Toshiba N300 8TB High-Reliability HDD Review

Introduction

Toshiba is adding to its X and P300 series of drives with a new N300 lineup. This lineup is aimed at NAS users wanting a reliable, high capacity solution in the 7200 RPM flavor.

Toshiba is playing a bit of catch up with its hard drive business, bringing its very own NAS brewed solution to the market. The N300 designed from the ground up for NAS use in up to eight-bay systems offers several capacity options for the prospective buyer. At the ground floor, we have 4TB for entry-level consumers, and a step up gives us 6TB. 8TB is the peak capacity at this point, but all drives carry a 7200 RPM spindle speed.

The N300 uses a Serial ATA 3.0 or SATA 6Gb/s interface in the 3.5" form factor. Sustained data transfer sits at 200 MB/s for the 4TB model, 210 MB/s for the 6TB, and 240 MB/s for the 8TB model in house. Buffer size comes in at 128MB on par with the standard for high-capacity drives with the N300 series carrying a 180TB/year workload rating, and MTBF sits at one million hours.

The Toshiba N300 in the 8TB capacity carries a three-year warranty and an MSRP of $279.99.