22.4.2017

Once upon a time... hard drives were easy and straightforward. When capacities were limited and your only worry tended to be if you needed a 3.5" or 2.5" drive. Like most things in computing things have evolved. With terms like Solid State Drive, NAS, RAID and JBOD to name just a few (not to forget some hard drives being released in different colours to denote different functions) sometimes you have to really think hard about what (hard) drive would meet your needs.What is on offer here is the "Toshiba N300 H4TB Internal Hard Drive" with SATA connection and 3.5" form factor. This drive has been designed and developed to offer "High Reliability and Scalability" when in an always-on environment as part of a NAS/RAID set up.However at the same time there is nothing stopping you using this drive as a standalone or like myself in single drive external enclosure. If you do intend to use it for the designed purpose then on offer to temp you is the Integrated RV Sensor, a high durability and heat reduction design, not to forget that large 128MB Cache. The RV Sensor is what makes it ideal for a NAS environment as minimising vibrations and any shocks would reduce the risk of malfunction and damage (especially in a multi-bay system).As build quality goes it would be hard to improve on anything here. It really is a solidly built drive that came very well packaged through the post. However one of the major failings seems to be the warranty. As several reviewers have mentioned the drive comes with a short warranty and there seems to be a bit of confusion on how long the warranty lasts with several quoting different time scales. The drive that I received contained paperwork stating that it is covered with a 1-year guarantee. To me this seems very short considering that the drive is designed for constant and long term use. Other harddrives come with up to a 5 year warranty (some even longer) so it strikes me as strange that this "premium" drive would fall short in this area. It may be worth looking into and it would be good if Toshiba could clarify it either on their website or elsewhere. Personally however I am expecting (and hoping) this drive to last a lot longer than a year.In terms of capacity 4Tb is the perfect size for most if not all users. Even if used in RAID there is plenty of storage space (just remember to pair it with an identical drive). Larger drives are on the market but the price increases sharply (almost doubling from 4 to 6Tb) so a pair of smaller drives could work out more economical depending on your needs. Installation of the drive was simple and straightforward, I initially had the drive inside my computer where it was recognized without any problems, before I formatted and got it ready for life in an enclosure. Several have mentioned problems getting the drive detected however I suspect that the problem lies with them or their BIOS/operating system and not the drive itself. Performance over the USB3.1 interface was very fast - likely the fastest I've seen in an external drive to date with the exception of the solid state drives (but not a huge distance behind). I doubt anyone would have any problems when it comes to this drive performing.I have read online and looked at a few benchmarks showing that this drive is slightly slower for many tasks when compared to the "Seagate IronWolf 4 TB" and the "Western Digital 4TB Intellipower" however it is £10-£25 pounds cheaper that both of them so in my books a slightly slower read and write speed is forgivable.The only thing that worries me ever so slightly is the question mark over warranty. Like I said the build quality is high, the performance is good and the bangs per buck and gigabytes per pound cannot be faulted. The confusions over the warranty and the (to be honest) ugly label on the drive itself is the only thing holding it back. If Toshiba could address this then it would help this drive stand out from the others on the market.Either way I doubt this drive will give you any problems...

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.

12.7.2020

I have been buying and building computers since the IBM 286 (1 meg ram) costing over a £1,000 was the cutting edge technology, I had a 40 Meg drive in it and that was considered to be so large you would never fill it, and to replace was well over £200. Things have certainly moved on and buying a fast 4TB platter drive for £95 was unimaginable then, now paying £23.75p a Tb means that 40 meg drive would have cost £3.80 today, clearly Moores law is as relevant today as it was in 1965 with all things technology based. Anyway less history and down to reviewing the drive. Its fast for a non SSD drive being helped by the 7200 rpm platter and the 128 meg buffer.The product details on Amazon are very basic and even incorrect stating its a Solid State Hard Drive which clearly it isn't, check out the Toshiba website for the specs and there are some great reviews on-line. My Mobo is 8 years old so I wasn't sure how easy it would be to partition and format this drive. I decided to structure the partition as GPT which went very smoothly without a hitch and format it NTFS which also went very smoothly, my system is Windows 10 64 bit pro. The Drive formatted to 3.6 tb which is correct for a 4tb HD. Interestingly I copied over 900 meg from my 1TB WD Caviar Black drive (7200 rpm platter and 64 meg buffer) and it only occupied approx 650 meg space on the new drive. I triple checked this was correct and it was, all files had been copied no hidden files missed, I know the drives storage is more efficient but I didn't expect that efficient. I have tested the drive and it is about 30% faster than the Caviar but obviously not as fast as my SSD's. Its quiet, well made, it doesn't hesitate to spin up when accessed and will be the main storage for all my big files/directories and games that don't need to be on an SSD. I have no intention to use it as a boot disc, although it would be fine if your mobo can boot to it, just not as fast as an SSD. It arrived in the Toshiba packaging which is great not OEM packaging as some reviewers mention. Finally there have been some negative reviews and some very positive reviews but tbh that will be the case with all makes of drive and I have used all makes over the years, e.g. my 1TB WD Caviar Black considered the fastest and most reliable HD possible at the time, has negative reviews but mine has been faultless for over 6 years of constant use. So don't worry about this drive,perhaps a slight niggle is the 2 year warranty, 3 or 5 would have been nice but it is what it is. I very happy with it, as long as its reliable and only time will tell, I see no reason why it wont be my main storage until SSD 4tb drives are as cheap as chips. So yes, its recommended by me and if I do run into issues at a later date I will update this review.

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,

14.8.2017

I am running this on a windows machine I use as a Plex server.In order to benchmark the drive I ran Crystal Mark twice, both with similar results. It gave me sequential read 210MB/s sequential write speed of 207MB/s. The attached image shows all the tested parameters.To replicate this to see how it fared in the real work, I copied a 13.6GB between the drive and an SSD drive (Samsung 840 Pro), with between 190-200MB/s transfer speed in both directions. I did not see any drop off of speed during the transfer. By way of comparison, this is noticeably faster than the other (NAS specific) Seagate HDD's on my rig which give about 90MB read and sustained 80MB/s write.I have never had a Toshiba HDD before,

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.

24.5.2020

I bought four of these for a NAS after extensive research. In terms of what's on the spec sheet, they blow the usual competition for NAS storage drives out of the water. They're cheaper, have lower URE rates, and very respectable MTBF times et al. I ran them for a month problem free, so while not long enough to get a true idea of review, I got a feel for their general characteristics in operation.In reviewing which drives to go for, something I hadn't bothered to take heed of is how noisy the drives would be. The first time I powered up the NAS in my living room I couldn't believe how noisy four of these operating at once were.

14.10.2019

*** Update ~ six months inI now have four 4TB N300 drives running across my two active NAS servers (the DS1019+ and 412+), and so far they have been running flawlessly. They seem to run around 2-3 degrees cooler than the 4TB HGST drives they are now mostly paired with (39-40 degrees, vs. 42-43 for the HGSTs), though obviously a bit warmer than the remaining 5400rpm Seagate drive (at 36 degrees).*** Original reviewI previously used a mix of 7200rpm HGST and 5x00rpm Seagate NAS drives and Samsung EcoGreen ones in my NAS servers (Synology DS1019+, 412+ and an older QNAP TS-210). These have replaced the Samsung ones,

28.4.2017

This 3.5 inch Toshiba HDD comes well packed in a fairly compact cardboard box. The drive is held firmly in the box by two plastic pouches that have air pockets so it can withstand a fair whack before you need to worry about damaging the HDD inside. Of course not whacking the whole thing is the preferable option...Price-wise this 4TB drive compares well to the equivalent Western Digital Red drive, and is also currently slightly cheaper than a Seagate IronWolf. It seems to me that they are all reputable brands.This Toshiba NAS HDD has twice the onboard cache at 128MB compared to 64MB in those other drives. Everyone is going to use their NAS drive in a slightly different way - personally I use mine to store my photo and music collection,

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.

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",

13.2.2017

The HDD arrived within 2 Days using the Free Delivery option and WOW! After installing it into my NAS Drive Unit (literally sliding it into my D-Link NAS Unit), I powered it on and then ran up the set up utility and it is a damn fast drive. I purchased the 3TB Drive and it is awesome.Note that you don't need any cables to connect from your HDD to the NAS drive as the HDD literally slides in and connects to the slots at the end of the drive. If however, you are going to install the drive into your tower/case, then you will need the respective cable which can be had for as little as GBP5.00. Note that cables and NOT supplied with the HDD.I think I might buy another one of these and get the two into a raid configuration!Basically,

27.3.2019

I am very pleased with this hard drive, it certainly has speeded up my PC considerably. Programs launch faster now I have this HDD installed. It is value for money this drive, getting 4TB of space and super high performance for under £100. I see that people comment that this drive is noisy but I don't mind it myself. It makes a crunching noise when reading and writing but AFAIK this is totally normal for this product. Temperatures for this drive tend to reach mid 30s with mine. I am going to get a HDD cooler fan to keep it running as cool as possible in order to make the life of it last longer. So far so good I have not encountered any problems with this HDD and hopefully it will last several years before needing replacing.

14.8.2016

Works perfectly with my OWC Mercury Elite Pro enclosure. I spent a lot of time researching what HDD to buy and settled on Toshiba after having read about their technical similiraities with Hitachi drives. People who use tons of external drives in their servers swear by Toshiba in terms of durability and quiet performance, both the things that I looked for in mine. This is a very quiet HDD and the sound that you can just about hear is far from intrusive. (No clank and rattle ever happens). Still, it's there, so if you want something totally quiet you'll have to go for a 5400rpm version. If you are looking for a HDD to use with your media player and you demand dead quiet performance don't go

14.4.2019

I bought two of these drives for a NAS unit. I was concerned at the stories of these bulk units arriving damaged / DOA without proper packaging. Mine arrived in solid sealed carboard boxes that had foam inside to protect the drives from damage. As I was just putting the bare drives in a NAS I didn't need instructions, cables, screws etc. The drives are quite noisy, but the NAS is out the way, so not a problem. The noise is just head seeking and spinning, as you would expect. The drives run at around 30C - 33C so they aren't getting too hot in use. The drives get a clean bill of health on the S.M.A.R.T test. So, as far as I can tell these are good quality drives at a good price,

Toshiba N300 8TB Bulk (HDWN180UZSVA) - Reviews

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