INTRODUCTION

   If you are reading these lines then you should be well aware that the two main reasons behind the increasing demands in storage capacity all of us have are the continuous speed upgrades we have been enjoying in internet bandwidth during the past 10 years in most places around the globe combined of course with the wide availability in Full HD/HD media content. Because of that most people (namely casual users, gamers and even some overclockers) naturally put the usual capacity/price ratio above performance and especially nowadays with the current state of the economy i can't really blame them for doing that (besides mostly for backup purposes you don't really need the best possible performance factor). However there are many enterprise users, professionals and enthusiasts out there who always place performance and data integrity above the usual capacity/price ratio and this is where 2.5" SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) drives like the latest Toshiba MK3001GRRB come in.

   Toshiba Europe Storage Products Division (SPD) has remained at the forefront of the storage industry for over 40 years and is the world's only storage supplier that owns design, development, manufacturing, sales and other infrastructure functions spanning the enterprise, mobile and retail environments for both HDD and SSD products. Customers are original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), system integrators and distributors within the EMEA region. As a leading provider of integrated storage solutions and as the principal inventor of NAND flash storage, Toshiba sets many of today’s industry standards for storage technology. Throughout its history, Toshiba SPD has revolutionized the design and development of storage devices and its drives can be found inside the world's leading GPS navigation systems, consumer electronics, computers and enterprise solutions. In addition, Toshiba Storage Products Division offers an extensive range of advanced technology drives such as high durability 24/7, extended temperature and SSDs for the consumer, industrial, enterprise and automotive sector.

   There are three things i particularly like about SAS drives, first and foremost their industrial/enterprise grade components that give them extra-long MTBF (Meantime Between Failures) compared to regular drives, second their increased RPM (Rotations Per Minute) which in turn give them superior performance and third the fact that they require dedicated SAS cards which save system resources, can help improve security for your critical data and finally give you a rather significant performance boost (mid/high-end SAS card models). Getting back to the product at hand the Toshiba MK3001GRRB is an 2.5inch 300GB SAS 2.0 HDD with an MTBF of 1.600.000 hours, a rotational speed of 15.000RPM and 32MB Cache. So it's quite clear after reading the drive specifications that there are only a handful of drives available in the market currently that can really go up against the rotational speed of the MK3001GRRB (especially 2.5" ones) so without further delay let's see what it can do.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

THE MK3001GRRB

As always we received the "bulk" version of the drive placed inside a static shielding plastic bag.

Unlike retail packages bulk ones just contain the drive itself.

Written on the large sticker placed at the top is the drive model, serial number, barcode, connectivity type, firmware version, revision, rollout factory date, electrical requirements and several certification logos.

As expected all of the chips are placed on the interior of the blue PCB for increased protection.

The SAS port is different from the regular SATA one so although you can use SAS cards with SATA drives you can't do the opposite.

Compared to most regular 2.5" drives (9mm) the MK3001GRRB is actually quite thicker (14mm).

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

     Thoroughly testing hard disk and solid state drives may require time and lots of patience but that's just about it. Of course that doesn't mean that one must take it lightly, at least not when people actually base their decision on your results. Because of that 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.

     SAS drive testing however is more complicated than testing regular SATA drives and so although we use the same 6 benchmark suites as with SATA tests in an effort to bring you the most accurate results across the board things are a bit different since we are required to configure/tweak some of those programs to address compatibility issues with the SAS card used. This may not be exactly "fair" for the SAS drive/s in hand since we test them with much heavier read/write loads in some of the suites used but that's the only way to get realistic results without taking into account certain extreme card-specific performance optimizations. So once again the benchmarking applications we use are the AIDA64 suite (former Everest Pro), HD Tune Professional (Partial Test/Full Accuracy), HD Tach RW (Full Bench), ATTO (2GB Length), Sisoftware Sandra Pro and the Crystal Disk Mark 64bit (2000MB mode). These benchmark tools are the best at 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.

    Last but not least do take into account that we use dedicated and separate performance charts for 2.5"/3.5" drives as we do for Internal/External and HDDs/SSDs so if you want to compare the performance of a 2.5" drive with that of a 3.5", an internal drive with an external or that of an HDD with that of an SSD you need to check the corresponding charts.

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK

TEST RESULTS - TEMPERATURES

CONCLUSION

   It's been a while since i had an 15k RPM drive in my hands and so i didn't really expect the level of performance the MK3001GRRB managed to achieve which literally left the competition far behind. With this kind of performance i think that 3.5" drives will become obsolete before too long but the main question is how will 2.5" mechanical drives compete with the better all-around performing 2.5" solid state drives in the future. Right now there are two things that make 2.5" mechanical drives more appealing to enterprise users and professionals, first the fact that there aren't any cost-effective SAS SSD models in the market currently and also the data recovery issue SSDs have since if one fails completely there's little to no chance of you ever recovering your data. These two reasons are mainly behind why even now with all the recent SSD price drops most professionals and enterprise users still choose mechanical drives over them for their mission critical operations (sensitive/important data).

   Mid/high end SAS cards don't really come cheap and the same applies for mid/high-end SAS drives even more so when we are talking about 2.5" ones which due to their small size factor are even more expensive than their 3.5" brothers. So currently the MK3001GRRB 300GB SAS 6Gb/s HDD by Toshiba retails for USD389 inside the USA (Purchase Directly from Amazon.com) and for 337Euros inside the EU (Purchase Directly from Amazon.de). Right now the MK3001GRRB is the fastest mechanical drive we've ever used and although the price is set somewhat high for its capacity if you are looking for performance and you are not willing to sacrifice reliability then you can't really do any better and that's why it walks away holding our Platinum award.

PROS

- Build Quality (Enterprise Grade/1.600.000 Hours MTBF)
- Superior Performance (SAS Connectivity/15.000RPM)
- Size Factor (2.5")
- Temperatures
- Environmental Friendly (4.5W Idle Consumption)
- 5 Years Warranty 

CONS

- Price (For Some)