Hi, I'm looking to get a few 3 TB hard drives and there is some Toshiba ones on on sale for a good price. Just wondering what peoples opinions are on them as I can't seem to find any reviews. Just need to upgrade my current file storage box that has 14 hd's in it (500gb-1tb drives). Hoping I can get away with 3x3tb drives and purge some crap/duplicates in my current setup.
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Toshiba Hard Drives
- Thread starter bmaffin13
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young_einstein
Weaksauce
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Toshiba 3.5" drives are basically just re-badged Hitachi disks.
Hitachi were taken over by WD in 2011, but they had to resell the 3.5" division to Toshiba in order to avoid problems with various competition regulators around the world.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5635/...e-business-to-toshiba-complete-hitachi-buyout
As far as I've been able to tell, the current Toshiba drives are still functionally identical to Hitachi before they were taken over (many of the drives still have Hitachi written on them somewhere).
So ... Look up some peoples reviews / opinions on the Hitachi drives, and that's basically what you'll be getting with the current Toshiba's.
Hitachi were taken over by WD in 2011, but they had to resell the 3.5" division to Toshiba in order to avoid problems with various competition regulators around the world.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5635/...e-business-to-toshiba-complete-hitachi-buyout
As far as I've been able to tell, the current Toshiba drives are still functionally identical to Hitachi before they were taken over (many of the drives still have Hitachi written on them somewhere).
So ... Look up some peoples reviews / opinions on the Hitachi drives, and that's basically what you'll be getting with the current Toshiba's.
drescherjm
[H]F Junkie
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I have 4 2TB 7200 RPM toshibas on order. I will try them next week to if they work in linux software raid at work. I am going to make a 6 or 7 drive raid 6 using 2 or 3 hitachi 7K3000s + these drives.
YeuEmMaiMai
Extremely [H]
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never had issues with the single toshiba hdd in my 3+ year old Dell Studio...
I purchased a 3TB Canvio external drive to see what is inside and if it works well with my Areca card and for the life of me, can't seem to figure out how to open up the case (without damaging it). The links on google are all for Toshiba 2.5 inch drives.
Anyone have experience with the 3.5 inch external?
Thanks!
Anyone have experience with the 3.5 inch external?
Thanks!
Old Hippie
Supreme [H]ardness
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Honestly, all drives are about the same anymore.
Some manfgs may/will have a single problematic series but it doesn't represent the entire production line.
Many are fanboys because of failures but in the end the stats say all manfgs are about the same.
Some manfgs may/will have a single problematic series but it doesn't represent the entire production line.
Many are fanboys because of failures but in the end the stats say all manfgs are about the same.
Think I'm going to buy a couple today. My last hard drive purchase was 6 samsung 1tb for a raid 5 array that I never could get working properly. Pretty sure it was due to a crappy highpoint raid controller and their crappy support that just kind of ended....
blastingcap
Gawd
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I have the same problem. The specs are very similar to the 5k3000 but Advanced Format so I'd love to use it as an internal drive, but I am leery of damaging the HDD if I pry the casing the wrong way. Anyone know how to crack one open?
Internals and physical packaging might be the same, but firmware can differ. I think the majority of us are interested in whether or not Toshiba has chosen not to cripple their firmware or introduce bugs which may impact raid compatibility for new consumer product lines. If Toshiba's DT01ABA and DT01ACA drives play nice, it will be the go to value drive of choice for consumer/prosumer enthusiasts and IT datacenter environments
The ones I picked up are DT01ACA300 Sep-2012 and it says on the anti static bag made in china by Hitachi Global Storage Products. Had failing hard drives that I had to take data off of so I didn't get a change to run any tests on these but transfer speeds seem pretty quick for a mechanical drive.
Seeing these start to pop up in Australia, a tittle googling found a Japanese guys review of the DT01ACA300 http://www.tonoko.info/2012/09/15/5325/ . From the review these identify as Hitachi drives and have similar performance characteristics to 7K3000 series 3TB drive.
The answer is no, firmware isn't gimped, they're still as RAID friendly as Hitachi's have always been, shipping drives with Toshiba labels are still identifying as Hitachi, still stating manufactured by HGST China, and I'd be extremely surprised if when the day came that they do identify as Toshiba and with Toshiba's firmware naming convention, that they took any steps backward to make them RAID unfriendly or otherwise gimped them. They'd really have no reason to.
Right now Toshiba wants to make inroads in their new 3.5" space, and they're not really trying to compete in the 3.5" SAS enterprise space, so if you're Toshiba you're going to make the drives the most appealing to the most people. And that means not playing WDC types of games like crippling firmware or using a gimped processor like they're doing on WDC Reds so that they bog down in high transactional environments.
In my view the 1TB/platter 3TB Toshiba will be the new sweet spot in terms of price-reliability ratio, whether used for RAID or otherwise. The only real hurdle right now is availability.
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Toshiba does offer enterprise SATA products, so it is conceivable that a consumer grade feature rich product could undercut enterprise sales. WDC and Seagate fear that scenario hence the games they play with product differentiation strategies.
Any news on DT01ABA300 availability? I wish they would start popping up, I'm debating ordering more Hitachi drives today, but fear the RMA process with WDC.
Another question posed in a discussion with mwroobel in the other Toshiba thread centered on the topic of Toshiba's firmware distribution policy for non-enterprise customers. I'm curious if Toshiba will adopt Hitachi's sharing/disclosure of stable firmware updates or deny updates to non-enterprise customers. A lot of us, yourself, mwroobel and myself included, will probably be interested in this topic.
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1710269&page=3
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