Toshiba 8TB Enterprise Internal Hard Drive

I usually buy Western Digital drives but given their recent anti-consumer practices (secretly supplying shingled drives where it used to be CMR, drives which issue a SMART failure after 3 years of operational time regardless of their actual condition and most recently the issues with their SSD subsidy SanDisk where rather than recall defective SSD's they simply cut the price in half in an apparent attempt to get rid of them) I decided to try another brand.As a bonus I managed to snag a discount; Amazon were offering a 20% off voucher and so I got the 4TB model for just under £82, which wasn't bad. It would have been nice if Amazon's packaging had been better, a single layer of bubble wrap in one of those Amazon book mailers isn't adequate, but that said it arrived without dents or obvious external damage.This drive is significantly more noisy than my 10 year old WD Red and even in a sound dampened case I can hear it clicking away. That said it's not particularly loud, completely tolerable even though I'm sitting right next to it and anyway it's aimed primarily at datacenters where this isn't going to be a concern so should probably be expected.Speed ranges from an initial speed of about 238MiB/sec to 98MiB/sec under a full disk write. In practice this disk is pretty fast for spinning rust. It does seem to run a bit hot under heavy load so I'd suggest monitoring it's reported SMART temperature (max 46°C) and relocating the drive / increasing fan speeds as appropriate.As for installation, I do what I normally do with new drives and ran a SMART extended (long) test which took a little under 8 hours. This test reveled several bad sectors and after two more runs with a write in between the bad sector count had somewhat strangely decreased but was still there. The acceptable number of bad sectors on a new drive is zero, and given I probably wouldn't be getting that deal again I decided to avoid returning it and instead raise a warranty claim with Toshiba.Although the web-based claim process was easy there were a couple of snags: it has to be sent to their service center in Germany and thanks to the "no trade barriers" Brexit deal you *cannot* simply print off a CN22 and stick it to the box. Instead you need to print off *3* copies of the supplied proforma invoice, include 2 of them in a clear document pouch ON the box (not IN the box!) and give the third to the courier / parcel shop. Toshiba provide a label, which you print off and then can either arrange free collection or take to a UPS-contracted 'parcel shop' / convenience store. I went with the latter although probably should have just arranged collection; I'm not sure what was going on but I got the impression the store really didn't want to take the package even though it was small.Total turn around time was 5 working days with it sent out on Monday and a brand new replacement back in my hands Friday. Excellent service Toshiba!

I've had several of these HDDs now in home NAS units. Just bought another two. I have a *lot* of experience with HDDs, having bought dozens myself and from working in IT for decades.Toshiba professional HDDs are as good as the best of anyone's range and ideal for SAN or NAS use, or just in a server or even (dare I say it) a home PC for bulk storage. We still aren't at the stage of SSDs replacing them for sheer value in larger capacities, and even in smaller ones where a lot of writing occurs (like my surveillance recorder) which quickly causes an SSD to deteriorate.These Toshiba HDDs have a larger cache than many, making read/write access a little quicker in some circumstances. Probably not enough to notice outside very high level use, but it's still nice to have. The noise level from them is no worse than most and not as clackety as some can be. I notice HDD noise, even with my NASs in the loft, but these aren't noticeable once in the box.When buying, check the serial numbers you get and make sure they have the coloured label, otherwise you might have been sent one that's intended for OEM, not consumer, sales. They don't have the same warranty. You can check the serial number and warranty status easily on Toshiba's web site. To be safe, buy from Amazon itself.

I've had this drive for a while now and thought I should let all other buyers know. THIS DRIVE IS NO GOOD! At boot up, there is a clicking sound, which usually means the drive is on it's way out. When using this drive on my PC, the partitions disappear from the system resulting in the need to reboot for it to reappear. It also means that saving to this drive is not a good idea, as the drive may cut out during reading, causing corruption to your files/work.Now I need to buy a replacement before the drive dies and I have to reinstall the contents.DO NOT BUY THIS YOU WILL BE WASTING YOUR MONEY!

I bought four of these for a NAS after extensive research. In terms of what's on the spec sheet, they blow the usual competition for NAS storage drives out of the water. They're cheaper, have lower URE rates, and very respectable MTBF times et al. I ran them for a month problem free, so while not long enough to get a true idea of review, I got a feel for their general characteristics in operation.In reviewing which drives to go for, something I hadn't bothered to take heed of is how noisy the drives would be. The first time I powered up the NAS in my living room I couldn't believe how noisy four of these operating at once were. The humming sound can only be described as a constant booming base note that is felt rather than heard and whenever the drives were accessed the sound is like a deep thrum that resonates around the room. I am a light sleeper and no matter where I placed the NAS in my home the sound of it operating disturbed my sleep - placing two walls between it and me still didn't fully filter out the sound!Unfortunately largely due to this noise issue I reconsidered my use of a NAS in the home. My concluding words would be, if you need excellent value enterprise storage in a situation where noise isn't a concern, I would recommend these drives. If noise is a concern I strongly advise against considering these.

I've had this a few months now, I've nearly filled it with games, works brilliant, benchmarks are nothing to shout about, but fast enough to play the latest games on. Noise is reasonable.For the price it's a pretty good deal, just remember the bigger the drive the more space you lose due the the way computer storage is calculated, you're still getting the correct size regardless. On bigger drives like this it's almost 2tb under 20tb, regardless it'll be the same for any 20tb drive you purchase, it's just how it works.