INTRODUCTION

   With heat assisted magnetic recording technology (used by Seagate) and microwave assisted magnetic recording (used by WD) hard disk drives right around the corner competition in the storage media industry is heating up and Toshiba as expected couldn't be far behind. As a matter of fact, according to the top people over at Toshiba Storage their plans include the release of HDDs both with MAMR technology and later on with the HAMR technology (based on specs in time MAMR may not be able to keep up with HAMR in terms of total available capacity). This means that Toshiba should also have 20TB HDDs (and perhaps even 22TB) models in their product lines by the end of 2020. For now, however Toshiba just announced the addition of more 16TB models in their product lines (X300/P300) and even though we'd really like to take a look at those as well today with us we have a somewhat lower capacity variant, the X300 10TB.

   Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH (TEE) is the European electronic components business of Toshiba Electronic Devices and Storage Corporation. TEE offers a broad IC and discrete product line including high-end memory, microcontrollers, ASICs and ASSPs for automotive, multimedia, industrial, telecoms and networking applications. The company also has a wide range of power semiconductor solutions as well as storage products including HDDs, SSDs, SD Cards and USB sticks. TEE was formed in 1973 in Neuss, Germany, providing design, manufacturing, marketing and sales and now has headquarters in Dusseldorf, Germany, with branch offices in France, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. TEE employs approximately 300 people in Europe. Company president is Mr. Akira Morinaga.

   Toshiba currently aims the X300 family of 3.5" SATA III hard drives (Performance Series) towards desktop use and is currently available in 4/5/6/8/10/12/14/16TB capacities (10/12/14/16TB models were all added recently). Now although the entire line is comprised by 7200RPM models (the 10TB model we have here has a total of 7 platters - each 1.5TB in capacity) there are quite a few differences between them, for example the 4/5/6/8TB models feature 128MB cache whereas the 10/12/14TB models have 256MB and the top of the line 16TB model has 512MB. The 12/14/16TB models are also helium filled which further reduces friction and thus temperatures and power consumption. Everything else however remains the same so the entire line features perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR), NCQ (native command queuing), ramp loading technology (improves reliability), stable platter technology (minimizes vibrations), internal shock sensors and dual stage actuators (offer increased performance, data integrity and overall drive reliability). Finally, Toshiba covers the entire X300 family of hard disk drives with a 2 year limited warranty and currently reports an MTTF (mean time to failure) of 600 thousand hours for entire line.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

The X300 arrived inside a black box that has a product picture at the front right beneath the capacity, platter RPM and amount of cache.

A comparison table between the current HDD lines by Toshiba is placed at the rear of the box.

Toshiba has placed the drive inside an air bag thus providing it with adequate protection.

Along with the drive you'll also be getting the installation instructions.

THE PERFORMANCE X300 10TB

The enclosure of the X300 10TB model is slightly different than the one used with the 5TB model which we reviewed a while back.

As usual the sticker on top of the drive lists the drive's capacity, rotational speed, buffer, installed firmware, electrical requirements, revision number, factory rollout date, country of manufacture, serial number, part number, barcodes and several certifications.

The rear of the drive is also quite different than that of the 5TB version but again we see that all of the modules are placed on the other side of the PCB for increased protection.

Typically, the standard SATA power and data connectors are placed at the rear end of the X300 right next to 4 pins (probably used for service purposes).

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

     Thoroughly testing hard disk drives may require time and patience but that's just about it. Of course, that doesn't mean that one must take it lightly, at least not when people base their decision on your results. True some choose to only use 2 or 3 benchmarking suits in order to measure the performance of a drive or drives since quite honestly most benchmarking suites do tend to agree with each other (so it's not really wrong) but we always like to take things a step further not because we have to but because we want to be almost 100% certain of the results we get and post in our charts.

     So, in this kind of reviews we will use a total of 7 different benchmarking suites in an effort to bring you the most accurate results across the board. Now the only reason why i say effort is because real-world usage is not always on par with what results one gets by running several benchmarks on a drive and that's mainly because there are many variables at work from ambient temperatures to hardware configurations and even firmware versions. The benchmarking applications we use are the AIDA64 suite (former Everest Pro), HD Tune Professional (as of October 2016 we also record seek times of 3.5” drives), HD Tach RW, ATTO, Sisoftware Sandra Pro, Crystal Disk Mark 64bit and the PCMARK 7 (secondary storage suite). These benchmarking tools are the best in what they do and as you will also see later on their results more or less agree. Each test is performed a total of 6 times and then the average is recorded into the charts. Temperatures are recorded using Hard Disk Sentinel and after 45 minutes of continuous testing in a 23 degrees Celsius temperature controlled room. Finally, we also use an ExTech HD600 dBA meter on each of the drives (5cm away) in order to accurately record their noise levels (during access), although if you don't turn off all system fans when doing so it's quite possible that you will never even hear the drive. The operating system used is a fresh installation of Microsoft Windows 10 Pro with every update installed up until the time of our tests.

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK X64

TEST RESULTS – PCMARK 7 PRO / TEMPERATURES / NOISE LEVELS

CONCLUSION

   Even though the X300 10TB is neither the largest capacity HDD in the market today nor is it the largest capacity model in the Toshiba line up it does extremely well in our tests. Yes, it doesn’t do quite as well as 12/14/16TB models but when compared to the 10TB models we’ve reviewed by Seagate in the past it actually surpasses most of them in most tests. The differences in performance may not be that great but still they are there so kudos to Toshiba for that. Reviewing however the 10TB variant of their X300 series when we reviewed the equivalent models by Seagate back in 2017 may strike some of you as a bit odd but the end result is what matters and we always welcome an extra model in our charts. The only “slight” downside of the X300 10TB HDD is its reported MTTF (mean time to failure) number which at 600.000 hours its roughly half compared to what Seagate reports for their equivalent models. This of course should have zero impact to regular consumers but it’s there so we have to address it regardless.

   At the moment of this review the Performance X300 10TB HDD by Toshiba retails for USD277.17 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for 301Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk) a price tag which actually places it over most if not all 10TB models in the market today. Still performance is there and quality is what you’d expect from a Toshiba drive (never had one fail on us to date after all) so the X300 10TB HDD is certainly worth of our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality
- Excellent Read / Write Performance (For A 10TB Model)
- Features / Technologies
- Low Temperatures
- Available Capacities (2/4/5/6/8/10/12/14/16TB)
- 2 Year Limited Warranty

CONS

- Price (For Some)
- Reported MTTF (Compared to The Competition)