30.11.2015

This is a review for a 1TB P300 Toshiba hard drive I received free-to-review via Amazon Vine. There used to be around 200 hard drive manufacturers and many have either gone under or merged (e.g. IBM hard drives division was sold to Hitachi who were later acquired by Western Digital and rivals Seagate acquired Samsung’s hard drive division in 2011). Now only three mainstream hard drive manufactures remain: Western Digital, Seagate and Toshiba, and the world spent 32 billion dollars on hard drive storage in 2013. Although these three companies assemble hard drives, they share many same components from external suppliers such as the motors that spin them round.And anything spinning at 7,200 rpm in the case of this P300 Toshiba drive is going to fail sometime,and if we are unlucky it will fail sooner rather than later. In fact around 8% of hard drives fail in the first year, significantly more than fail in the two subsequent years – largely due to manufacturing faults and rough handling at the warehouse and during delivery as 3.5” hard drives are very susceptible to knocks, far more so than 2.5” laptop drives that are specially toughened for mobile use. As well as reliability we also want speed, and generally hi-performance drives are less reliable than those specifically designed for reliability (i.e. NAS storage drives). Plus pay more and the number of years warranty’s increases, suggesting better reliability but in fact the extra cash may also be to cover replacements after failure (i.e. the higher price might be simply anti-failure ‘insurance’ to cover replacement costs rather than significantly improved reliability). The warranty for these 3.5” P300 ‘hi-performance’ 7,200 rpm Toshiba hard drives is two years, not bad, but nothing like the 5 year warranty I have on my Western Digital Black gaming hard drives I have now returned to after suspect reliability with a few of my Seagate Hybrid (SSHD)'s that had 3 year warranties – plus the 2.5” laptop version of these Toshiba drives (the L200) has a longer 3 year warranty. Backblaze in the USA monitor their 50 thousand hard drives and have found Toshiba a relatively reliable brand along with Hitachi HGST (still manufacturing independently of owners Western Digital at the moment), although capacity and hard drive model number also played an important part (the new 4TB drives in particular holding up well).Anyway practical upshot is that my Toshiba 1TB P300 hard drive performed quite well matching my WD Black for sequential write/read speeds but random 4k operations were relatively poor. In use I doubt you’d really notice much difference as I have my STEAM gaming files on a 4TB Seagate HSSD (as it was there first) and my photos and videos on the faster 4TB WD Black (and I am perfectly happy with the Chillblast PCs gaming performance – probably as the system C: drive is an uber fast 512GB Crucial SSD). So the P300 drive's OK as a secondary drive for gaming on a budget. Still as I got this Toshiba drive free-to-review I was limited to the 1TB, and that small size just isn’t large enough to waste time installing inside my main PC case – I’d always buy the 4, 5 or 6TB versions for internal use, deciding on which by cost per GB. Still this 1Tb Toshiba P300 works fine via USB3 and is more than speedy enough for file backup, so 4* (assuming it lasts many years). Like all 7,200rpm mechanical drives these Toshiba P300 drives can make an audible staccato noise as they rummage about.There's also the upmarket Toshiba X300 uber fast 7,200rpm drives for 'extreme gaming and graphics' which I would be tempted by as they are a tad cheaper in price to my WD Blacks (although they don't have the 5 year warranty of the blacks, it's still just 2 years). These days I avoid the likes of eco low power WD Greens and the Toshiba E300 hard drives as speed is more important than power saving when gaming and I can recover my STEAM account game files anytime by re-downloading them - seems daft having a power saving lethargic green hard drive that trims half a watt or so off the PCs power requirements when our gaming PC cases light up like Christmas trees, produce half a kilowatt of heat and are tapping their toes waiting for the next file to be read. So would I buy this Toshiba drive as it’s cheaper than the WD Black? Probably I’d still go for the Blacks as a mechanical hard drive as I find them reliable, fast enough, and I don’t buy hard drives that often. Although the WD Blacks now go to 6TB, the significantly cheaper 5TB Toshiba X300 is still tempting for gaming. However if the files on the drive are important, the WD Blacks include hardware like 'Corruption Protection Technology' (CPT) to minimise data corruption during power failure. For my external backup NAS system I’d stick to a special NAS drive designed for 24/7 operation as hard drive failure in a NAS raid is still best avoided, as rebuilding the RAID array doesn’t always go to plan. I would buy a Toshiba X300 in preference to a Seagate HSSD for gaming and this cheaper P300 type for backup data storage, as I have had those reliability problems with Seagate HSSDs (my backup drives sit idle stored offline in Orico hard drive protection boxes and so tend to last a long time as they aren’t spinning very often). However my failed Seagate HSSDs were early 2TB ones and I think they had particular teething problems, but that has made me wary of them. For home file backup (photos, videos, documents etc) I also use USB3 hard drive docking stations and hard drive quick-swap enclosures to slip bare drives in and out for file transfer, and we have an Netgear 8TB RAID NAS server attached to the router.

1.8.2017

A hard drive is usually a pretty simple affair; you install it, install software, and then forget it's there until it goes wrong. Therefore I'll review it in light of the differences it makes over the old one (which was replaced fully working - this was a voluntary upgrade, elective surgery!). So this is my installation, the advantages it brought, and my initial feelings about the device. Please be aware that I *do* come back and add to reviews, so if this drive went duff a week later, you can bet I will mention it (I can even install my previous 250GB disk and be back online before the irritation has passed).I needed to breathe life into an oldish laptop (8-9 years)that is still reasonably high-spec (dual-core 2.3Ghz, only a modest 3GB DDR3 RAM, and a sad 250GB hard disk). It used to run Vista, now no longer supported, so with software becoming unavailable for Vista - such as Firefox (which has entered end-of-life updates only) its time had come. The machine has been central to much of my work/education/online life in this time, and rather than destroy the contents of the 250GB HDD that was in there, I thought I'd instead simply swap that drive out and install a new larger one in place to recreate my old Vista machine as Windows 7,but with a lot more hard disk real-estate than previously. The upgrade process was painless, undoing four screws, swapping drives, redoing four screws - done. The drive is 100% compatible with the Fujitsu SATA drive it replaced, thanks to standard screw positions and the connector.I'd considered spending twice as much money (today's prices) for an SSD, getting faster responses but only the same capacity. I wanted more capacity more than I wanted snappier response, and the dream ticket of a 1TB SSD was really not worth the outlay, while the older capacity but now on an SSD, was twice the price..I tried installing Vista first, thinking I'd get an option to upgrade in-place rather than install fresh and have to transfer documents and reinstall everything, but that didn't work out - W7 only allowed fresh installations. Both the Vista installation media and the Windows 7 installation media recognised the disk for what it is (1TB, although only about 950GB when the file tables are in place - if you are using NTFS file system that has been Windows standard for a long time).It is very quiet in operation; access speeds, which mean nothing much on paper, have been pretty good. This drive has a larger buffer than the one it replaced (which was 2GB) and, since it is doing essentially the same work regarding disk accesses, "feels" faster despite the seek times being only marginally faster - not enough that I would notice at least.It almost feels like a CPU boost sometimes, at least when data is fetched, things appear a tad faster than before - and 8-9 years of getting used to a particular response does help me to notice when performance gets a lift, even a modest one.Having acres of space does help me to keep more data locally that until now, having to be disciplined with 250GB, I've had to farm out to NAS storage or external USB HDDs. Now that it can live on the machine again there's less extra nonsense to have to carry around quite so much. For my work I have to have a lot of PDF and other documents to hand, as well as captures of news and media broadcasts, and these can really eat up space. It has been in and operating for 3 days so far. I've pretty much forgotten that it is new, but for the fact I'm reviewing it.Toshiba has been making PCs since the year dot and has been manufacturing HDDs for them too (although they are selling their memory business and the HDD manufacture may change hands in the coming year or two) - they know their stuff and have the track record to prove it, when you consider the vast number of installations that are "out there". So the numbers add up in that sense too, I trust the brand (even though this laptop is Samsung (R710)).I can recommend the HDD, certainly on this brief acquaintance. If I've stayed happy with it, you can tell how long that's been the case simply by checking when I wrote this! If a hitch comes up, it will be documented here, possibly in all-caps (!).

21.1.2020

So I got mine (4tb) back in early 2018, and at time of writing (early 2020), I have to say I've had 0 issues with it.The short summary:Pros:-Big-Cheap for what it is-No real noticeable lag. It's a little slower than my laptop's SSD, but you'd be getting an SSD 4x smaller for the same-installation is bog standard HDD installationpriceCons:-Rattles a bit when in a lot of use (not something that bothers me)-Some people have reported problems (can't speak for them, 2 years, no issues)-Sticker doesn't match my PC's internal colour scheme (mileage may vary)Here is what I think:When it says "for professionals", that's probably one of the key things you want to consider. Ultimately,this drive is loud as hell as far as drives go. When idling, it doesn't really make a lot of noise, but do anything with it, and it's like someone's tinkering with an old lawnmower (it's a switched off lawn mower, but very echoey and in a garage next door). Now. Being an hardcore e?️ic gamer, much of the time, I have my speakers on (or headphones if you're a headphone person). So when I'm using this, it's because I'm playing a game, and as such, I can't hear it once the game has started, due to other noises going on. You've got to square this away yourself really. I find computer noises relaxing, so a little rattling from under my desk doesn't rattle me, but if you're honestly bothered by that, then it's not for you. Reviews I read before purchasing appeared to suggest it was mainly built as a budget dedicated server option, and considering many people I know don't in fact want 300+ games installed at a time, that seems about right. So just remember. You're getting good performance, and big size out of a fairly cheap drive (as far as relatively high speed drives go). The concession is a little noise occasionally, or a lot if you're a habitual ctrl+s person, and you're working with blender or something, then a little noise a lot. I use a different drive for my art stuff though, and word documents and code go to the cloud, so these are not use cases I can really report back about.It was easy to install, it's literally just a bog standard hard drive installation. I can't remember if I had to format it, but it's not my OS drive, and if it was, it still wouldn't matter, because ultimately, when you set up from scratch, the installation wizard gives you an option to do it as far as I can remember. The main take away here though, is that the installation process was problem free enough that after 2 years, my main stick out memory of buying this was thinking I got a good deal on 4tb, and now I return, because I only have 25ish gb left. Should I uninstall some games? Hell no. Get back in the bin with your terrible advice.I can't speak for the 1 star reviews. Ultimately, if the drives are failing after months or a year in those cases, then that sucks, and that's a legitimate complaint. However, I can't speak for them because of the fact that mine has lasted 2 years now with not a single issue and a higher than average amount of moving my desktop from place to place. With any product you buy, you're rolling the dice, and there's a certain probability you will get a dud, but I honestly cannot recommend this enough. Especially considering that I use this probably about 8-9 hours a day at the best times. I've really put this through its paces, and mucked about with partitioning, and it's been pretty solid.

3.7.2016

I bought a couple of these to replace some 2TB Seagates that live in my PC and have spent the last three years storing and serving up my music and film collection via Plex. It's fair to say that the Seagates have had a hard life and so when one gave up after a power cut last week, I decided to replace them both. These P300s seem to be a fairly recent addition to the Toshiba catalogue which may explain why there isn't much online about their longevity. Nevertheless, at the price I thought I'd take a punt and having them set up in a RAID1 configuration, just as it was with the Seagates, I'd have to be a really Unlucky Alf to lose any data in the event of a failure....Anyway,the disks arrived on time and well packed (each in its own bag, in its own padded box, and then each box in a slightly bigger padded Amazon box). No problem with any of that.I've attached a picture of the label on one of the drives. These are from the HDWD range which, according to the Toshiba website, has a two year warranty. Both the drives I bought were manufactured in April 2016. Installation was unremarkable. The BIOS on my Gigabyte motherboard created the RAID array for me, and I activated the resulting "disk" in the Disk Management area. Windows 10 is quite happy with the arrangement. I then transferred about 1.8TB of data from the remaining Seagate. I could probably have done this by a simple copy and paste, but I didn't want Plex to notice that anything had changed (my concern being that Plex might do a total refresh of my library and lose some of the labelling and artwork I had added). So, instead I used AOEMI Partition to duplicate the existing partition from the remaining Seagate. I mention that here because it meant that within a few minutes of being installed, the P300s were put to work writing 1.8TB of data. I left the operation to complete overnight which it did with no issues at all. I ran a disk check today and everything is sweet. The only other observation I can make right now is that contrary to some other reviews, I have found that these disks are very quiet in operation. The old Seagates were quiet too, although they could just be heard if doing a defrag in the dead of night, for example. For me, the P300s seem to make no noise at all. It may be, then, that much depends on the way in which the disks are installed or what they are installed in - my tower has machined aluminium internals). And that's about as much as I can say right now.UPDATE March 2017:So, I've had these drives in my tower for six months or so. My tower functions solely as a Plex server and due to the strange nocturnal habits of my friends, runs 24/7. The P300s haven't missed a beat and a recent disk check confirms all is well.UPDATE June 2019Possibly tempting fate, but these two drives are still going strong in my 24/7 Plex server. Unfortunately they are getting a bit full so it will soon be time to refresh my set-up and get some larger capacity drives. But more than three years without a hiccup is quite impressive!

9.4.2019

My intention was to buy two 8TB drives (one in a PC where noise mattered and a backup where noise didn't matter), but given some of the other review comments about noise, I thought I'd only buy one of these for now to see what the noise was like.Had this running for a day now with some observations:-When installing via a USB to SATA adaptor (thought I'd try it externally first before fitting into a machine), it only detects about 1TB of data. I was a bit worried but it's fine once installed internally into a machine's SATA port, which would then see the full 8TB. I formatted as GPT rather than MBR.ProsGreat storage capacity for the money (bought significantly cheaper than other 8TB drives,

5.12.2015

Who buys an old-fashioned Hard Disk Drive (HDDs) nowadays, with Solid-State Drives (SSDs) becoming all the rage? Well, it's still much cheaper to buy an HDD than an SSD, so although the writing is on the wall, there's a place for them yet in desktop computers.I've previously used a Western Digital Blue 1TB HDD as my system disk. In terms of performance, this drive is pretty much identical, which is to say it is fast. The 7,200 RPM rotation speed means faster access to disk sectors, and the burst transfer rate of 6Gbit/s (600 MB per second) is good (I believe this equates to the SATA 3.0 standard, and will only work at this speed if your motherboard supports it).

21.8.2016

Fast performance, time will tell if they also have endurance.I have installed two of the 4TB versions in a RAID 0, in a Terramaster D2-310 USB 3.1 enclosure, connected to a 2013 27" iMac directly to a USB 3.0 port. I'm getting 350-400MB/s reads and writes with Black Magic Disk Test. Excellent for a couple of spinning drives.They are pretty silent for a 7200rpm/128MB cache performance drive - they have some weird "clonk" sounds once in a while when running, not sure what that is (probably the heads moving or parking), but this is supposedly normal, according to other reviews. No issue though, once you get used to how they sound, you won't notice it anymore.They also stay pretty cool for what they are.

15.11.2016

Before buying this hard drive I have owned a Toshiba laptop which I enjoyed for its durability and performance, as an IT geek I did not consider WD Blue drives (previously customers have asked to replace their drives with those, and I wasn't quite happy with the behavior of the sectors by the end of the hdd platter (slow seek, eventually sectors should become uncorrectable)), neither did I consider maxtor drives (too many failed on me), nor samsung (they tend to have controller issues and overheat), however I did consider getting HGST or Toshiba hard drive, but as I did not know how the seller would pack the hard drive I have decided to go with the product delivered by Amazon.As this hard drive serves in my main rig (it is a laptop),

12.5.2016

So far so good!. Been using it three weeks and it has been working perfectly. No problems at all. It was recognised straight away in BIOS and in W10 programs and hardware section (you have to format this HDD before you can use it). It is very fast and transferring files is notably quicker than my other (Western Digital) 4TB HDD. This is due to the 128MB cache (whereas other HDD's have 64MB cache). I was initially capitulating because of mixed reviews for this HDD. In fact, my HDD came from Amazon France and in the past I have had bad experiences from Amazon EU Sarl as I was receiving items that were either customer returns or refurbished. However, this time around I received a brand new and unopened/unused item.

27.11.2015

The drive is described as high performance 7,200 rpm drives with 64 MB data buffer and SATA 6 Gbit/s which is SATA 3 equivalent.If you are installing this as a secondary drive in a desktop PC you may find your motherboard is not SATA3 but backwards compatibility ensures it will still work. Mechanical drives of this description will probably not seem any faster and if it is speed you want then a costly SSD (solid state drive) is what you need to notice a performance boost.This is supplied as an OEM package for PC builders so don't expect fancy packaging or instruction manuals.If you fit it to a Windows PC as a secondary drive and open "This PC" or "My Computer" the drive will not show initially.You

18.9.2017

Had my doubts about the noise levels from other reviews, but this is certainly not the case for me.When I built my computer a few years ago I cheaped out on the tower case since I spent everything on quality internal parts instead. £30 tower with no sound/vibration dampening extras other than the rubber feet I put on myself. It has good cooling option though.What I am saying is, if this hard drive was noisy, I would sure hear it. I have an older ( Indestructible ) Hitachi Desk Star 1TB 7200rpm which is definitely audible ( get used to it ), and this Toshiba barely even makes a sound when compared to that drive. I actually have to get up and walk 6ft to my PC to even here the drive making it's general noise.Not saying all of the P300 drives are silent,

19.12.2016

I bought this hard drive as a secondary hard drive on my gaming computer (OS and programs run on a SSD). I chose this one because because i wanted as much performance and storage space as i could possibly get for my money. With it being a secondary hard drive I wasn't too bothered about getting the best one out there, just the best value and I can safely say I'm very pleased with this hard drive. I've had it about 6 months now and it works brilliantly. Can't complain at all, especially for the price. As this is a 'bulk' hard drive (I'm assuming this means it was originally meant for commercial use not retail) it comes in plain packaging and with no instructions or cables. Not a big deal for me,

3.2.2019

Now I bought 3 x 4TB versions of these to replace the drives in my RAID-5 array. Compared to the Seagate Ironwolf Pro drives, these are a real bargain in terms of price, being almost 1/3 cheaper. And you really HAVE to compare the N300 against the Ironwolf Pro rather than the Ironwolf because only the Ironwolf Pro spins at 7200rpm like the N300 does. They're certainly faster in terms of transfer rate than the Ironwolf spinning at 5900rpm, but DEAR GOD are they noisy. I don't think I've come across a drive as noisy as the N300 in a LONG time. We're not talking about case-rattle here either, so it's not something that can be damped-down, this is head stepping noise.

8.7.2016

Intended for use in a multi-drive array to increase overall capacity in conjunction with existing installed drive units, two were purchased (separately, but within a couple of hours of each other). Having used similar drives rather than NAS-specific models in similar situations, the idea was to use less expensive alternatives.When installled, having copied existing data to a reserve unit as it would otherwise have been lost and then re-formatting in preparation for copying back, it was found that there was some incompatibility between the existing units and these - their existence was not recognised as part of the increased set. With the original units temporarily disconnected, they were recognised,

21.4.2017

Five Stars if you are not worried about how noisy it is...Three Stars if you need it to be silent...I have installed this in a ASUSTOR AS1002T 2-Bay Personal Cloud NAS, 1 GHz Dual-Core CPU with Hardware Encryption, Mobile Streaming, Tool-Less Setup, Diamond-Plate Design and Ultra-Quiet Operation with no problems.The drive is fast and I can read and write large files at over 100Mb/Sec and of course the drive is likely faster and another part of my network may be limiting the speed.Only one snag with this drive is the read and write access noise which in a quiet room is objectionable and reminds me a bit of a thunder storm.I should imagine a RAID array of four of these would be very "tuneful",

Toshiba L200 - Reviews

Info

Analysis

Detail