We've been testing this thing for better part of two weeks now. Yeah, the other thing that we want to point out is that we're not pointing the finger here at Western Digital the one commonality between all this is the AS media three-twofour-two controller that everybody is using right now to power everything from the next $2.99 system to the external cards to the TRX 40 platform so again we won't want to point fingers at either Asmedia or Western Digital but that is the one commonality between all this. So hopefully as time goes on they're gonna figure out these issues there's probably some platform incompatibilities so on Western Digital sparked and then every other drive is it's very very hard to diagnose this because it's so random I mean heck we're asking for crystal disk info after this thing aired out and it didn't pick up any errors and that's about the first time that I seen a drive air out and crystal disk info not pick up the information.

So with that I think we're gonna sort of move on to the benchmarks starting off with synthetics it's pretty obvious that when the Western Digital black P50 isn't having any problems it's ridiculously fast. It's almost fast to a point where it almost matches our go-to Thunderbolt 3 drive honestly we've seen a lot of external USB drives over these years and this is by far the fastest one by a long shot even if you don't have a 28 bits per second port it's just as fast as the SanDisk pro xstream SSD. Moving on to our transfer tests here's where things start to go wrong a full steam library transfer as I mentioned earlier failed every single time sure it transferred over that 10 gigabits per second port but that's not what I really wanted to test for gaming well it was pretty interesting modern warfare shader loading usually takes forever but there really wasn't much difference between the external drives. The only true winner was that Corsair and GME SSD the same thing goes for Warhammer 2 other than the fact that the P50 couldn't actually load the game when it was in Gen 2x2 mode.

What about SIF well the WD P50 is fast as an external drive but it could have been so much better if the game would actually load at that full speed. Finally there was one game that performed without any problems and that was Grand Theft Auto 5 we were finally able to see what this thing could offer and it was pretty amazing shaving off almost 10 seconds of the same game loading time. Alright so you've seen the numbers this drive is fast when it's fast it's fast guys exactly but I want to know I'm gonna end this conclusion with a quick question would you buy the P50 right now no because to me I actually prefer using that Rog Arien drive because that enclosure itself is like $60 and it can populate that with a traditional NVMe SSD which I'm sure you can find on sale maybe Friday or anything and like you've got yourself a really fast portable and MRS Dean not only that you can upgrade it down the line so if you pick up a one terabyte and Eme drive you can swap it out and bring it 4 terabyte drive if you want to.

So user upgrade ability is certainly there and that's what I love about that Rog Arien drive or just any other external enclosure. I'm gonna show you I'm gonna say that I would buy it so there's only a certain amount of time in my belief until the issues are ironed out either on Asmedia side or the motherboard vendor side and at that point in time you're gonna have an ultra-fast drive at the same time you can pick it up right now and it would still operate in that 10 gigabits per second mode yeah and it's still one of the fastest drives on the market right now for the USB 3.2 interface on the flip side I wouldn't need the proof that the issues have been fixed that's true you're basically paying for a future tech that's built in that necessarily isn't working but you're hoping that will get solved in the future so that's what I'm gonna draw the line.

Thank you so much for watching let us know what you think about the Western Digital P50 we have two of these I have two of these I don't know what you want to do with them but thank you so much for watching I'm Heber I'm Mike and I've been frustrated at this thing for two weeks but I'd still buy it we'll see you in the next one guys

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enso this is the Western Digital p50 gamedrive now you might be thinking toyourselves Eber what's so special aboutthis drive well it's one of the firstexternal SSDs to incorporate USB 3.2 gen2x2 and I know that might confuse alot of people but it's simply thefastest USB interface that's availablein the marketright now but before you go out and getone of these new drives there are a fewthings that you need to know aboutbecause since it is using a newinterface we did run into a few issuesthat are certainly a bit concerning solet's talk about those and of coursetalk about the drive itself right afterquick message for our sponsor the RazerDeathAdder v2 the gaming icon that justgot upgraded with a lighter bodynegligence sensor and optical switchesfrom maximum reliability and speed theclassic economic shape handles like nootherfind out why 10 million other users lovethe Death Adderdown below alright so let's talk aboutthat USB 3.2 gen 2x2 interface at 20gigabits per second I repeat 20 gigabitsper second it's double the speedcompared to a standard USB 3.0 gen 2which is rated at 10 gigabits per secondnow naturally with every new USBinterface is geared to be backwardscompatible so if you are running asystem with a 10 K bits per second portor a 5 gamers per second port this Driveshould work just fine right now thereare a few AMD TX 40 motherboards thatsupport USB 3.0 gen 2x2 interface aswell as a few x29 a motherboards butunfortunately notebooks are completelyare the equations so if your mainprimary machine is a laptop well you aremost likely not gonna have a 2x2 portbecause it's it's such a brand-newinterfacegigabyte has also announced an add-incard so from a speed perspective whywould you want something like a 3.2 gen2x2 at 20 gigabits per second instead ofThunderbolt 3 which gives twice as muchas bandwidth first of all Thunderbolt isowned by Intel so what do you knowAMD boards certainly take a lot longerto get certified with Thunderbolt 3which is why we only have a few Indymotherboards floating in the marketwith that certification also Thunderballthree drives are just ridiculouslyexpensive I mean it just it's not evenfunny compared to a standard USBexternal drive so with that out of theway let's quickly talk about the WesternDigital p50 so from the outside it looksamazing I mean I love this matte blackfinish but unfortunately it does showfingerprints I also really like the fontchoice engraved at the top it reallysuits the design it's also super durableas it comes with the shock resistancecertification all in all this is one ofthe best if not the best lookingexternal drives that I've ever seen whatdo you guys think Western Digital istargeting the p50 and gamers and thatmakes sense because with modern titleslike Red Dead Redemption 2 it can easilyeat up a hundred and twenty gigabytes onyour local disk so it's better to havesomething like that on an externalstorage solution because you can use iton multiple computers and ideally thisis exactly what we were looking forespecially here in the office becausewhen we're doing benchmarking it'seasier for us to have our game librarieson an external drive without having toredownload all the files again forconsole gamers the p50 is both Xbox oneand ps4 certified but all of this doescome at a cost as you can see comparedto some of the other gentle drivesavailable market you are paying a littlebit more but it's nor closer to theaccountable three tax that's involved insome of the other drives that areavailable in the market alright so Ithink it's time to talk about some ofthe issues that we encountered on thep50 game drive from Western Digital weencountered some of these problems as wewere using it on a regular basis so I'mgonna invite Mike over to talk aboutsome of these issues in three two onethis you oh yes you you clap - thatafraid you gotta move I got a moredammit no you're taking over the framealright so what are some of the issuesthat we experienced with the p50 what'syeah so for me this is probably one ofmy most frustrating experiencesbenchmarking a long long time the mainreason for that is the problems that wefound were so randomized but they onlycame up when we were using it in itsnative 20 gigabits per second wellthat's true yeah now one of the thingsthat I noticed was that there wastransfer errors on random files forexample some video files transferredtotallyokay while others they went almost to100% and then we started airing out onthe drive another thing that we noticedis the steam library folder that wewanted to transfer to the drive it nevergot past like 10% it kept on airing outat the same time every single time butwhen we finally got that steam libraryto transfer over the 10 gigabit persecond port mind you some games justrefused to load so sieve and Warhammerthey just aired out completely steamcrashed its steam crash on the otherhand grand theft auto and absolutely noproblems with that game none at all onthe blizzard side modern warfare wentoff without a hitch as well so we haveno idea there's no rhyme or reason toany of these problems it's so weirdanother thing we noticed was drive speedinconsistencies so the first time youplug it in it runs at its full speedthen the next time you plug it in itruns at a completely different speedthat's lower and then we had two replugit in yeah and I mean I know what youguys are typing on your keyboard rightnow it is not due to our test systembecause we had an insanely fast raidarray that was feeding this so it's notI mean that would have been a bottle awe're just gonna post a screenshot ofcrystal diss mark on that raid array itis insanely fast exactly so anotherthing that we did is first of all wereach out to Western Digital we reachedout to other all the motherboard vendorsand they said look there's all thesethings that you can try and that'sexactly what what we did so we triedchanging motherboards we try changingplatforms cables we even have two ofthese drives we picked up another one itwas the same thing over and over overagain I'm talking about fresh Windowsinstall old windows installed differentBIOS is absolutely everything we've beentesting this thing for better part oftwo weeks now yeah the other thing thatwe want to point out is that we're notpointing the finger here at WesternDigital the one commonality between allof this is the as media three-twofour-two controller that everybody isusing right now to power everything fromthe next $2.99 system to the externalcards to the TRX 40 platform so again wedon't want to point fingers at either asmedia or Western Digital but that is theone commonality between all this sohopefully as time goes on they're gonnafigure out these issues there's probablysome platform incompatibleso on Western Digital sparked and theneverybody else is it's very very hard todiagnose this because it's so random Imean heck we're ant crystal disk infoafter this thing aired out and it didn'tpick up any errors and that's about thefirst time that I seen a drive air outand crystal disk info not pick up theinformation so with that I think we'regonna sort of move on to the benchmarksstarting off with synthetics it's prettyobvious that when the Western Digital black P50isn't having any problems it'sridiculously fastit's almost fast to a point where italmost matches our go to Thunderbolt 3Drive honestly we've seen a lot ofexternal USB drives over these years andthis is by far the fastest one by a longshoteven if you don't have a 28 bits persecond port it's just as fast as theSanDisk pro xstream SSD moving on to ourtransfer tests here's where things startto go wrong a full steam librarytransfer as I mentioned earlier failedevery single timesure it transferred over that 10gigabits per second port but that's notwhat I really wanted to test as forgaming well it was pretty interestingmodern warfare shader loading usuallytakes forever but there really wasn'tmuch difference between the externaldrives the only true winner was thatcorsair and GME SSD the same thing goesfor Warhammer 2 other than the fact thatthe p50 couldn't actually load the gamewhen it was in gen 2x2 mode what aboutSIF well the WD P50 is fast as anexternal drive but it could have been somuch better if the game would actuallyload at that full speed finally therewas one game that performed without anyproblems and that was Grand Theft Auto 5we were finally able to see what thisthing could offer and it was prettyamazing shaving off almost 10 seconds ofthe same game loading time alright soyou've seen the numbers this drive isfast when it's fast it's fast guysexactly but I want to know I'm gonna endthis conclusion with a quick questionwould you buy the P 50 right now nobecause to me I actually prefer usingthat rog ariane drive because thatenclosure itself is like $60 and it canpopulate that with a traditional nvmeSSD which i'm sure you can find on salemaybe Friday or anything and like you'vegot yourself a really fast portable andmrs. Dean not only that you can upgradeit down the line so if you pick up a oneterabyte and eme drive you can swap itout and bring it 4 terabyte drive if youwant to so user upgrade ability iscertainly there and that's what I loveabout that rog ariane drive or just anyother external enclosure I'm gonna showyou I'm gonna say that I would buy it sothere's only a certain amount of time inmy belief until the issues are ironedout either on as media side or themotherboard vendor side and at thatpoint in time you're gonna have anultra-fast drive at the same time youcan pick it up right now and it wouldstill operate in that 10 gigabits persecond mode yeah and it's still one ofthe fastest drives on the market rightnow for the USB 3.2 interface on theflip side I wouldn't need the proof thatthe issues have been fixed that's trueyou're basically paying for a futuretech that's built in that necessarilyisn't working but you're hoping thatwill get solved in the future so that'swhat I'm gonna draw the line thank youso much for watching let us know whatyou think about the Western Digital p50we have two of these I have two of theseI don't know what you want to do withwith them but thank you so much forwatchingI'm Heber I'm Mike and I've beenfrustrated at this thing for two weeksbut I'd still buy itwe'll see you in the next one guys\n"