INTRODUCTION

   With 2TB solid state drives already available in the market and 4TB models announced to arrive pretty soon it's clear that although the price/capacity gap with 3.5" mechanical drives is still quite wide (currently 10TB 3.5" drives have already made their debut) the same no longer applies for 2.5" mechanical drives since as we speak the highest capacity model is a 3TB one. All of the above however are for the consumer market so when it comes to enterprise grade products things change quite a bit since SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) models cost a lot more compared to their SATA siblings. Because of that 2.5" enterprise grade mechanical hard drives still have the "edge" over enterprise grade SSDs in terms of price/capacity and thus many professionals and businesses still choose to go with them for their data arrays. Toshiba recently announced their latest AL13SXBxx 15.000 RPM 2.5" SAS hard drive line and not long after being the first ones to test the 12Gb/s SAS model with us we have the 6Gb/s SAS one.

   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.

   Just like the AL13SXB60EN 12Gb/s SAS drive which we reviewed recently the AL13SXB600N is also a 600GB, 2.5", 15mm thick HDD (also available in 450 and 300GB models) that spins at 15.000 RPM and although it features SAS 6Gb/s connectivity (backwards compatible with 3 and 1.5Gb/s) and only has 64MB of cache it still manages to keep up by producing an equally impressive average latency of just 2.0s. Strangely enough the AL13SXB600N is slightly more power "hungry" compared to the AL13SXB60EN since it consumes up to 9W while in use and up to 5W while in idle mode but it still offers the same excellent MTTF (Mean Time to Fail) of 2.000.000 hours making ideal for use in data centers. So aside 12Gb/s SAS connectivity on paper the AL13SXB600N really has very little else to be jealous of its more expensive sibling the AL13SXB60EN so all that's left is to check and see how well it really does in our tests.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

THE AL13SXB600N

Once again we received the sample drive inside a static-free bag.

Appearance-wise the AL13SXB600N is identical to the AL13SXB60EN (both are also 15mm thick and weigh 230g).

As always a 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.

Typically all of the modules are placed on the interior of the PCB located at the belly of the drive.

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 15^th of August 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

   15k RPM mechanical drives have been around for quite a while but Toshiba seems to take things further with their latest AL13SXB line since both models we’ve reviewed are the fastest ones in their class, at least to date. Read and write performance can’t really compare to that of an SSD and neither can electrical consumption but thanks to their impressive durability and better price/capacity ratio they are a very good option for data centers. The only issue (aside slight noise during intensive tests since that’s typical for 15k RPM drives) we came across with the AL13SXB600N model was with its temperature levels since for some unknown reason (unknown since the AL13SXB60EN did not) it almost hit 50 degrees Celsius during testing. This isn’t really a problem since we’ve had HDDs hit 60 degrees when used in our test rigs (during every day use) but do keep in mind that this happened in our temperature controlled room of 23 degrees.

   Because of its 12Gb/s connectivity at the time of our review the projected price for the AL13SXB60EN model was set at around USD500 so right from the start we knew that the AL13SXB600N would cost quite a bit but not as much. Well we were right on the spot once again since as I type these lines the AL13SXB600N 600GB 2.5” SAS 6Gb/s Enterprise Grade HDD retails for USD380 inside the USA (ServerSupply) and for around 450Euros inside the EU. Again casual consumers will consider this overkill but for use in data centers and even by professionals such drives justify their price and although it does “deduct” some points from our final conclusion thanks to its performance levels the AL13SXB600N gets our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality (Enterprise Grade / 2.000.000 Hours MTTF)
- Superior Performance (SAS-2 Connectivity / 15.000RPM)
- Size Factor (2.5")
- Environmental Friendly (5W Idle Consumption)
- 5 Years Warranty

CONS

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