Introduction

The Toshiba MK01GRRB/R is a top-flight enterprise HDD Series that comes in a surprisingly small form factor. Today we are testing the 147GB version, the MK1401GRRB that is in the same product line as the MK3001GRRB/R, which is the 300GB bigger brother. While 300GB might not seem to be a huge amount of capacity, for a 2.5"� 15,000 RPM drive, it the highest available at the time of writing.

This small form factor allows for 2.5"� HDDs such as the MK1401GRRB to provide more performance in higher density enterprise HDD applications. Increased storage density leads to less space and cooling requirements. This reduced footprint requires less rack space and floor space to provide more performance than 3.5"� form factor HDDs.

Every square foot of space is crucial in datacenters, as it has to be cooled, raising the overall power requirement for the data center. One of the greatest aspects in utilizing 2.5"� hard drives is the lower wattage requirements than their 3.5"� counterparts. Lower wattage results in less heat generation from the device itself. Toshiba has also integrated enhanced idle spin-down power states to reduce power consumption further.

And then we come to performance. Operating at 15,000 RPM places these HDDs at the top of the pack when it comes down to sheer performance. 15K drives provide a great combination of speed, capacity and agility. With highly random workloads becoming more commonplace as virtual machines proliferate in the data center, hard disk drives that can provide increased performance are in high demand.

Protecting data is also very important, and to that end, Toshiba has provided a version of the MK01GRRB series that includes AES-256 device-level encryption without sacrificing performance. This model is denoted with an R at the end of the product SKU instead of a B. This functionality allows customers to repurpose, service, return or retire drives without long overwrite operations or physical destruction of the HDDs when critical data is in place.

At the end of the day getting more performance, higher density, and lower heat generation with less power sounds like a dream come true for datacenter administrators. Supplying a five year warranty provides customers with some peace of mind, so let's take a look and see if the Toshiba MK01GRRB series delivers on these promises.