INTRODUCTION

   Most people i know think that enthusiasts and serious gamers are the ones who always choose the fastest hardware components money can buy for their own systems but that's really far from the truth at least in regard to storage media. In that area for most consumers (enthusiasts and serious gamers included) even a regular SSD is good enough to do the job but for professionals and enterprise users alike there are more important things to take into account other than performance with endurance and the typical price/capacity ratio leading the list. There are of course several enterprise-grade SSD models in the market as we speak but unfortunately to date they haven't been able to catch up with mechanical HDD models in terms of price (that may change in 2016 however) and in some cases even endurance. Toshiba has released several enterprise-grade HDD lines over the past 3 years or so and they continue to do so this time with the brand new AL13SXB60EN (and to date we're the first to take a look).

   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.

   The AL13SXB60EN may just offer 600GB of storage capacity (also available in 450/300GB) but it's probably one of the fastest 2.5-inch (15mm thick) enterprise-grade HDDs currently in the market since thanks to its SAS 12Gb/s connectivity (backwards compatible with 6, 3 and 1.5Gb/s), rotational speed of 15000 RPM and 128MB of cache it sports an average latency of just 2.0s. Ontop of that add its low power consumption of 8.7W even under load (4.5W in idle), Toshiba's persistent write cache technology (improves data integrity and performance) and an excellent MTTF (Mean Time To Fail) of 2.000.000 hours and you've got yourself a powerful tool for mission critical IT operations. To some people jumping from SAS 6Gb/s to SAS 12Gb/s may seem too much for mechanical drives but aside the fact that these drives are backwards compatible with previous SAS host controllers (thus you may still use them without a 12Gb/s card) manufacturers may also start offering SAS SSHD enterprise-grade drives so this was the obvious path for them.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

THE AL13SXB60EN

Typically we received the AL13SXB60EN inside a regular static-free bag.

Aside the fact that the AL13SXB60EN is quite thick (15mm) and heavy (230g) it's not much different than any other 2.5" HDD.

The large sticker placed at the top of the drive lists the connectivity type, part and serial numbers and barcodes, firmware version, electrical specifications, factory rollout date and country of manufacture.

As you can all see the PCB at the rear of the drive has all the modules on its interior for maximum protection.

The typical SAS connector is placed at the rear along with 4 pins (probably used when flashing a new FW version onto the drive).

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, Crystal Disk Mark 64bit (2000MB mode) and PC Mark 7. 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. All tests were performed in a fresh Windows 7 Ultimate x64 installation with every update installed up to the 23rd of June 2015.

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 / TEMPERATURES

CONCLUSION

   The AL13SXB60EN SAS HDD by Toshiba is not the first 15.000 RPM model to arrive in our lab since roughly 2 years ago we also received the MK3001GRRB model which as you can see in our charts did better overall. Before we continue however we need to point out that these results are not because the MK3001GRRB is a better drive compared to the AL13SXB60EN but because in our SAS 6Gb/s tests we use the MegaRAID 9271-8i SAS 6Gb/s card and not the 9300-8i SAS 12Gb/s card which we use in our 12Gb/s tests (the first is a more feature-rich model). With that out of the way the AL13SXB60EN may not be "really" faster compared to SAS 6Gb/s models (we all know that mechanical drives have very little to no use for 12Gb/s) and as clearly shown in our charts you might be better off pairing it with a good SAS 6Gb/s card instead of an 12Gb/s one but what doesn't change is its top of the line performance for an 2.5" drive. With power consumption during read & write of up to 8W the AL13SXB60EN may not be the "greenest" drive in the market as we speak but 15k models are known for this and considering that there are quite a few 10k RPM models with similar electrical needs we think Toshiba did well in this area. Unfortunately the drive is quite noisy and produces more heat compared to the more regular 7200RPM ones (as does every 15k model out there) but that was something we expected from the get go.

   We spend quite a bit of time searching for the AL13SXB60EN model online without luck so currently we can't provide you with a valid price tag, not even an MSRP since our contacts are out for the weekend (will update first chance we get). Judging however from previous SAS models by Toshiba the AL13SXB60EN will most likely surpass the 600$/Euro mark and although that's quite the hefty price tag it's nowhere close to what one would have to pay for a 600GB enterprise-grade SAS 12Gb/s SSD model. True SSDs may be the future and we may see their prices take a serious dive sooner rather than later but for now one thing's for certain you just can't go wrong with the likes of the AL13SXB60N if you deal with mission critical applications and that's why we're giving it our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality (Enterprise Grade / 2.000.000 Hours MTTF)
- Superior Performance (SAS3 Connectivity / 15.000RPM)
- Size Factor (2.5")
- Environmental Friendly (4.5W Idle Consumption)
- 5 Years Warranty

CONS

- Price? (For Some)
- Only Available Up to 600GB