Toshiba MAIN-47587 3.5-Inch 1TB 7200 RPM SATA3/SATA 6.0 GB/s 32MB Hard Drive DT01ACA100 / HDKPC03

[Updated 5/28/2015]This review is for the 3TB model, DT01ACA300. This is a bare drive with only whatever packaging is used by the seller. You can also buy it in a box with foam padding under the model name "PH3300U". I can't comment on Amazon's packing, because I bought it from a different site.Because drives and firmware sometimes change, I should specify mine. I don't see a clearly labeled firmware version on the label of my drive, but it does say "DRIVE REV AAA AA00 / BB0". It also is marked with the number HDKPC08A0A01. This unit was made in Aug-2014. On a scale, it weighed 1.473lbs.Real capacity is 2.729TB when measured in proper base-2 units.This is a 7200rpm drive. It uses 1TB platters.Performance and Noise=================After 6 months of use, I recently tested this drive's performance under Linux Mint 17.1 using the "gnome-disks" utility. Screenshot is attached. Please note that the linear transfer rate values in that graph are base-10 measurements, not base-2. They would be a bit less when expressed in base 2.This drive has moderate access times for a 7200rpm drive, but it is quiet. This is a popular formula - faster drives are louder, and people tend to complain about that nowadays. The access time measured was 15.18msec average with a test of 5000 random seeks. This test covered the full 3TB capacity, not short stroked. I could not hear any seek noise during this test unless I put my ear next to the drive, and then it was just faintly audible. However, I do not have a quiet PC. People who build quiet PCs might hear seek noises more easily than I do. To me, I couldn't even hear the test running until I got my ear next to the drive. I also tested a 4TB Toshiba MD04ACA400, and observed that they are complete opposites in respect to seek noise vs speed. This 3TB DT01ACA300 is the slower but much quieter drive - it's inline with most modern consumer 7200rpm drives.Reliability=======I've had this drive in operation for 6 months. It was initially subjected to a burn-in period using the linux utility 'badblocks'. That took 48 hours of continuous stress to complete, which it did with no errors. It then completed the SMART extended self-test, again with no errors. The intention was to weed out any infant mortality before putting real data on the drive.Since that time, up until a few days ago, it has been used as the parity drive for a SnapRAID array. In that role, the drive spent most of it's time spun down. When it was accessed, it would see continuous stress for a few hours at a time.Recently I've moved it to file storage, and another drive has replaced it for parity. This drive is still working fine, it does not have any faults logged in SMART.During the initial burn-in period, the highest temperature recorded in the SMART data was 38C, probably about 10C above ambient. That was during the very long 'badblocks' test with a fan blowing through the drive cage. I don't know how much warmer it would get without the fan, but every case will be different. Opinions vary but I'd say anything up to 45C is nothing to worry about.No "Intellipark"============I do not believe this drive has any auto head parking behavior. I'm glad for this, because I believe head parking should be left under control of the operating system, not arbitrarily forced by a drive's firmware.I used the linux "watch" command to watch the "load/unload" counter in the drive's SMART data with a timer of 5 minutes. The drive was otherwise unmounted and not being accessed. This means the only access to the drive was on those 5 minute intervals. Therefore, if the drive were auto-parking itself, I should have seen the "load/unload" counter increase at every 5 minute update. I did not - the "load/unload" counter stayed constant, and was at a very low number. That is why I'm convinced it does not auto-park.It should still respond to head parking commands from the OS, as any hard drive has been capable of doing since the days of MS-DOS. It most definitely responds to spin-down commands, I've had the OS configured to spin it down after 30 minutes of inactivity and this has worked fine.Partitioning comments---------------------The tool I used for partioning this drive was 'gdisk'. This is a linux utility which is very similar to the familiar 'fdisk', except it is designed to work with GPT partitioning instead of traditional MBR. In a GUI environment, 'gparted' is another way to partition the drive. At the command line, the console equivalent is 'parted', but I used 'gdisk' instead because it was easier to understand.Although technically there may be some workarounds, GPT partitioning is essentially required if you want to partition drives larger than 2TB. If you are only seeing something like 700GB of space on this drive, it is because you are using an outdated MBR partitioning tool which will not work properly with drives of this size.Under Windows, note that 3TB drives (anything > 2TB) cannot be properly used with 32-bit Windows XP or older versions. This is because they don't support GPT partitions. Limited support for GPT was added for 64-bit WinXP, but not for a system drive, only for a data disk. GPT support is better in later Windows versions.In an experiment on my system, I found that >2TB drives don't even appear in the WinXP-32 Disk Management screen. It only became visible if I used HDAT2 to reduce the drive's reported size to 2TB.>2TB drives might work with patched versions of Vista, but I don't know. I expect at least Windows 7 should support them. Please research this before buying.This would not be a problem for using the drive over a network. It's only an issue for mounting it directly on the system.If you're using WinXP-32, then stick to the 2TB model or below. Those sizes will work fine. However, the remaining point to be aware of is that these drives (even the smaller sized models) have 4KB sectors with 512 byte emulation. This is something older Windows versions don't understand. The partitions need to be aligned with these 4KB sectors for the drive to perform it's best. This won't keep it from working but it's a performance issue.Don't use the partitioning that is built-in with WinXP, or the alignment will not be correct and performance will suffer. Instead, I suggest downloading 'gparted' and running that tool from a bootable CD or flash drive. This tool has an option to align your partitions on a 1MB boundary. Use that option while creating the partitions, and you'll be good. Then reboot back to Windows and let it format the partition(s) that you already created. Formatting under XP is fine, you just don't want to let it create the partitions.

This Hard drive came packed in a cardboard box inside a paper bag and also in a plastic bag. The New hard drive booted up quickly and is very fast and a quiet. So thank you.

Easy replacement. Works fine

I bought these to work in a Sans Digital ToweRAID unit. They are not RAID or enterprise class drives, but I noticed that QNAP is supporting them in their NAS units. So I decided to give them a try. It took a lot of effort and troubleshooting but I was able to get them to work in my RAID 5 configuration. Performance is excellent and I would recommend these drives for my desktop applications and select RAID configurations.I am seeing spikes of 195MB/sec transfer speeds to these drives over eSATA III. Make sure you are using a connection method that supports SATA III drives, otherwise your speeds will be slower. These drives are quiet, well priced, tons of space and I'm hoping they will last me a good while. Overall they are a great deal and at this price of just over $100 they are perfect for most desktop storage needs.

We've had 3 of these hard drive shaped objects fail in the span of 2 years. I normally don't write negative reviews but I will make an exception for this one. I have no colorful stories to tell, all I know is they all failed, the last one only lasted a week. At work if an item conks out for no reason, we say, "Uh oh, looks like it just Toshiba-ed out"

I'm going to start by saying that my sole reason for purchasing this hard drive is to upgrade the hard drive in my PS4.There are two ways to upgrade a PS4 hard drive using a 3.5" desktop hard drive. 1) Using the Nyko Data Bank 2) Using an external enclosure to power the hard drive, and running a SATA extension cable from the extension or hard drive to the PS4.I chose to use an external enclosure to house and power this Toshiba hard drive and run a SATA extension cable from the hard drive to the PS4. I'm not going to go into great detail about the process or set-up, but I will be happy to answer any questions and provide help for anyone that may have questions on how I ran my set-up.I spent approximately 2 months doing research and reading every single review for over 10 different hard drives I was considering putting into my PS4. I had narrowed it down to 3 hard drives, but still spent weeks contemplating which would be the best option. In the end, I chose none of those options. One day while doing research, I stumbled upon hdd.userbenchmark.com. This is a fantastic website that shows real-world statistics for a wealth of different hard drives. I was able to compare side-by-side each one of the hard drives that I was considering for my upgrade. Upon chance, I found this Toshiba hard drive on the list. This hard drive currently ranks at #10 on the speed/performance list, and easily out-performs all of the other hard drives I was considering. And the best part? It's at least $20 cheaper than all the other drives I was considering!Now on to the hard drive itself. I'm just your average every day consumer, and I don't have much experience in internal hard drives. I learned a great deal about them through all the research I performed before making my purchase. I could not possibly be more satisfied with my purchase. This hard drive has exceeded all of my expectations. After installing the drive (the PS4 software installed much quicker with this hard drive than my previous upgrade drive) I proceeded to install all of my PS4 games from discs. This took not quite half as long as it did than with the other hard drive I originally used to upgrade the PS4. Loading games and game saves is much quicker with this drive, and the actual processing and performance of the drive is a huge improvement as well. With the other drive, there would be stuttering and delays in graphics rendering while playing large open world games such as GTA 5 and Shadow of Mordor. There are no issues like that whatsoever with this drive. This also wasn't as much of a concern to me, but this drive is whisper quiet. It also doesn't produce as much heat as other 3.5" 7200 RPM drives do. So that being said, I think placing this drive in the Nyko Data Bank to upgrade the PS4 would be absolutely fine.I will be happy to try and answer any questions regarding the hard drive or my set-up. I absolutely without any reservations recommend this hard drive for an upgrade to the PS4!

This was a replacement for a hard drive that quit on me. This new drive was the same as my old drive and worked great.