CONCLUSION

   Although we were unable to finish the secondary storage suite of PCMARK 7 with the MG04ACA500A 5TB HDD by Toshiba (returned error code 87) things went extremely well on every other test and in some it even managed to trade blows with the Enterprise Capacity 3.5 V4 6TB HDD by Seagate. Overall the Seagate ES V4 6TB drive does come ontop by a relatively small performance margin and thus still holds the title of fastest 3.5" HDD in our charts but compared to previous Nearline models the MG04ACA500A 5TB drive is simply put quite impressive. Toshiba however didn't stay there and aside using the same buffer size (128MB) they also offer the same MTBF (Meantime Between Failures) of 1.4 million hours, similar power consumption under load (11.3W) and the same 5 year warranty as Seagate so read/write performance is obviously not the only area they aimed to match them at.

   Toshiba enterprise grade HDD models are not very easy to come by in the consumer market (unlike the ones by Seagate) so it took quite a while for us to find that the Nearline MG04ACA500A 5TB HDD currently retails for around 320Euros inside the EU (unfortunately we couldn't locate this model in the USA at the time of this review) a price tag that puts it roughly 30% beneath the Enterprise Capacity 3.5 V4 6TB model by Seagate. Of course we're talking about an 5TB model so a comparison with a 6TB one is not the most ideal one but either way Toshiba obviously wants to compete with Seagate in this area as well. In conclusion Toshiba seems to be finally taking some serious steps in order to compete directly with their largest (and perhaps only) rival and since the MG04ACA500 5TB HDD just couldn't be better it gets our Platinum Award.

PROS

- Enterprise Class Quality
- 1.4 Million Hours MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures)
- Excellent Performance (2nd Only To The ES V4 6TB Drive)
- 5TB's Of Capacity
- Write Cache Technology
- Temperatures/Noise Levels
- 5 Years Warranty

CONS

- Price (For Some)