membership of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate.

The regular D30 Game Drive and its Xbox-branded variant come with detachable stands

The drive is available to pre-order in three storage capacities, starting at $90 for 500GB, $150 for 1TB, and $270 for the 2TB version. The Xbox-branded D30 costs an extra $10 for the base model and is $20 more expensive on higher capacity models. Both versions come with a 3-year warranty.

For PC owners, the SN750 internal m.2 SSD gets a new SE edition. WD says this PCIe 4.0 NVMe drive is up to 30 percent more power-efficient than its predecessor and delivers up to 3,600 MB/s reads and 2,830 MB/s writes on the flagship $130/1TB model. The remaining versions include the base $55/250GB drive and a $75/1TB model. WD offers a 5-year warranty on the SN750 SE edition and expects availability in 3 – 4 weeks.

Additionally, WD announced a slew of storage products under its new SanDisk Professional brand. The main highlights include the Pro-Dock 4, a $500 four-bay card reader and docking station featuring multiple USB-C/Type-A ports designed for cinematographers and videographers.

For the same audience, WD has launched the $100 Pro-Reader CFExpress VPG400, a premium media card that supports a minimum video recording speed of 400 MB/s. There’s also a USB-C-based series of Pro-Reader media card readers with SuperSpeed 10Gbps (1,250 MB/s) support, including a $200 RED Mini-Mag module.

WD’s existing Ultrastar, G-Raid, and G-Drive products will now also be offered under the SanDisk Professional brand. The rugged G-Drive series gets a new 4TB variant for the ArmorLock SSD. This drive will become available next month, while the aforementioned Sandisk Professional products will roll out sometime in the summer.