The Toshiba N300 12TByte drive is great for NAS applications, offering speed, capacity and value for money. The first drive I received was faulty (unable to spin up) but this was quickly dealt with by EBuyer and a replacement drive arrived in just a smidge over 24 hours. The faulty drive was also collected at the same time. Whilst a DoA drive is not great, it does happen, and EBuyer's response to the issue was perfect.

2 year update: Nowhere even close to advertised speeds

I got this drive for media storage. It only has about 700 gigs on it and the read speeds have gotten so low that it has rendered it practically useless. No, my sata lanes are not throttled; I can hook up a 1tb WD on the same port/cable and get over 200 mb/s every time, and I have tried hooking the Toshiba up to every other sata port I have on 3 separate pc's as well as my friend's pc, none of which have changed the read speeds. Eventually I decided to short stroke this hdd into 3 partitions as a last resort hail mary before sending it in for warranty. That has gotten my first partition of 600gb to read/write around 100 mb/s with the other two 1.5tb partitions severely degrading in performance the closer it gets to the platter's middle. It's usable now anyway, that's ... MoreI got this drive for media storage. It only has about 700 gigs on it and the read speeds have gotten so low that it has rendered it practically useless. No, my sata lanes are not throttled; I can hook up a 1tb WD on the same port/cable and get over 200 mb/s every time, and I have tried hooking the Toshiba up to every other sata port I have on 3 separate pc's as well as my friend's pc, none of which have changed the read speeds. Eventually I decided to short stroke this hdd into 3 partitions as a last resort hail mary before sending it in for warranty. That has gotten my first partition of 600gb to read/write around 100 mb/s with the other two 1.5tb partitions severely degrading in performance the closer it gets to the platter's middle. It's usable now anyway, that's about the best I can say for it. The first 600 gigs benchmark at 180 mb/s but even when it's short stroked I still get nowhere near those speeds, and even at it's best performance on the short stroke it is still 60 mb/s away from advertised speeds. I have only ever used Western Digital hdd's over my 30+ years of pc'ing, and this is exactly why. Stay far away from this drive. It's a 4 tb drive with only 600 gigs that are actually usable. Pathetic. I'll be sending it in for warranty, but from what I have read, Toshiba's warranty department is flat out garbage and they don't actually send you a new drive, just a check for your purchase price. So if you get this drive on sale, you are doomed. Stay away.

Failed within 1 hour of installing

I bought this HDD for my NAS server. Typically I have always used enterprise level drives such as Ultrastar 7k4000 but I saw this Toshiba N300 on sale and well, you get what you pay for. I installed this drive in my server, booted it up, and after resilvering the RAID setup it worked great for about an hour. Now i get SMART fail tests every 30 minutes (see below) : Apr 6 20:36:24 NASSRVR01 smartd[2086]: Device: /dev/ada0, FAILED SMART self-check. BACK UP DATA NOW! Apr 6 20:36:24 NASSRVR01 smartd[2086]: Device: /dev/ada0, Failed SMART usage Attribute: 7 Seek_Error_Rate. Apr 6 21:06:23 NASSRVR01 smartd[2086]: Device: /dev/ada0, FAILED SMART self-check. BACK UP DATA NOW! Apr 6 21:06:23 NASSRVR01 smartd[2086]: Device: /dev/ada0, Failed SMART usage Attribute: 7 ... MoreI bought this HDD for my NAS server. Typically I have always used enterprise level drives such as Ultrastar 7k4000 but I saw this Toshiba N300 on sale and well, you get what you pay for. I installed this drive in my server, booted it up, and after resilvering the RAID setup it worked great for about an hour. Now i get SMART fail tests every 30 minutes (see below) : Apr 6 20:36:24 NASSRVR01 smartd[2086]: Device: /dev/ada0, FAILED SMART self-check. BACK UP DATA NOW! Apr 6 20:36:24 NASSRVR01 smartd[2086]: Device: /dev/ada0, Failed SMART usage Attribute: 7 Seek_Error_Rate. Apr 6 21:06:23 NASSRVR01 smartd[2086]: Device: /dev/ada0, FAILED SMART self-check. BACK UP DATA NOW! Apr 6 21:06:23 NASSRVR01 smartd[2086]: Device: /dev/ada0, Failed SMART usage Attribute: 7 Seek_Error_Rate. I don't know how I can get a replacement from Toshiba, but I read somewhere that this specific batch (July 2021) had a faulty motherboard so my guess is they dumped it on 3rd parties like Newegg to unload it for a cheap price. Thanks Toshiba!

Good drive at a good price

Let's start with some numbers obtained from CrystalDiskMark 3.0.4 running a 4000MB test size. While empty the drive achieved sequential read and write speeds of 206MB/s and 205MB/s respectively and 4K speeds of 0.75MB/s and 1.75MB/s. With about 1.7TB of data on it the sequential speeds dropped to 182MB/s read and 180MB/s write and the 4K speeds dropped to 0.51MB/s and 1.58MB/s. For a spinning drive, the sequential speeds are good and the 4K speeds are to be expected. These Toshiba drives (the N300 and X300) differentiate themselves from the competitors in one major way, price. These drives are significantly cheaper while still offering similar performance and features. The only area these drives fall behind in is the warranty. This N300 only has a 3 year warranty ... MoreLet's start with some numbers obtained from CrystalDiskMark 3.0.4 running a 4000MB test size. While empty the drive achieved sequential read and write speeds of 206MB/s and 205MB/s respectively and 4K speeds of 0.75MB/s and 1.75MB/s. With about 1.7TB of data on it the sequential speeds dropped to 182MB/s read and 180MB/s write and the 4K speeds dropped to 0.51MB/s and 1.58MB/s. For a spinning drive, the sequential speeds are good and the 4K speeds are to be expected. These Toshiba drives (the N300 and X300) differentiate themselves from the competitors in one major way, price. These drives are significantly cheaper while still offering similar performance and features. The only area these drives fall behind in is the warranty. This N300 only has a 3 year warranty while the higher priced competition has a 5 year warranty. In my opinion, the increase in price is not worth the extra length of warranty. One other thing I have noticed about this drive is that it is a little louder and a little hotter than other drives. When benchmarking and transferring large amounts of data, the HDD is noticeably audible. In terms of heat, I have noticed this drive operating about 3°C warmer than other drives in the same cage. While these things are minor and relatively insignificant on a single drive, many drives together in an array could stack the effects and have a significant impact. Overall, this is a good drive for mass storage in any device at a good price. While it is targeted towards NAS with a continuous use rating, it would work just fine as a standard HDD in just about anything. And in regards to the "RAID support" marketing, I have yet to find a HDD that did not work with RAID.

Good hard drive, with caveats

I am using this hard drive as a primary desktop drive (EXT4 format) running Mageia Linux. The HDWQ140 replaced a PATA Seagate Barracuda ST3500630A, so any comparisons I make are relative to that hard drive. The Toshiba is fast: cold boot times (from power-on to desktop login) have gone from roughly 1 minute 15 seconds to about 25 seconds. Three runs of hdparm -Ttv yielded speeds of around 200MB/sec, in line with what Toshiba reports, so I have no issues with the drive's speed. The HDWQ140's sounds are pitched higher than my old ST3500630A's. When reading/writing, the Toshiba makes a "chir-chir" sound whereas the ST3500630A made more of a "dut-dut" sound. That being said, I do not find these sounds unpleasant, but they are audible. In my particular setup, the major ... MoreI am using this hard drive as a primary desktop drive (EXT4 format) running Mageia Linux. The HDWQ140 replaced a PATA Seagate Barracuda ST3500630A, so any comparisons I make are relative to that hard drive. The Toshiba is fast: cold boot times (from power-on to desktop login) have gone from roughly 1 minute 15 seconds to about 25 seconds. Three runs of hdparm -Ttv yielded speeds of around 200MB/sec, in line with what Toshiba reports, so I have no issues with the drive's speed. The HDWQ140's sounds are pitched higher than my old ST3500630A's. When reading/writing, the Toshiba makes a "chir-chir" sound whereas the ST3500630A made more of a "dut-dut" sound. That being said, I do not find these sounds unpleasant, but they are audible. In my particular setup, the major annoyance is a slight "hiccup" every five seconds or so, which I think is a read/write of minimal data, but I do not think this is the fault of the drive; my guess is that either the OS or the programs I am using (or both) are to blame. Toshiba packages the hard drive in a plastic bag (which did not appear to be an anti-static one) and fits it snugly into a 2-piece "sleeve" that has multiple plastic air cushions, so it does seem as if there is no way for it to move around inside the box. There are no SATA cables or screws, so make sure you pick some up elsewhere.

Nice big drive but does vibrate, lots!

Dropped a star due to the vibration issues. For a NAS drive I'm a little disappointed with the amount of vibration from this drive. Admittedly, this is the first 'really big' capacity I've bought, so is this normal, I don't know. Data transfer rates are good with it mounted in a new Asustor NAS enclosure bought to replace old QNAP's. When accessing the drive the data read/write operations are quite noisy too, popping away noticeably so. Do I regret buying this Toshiba, no, however, time will tell if it was the wrong choice. Would I purchase again? No, I think I'd go for a different make.

Reliability for peace of mind.

This drive is marketed as a NAS drive, mainly for data backup as that’s what most NAS systems are for. Along those lines, the drive is also marketed as a highly reliable drive, something NAS owners value in a hard drive. Let me just say that over the last 30 years of working with and building PCs, Toshiba drives have impressed me the most for their reliability strengths. When my Western Digitals and Seagates have reliably failed me, my Toshiba drives have always come through. In fact, I have never had a Toshiba drive fail on me, so as far as reliability from my point of view, the name alone is marketing enough. Installing this drive was as easy as any other drive, quickly recognized by my bios and properly formatted. Most of my testing was using the drive directly ... MoreThis drive is marketed as a NAS drive, mainly for data backup as that’s what most NAS systems are for. Along those lines, the drive is also marketed as a highly reliable drive, something NAS owners value in a hard drive. Let me just say that over the last 30 years of working with and building PCs, Toshiba drives have impressed me the most for their reliability strengths. When my Western Digitals and Seagates have reliably failed me, my Toshiba drives have always come through. In fact, I have never had a Toshiba drive fail on me, so as far as reliability from my point of view, the name alone is marketing enough. Installing this drive was as easy as any other drive, quickly recognized by my bios and properly formatted. Most of my testing was using the drive directly through my motherboard. I do have a NAS device that I installed the drive into, and as expected, it worked just fine. Speeds were close enough to the advertised numbers to make me happy, and as far as other points of performance, heat, noise, spin-up, etc. all were easily within industry norms. Some reviews say it is noisy, but I think that the noise that it does make is just at a more noticeable pitch and not necessarily louder. It’s not a big enough issue to consider in my opinion. Using this drive as a system’s main C drive would work fine, although I am a big believer of SSD’s for that purpose. Its 4 terabyte capacity at its current price point is very nice. It comes with a 3 year warranty, though I wouldn’t expect I’d have to use it. Small things like the location of mounting screw holes were accurate and ample. The cables fit tightly and the drive is simple and elegant in the way it looks. I would recommend this drive for any common application and I think it would be a really good drive for using in your Network Attached Storage system, eight of them in fact.

Reliable drives for NAS use but a bit noisy

I've got six of these drives, four of the old generation (HDWG180) and two of the newer variant (HDWG480).Both types have been absolutely reliable thus far in different Synology NAS units.Personally I wouldn't mix old and new versions in one NAS (hence I bought the 4th of the old type second hand from CEX).Ask me again in 5 years what I think of these drives but I've a feeling I might still be pleased with them.I've also got a couple of the 6TB drive, one of which has been in service for 3.5 years and is fine (the other is in a desktop so not on 24x7).If you don't mind the noise they are super. If you do, try a WD Red which are much quieter.I've a couple of those which have been working for more than 8 years old and still going well in a NAS.

So far, so good - and very well packed by Scan

I bought two of these to put in a home built NAS (re-use of old PC that I had). On the whole I've had good luck with Toshiba HDD's. They're in a mirror config using ZFS format. There were and are no errors showing. They are cool running, just high 20's when idle and only really getting to the mid 30's when active. They perform as claimed in terms of read/write speed.If there is one complaint, it is that they can be a bit noisy under load. To be fair, the case the server is in (a Corsair Carbide 200R) is not built for quietness, and has always tended to amplify disk sounds. I'd also like to complement Scan for the fast delivery, and the fact these were extremely well packed in protective wrapping.

[Rewarded Review] Purchased two for new DS214+ Synology NAS unit - Work GREAT

Purchased two for new DS214+ Synology NAS unit - Work GREAT! Super easy install in synology NAS unit. You DO have to say, YES it's I know these are not the recommended Synology (Toshiba) Drives that Synology recommends..... But, nonetheless, they work without any issues I can determine. Installed as a Mirror RAID1 system. Ends up 7.3TB usable space... plenty fast, quiet, suits intended purpose. Would definitely recommend to others for Use in dual drive NAS unit!