Toshiba N300 10TB NAS HDD Review

I’ve had the pleasure to test the Toshiba N300 series in the past, but today it is time to take a look at the 10TB version of this drive. Other available capacities include 4TB, 6TB, 8TB, 12TB, and 14TB. So there should be one for every capacity need.

Toshiba N300 NAS Hard Disk

The N300 series from Toshiba is purpose-build for NAS usage. While that’s the case, there’s nothing which prevents you from using it in your gaming rig or workstation setup. Since a NAS setup is demanding on the drives, they’ll easily handle the lesser load from a desktop.

Naturally, the N300 series is rated for 24/7 usage and they’re safe for use in up to 8-bay enclosures and devices. The drives feature RV sensors and control technology. With this, vibrations created by all the drives will be detected and counteracted, thus giving you a more stable and less fail-prone setup.

Toshiba also added a temperature control which automatically adjusts the seek speed to reduce heat during high-temperature operations. A feature which improves endurance in demanding situations.

This 10TB Toshiba N300 drive is using a traditional design. It is only the larger 12TB and 14TB versions which use a helium-sealed design.

Performance and Endurance

Let us get to the Toshiba N300 numbers. The N300 series are 7200RPM drives with either 128MB or 256MB cache. How much depends on the drive capacity where it is the 10TB and larger models which come with the 256MB cache.

In performance, the 10TB N300 is rated for a sustained transfer speed of 248MB/s. The average latency is rated at 4.17ms. Part of all this is Toshiba’s Dynamic Cache Technology. This is a self-contained cache algorithm with on-board buffer management. It optimises how the cache is allocated during read/write to provide the high-level performance demanded by real-time domains.

As far as endurance goes, we get a workload rating of 180 TB per year for the 3-years in which it’s also covered with the warranty. The mean time before failure rating comes in at 1 million hours.

Feature Highlights

• 7200 RPM spindle speed
• 24/7/365 usage certified
• Supports up to 8-bay units
• Built for NAS usage
• Solid feature set

Specifications

The specifications are taken from the manufactures information and are valid at the time of this review. It is possible that things can change if there are future revisions of the product.