CONCLUSION

       Judging by its features and specifications it’s quite clear that the N300 High Reliability Hard Drive for NAS by Toshiba was designed to take on the latest IronWolf HDD by Seagate both in terms of performance (we’ve yet to get our hands on the 6TB IronWolf variant but based on its specs sheet we know that it’s not as fast as the 10TB variant) and durability (both the N300 6TB and the IronWolf 6TB are rated for 180TB and have an MTBF of 1 million hours). According to both Toshiba and Seagate the IronWolf 6TB does seem to require less power at load compared to the N300 6TB (8W/10W) but I expect that for SMB use this will not represent a serious issue. We were somewhat impressed to see that in terms of temperatures the N300 keeps with the helium filled IronWolf/Pro models and that is perhaps even more important for 8 disk RAID systems. Unfortunately since the N300 line doesn’t currently have a 10TB variant we can’t directly compare it to all the other 10TB drives we have in our charts but once they do we’ll do our best to get our hands on it.

   So just how much is Toshiba asking for their N300 6TB High Reliability Hard Drive for NAS? Currently the N300 6TB (HDWN160) retails for USD197.99 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for 190Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk) a price tag which is very similar to what Seagate asks for their IronWolf 6TB HDD. Unfortunately since we haven’t tested the 6TB variant of the IronWolf pro we can’t be 100% certain about which is best, what we do know however is that these two HDDs are very similar in everything. At the end of the day it seems that the N300 High Reliability Hard Drive for NAS has nothing to be jealous from its counterparts not only in terms of performance and endurance/reliability but also price and for that it gets our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality (180TB Per Year With An MTBF Of 1.000.000 Hours)
- Very Good Read/Write Performance
- Features (RV Sensor / Internal Shock Detection / Error Recovery / Heat Prevention)
- Low Temperatures & Noise Levels
- 3 Year Limited Warranty

CONS

- Only Up To 8TB
- Reported Power Consumption At Load (2W over the IronWolf 6TB)