1.This HDD is top of the range, comparable to WD Black and enterprise-rated drives, not value oriented external HDDs
2. It is much faster rated than your 5TB (double the cache and much faster read/write speeds), and doesn't have/risk having the forced sleep firmware issues that your external one does. Some of the external 5TBs had 64MB cache and much slower transfer speeds, so if someone doesn't want to play the HDD lottery and wants the extra space, this drive would make sense.

Also remember that your external drive has no warranty whatsoever out of its caddy, while this one comes with a 2 year warranty, if I'm not mistaken...

I think you are getting a bit confused between Hitachi and HGST.


https://www.backblaze.com/blog/a-look-at-backblazes-toshiba-hard-drives/

TL;DR. HGST = WD, Hitachi = Toshiba

Hitachi's HDD division are owned by WD and therefore no longer exist or manufacture their lines of drives (and haven't for a long time). In fact, if you read the forums/reviews, people have brought up the worrying fact that WD currently only use Hitachi's name as the dumping ground for lower-binned drives to kill off the brand name as quickly as possible (very similar to what Seagate did to butcher Samsung's line-up), so your point no longer stands in that regard.

And adding to all the above, Toshiba use WD's plants and equipment to manufacture their drives, so the point of WD being more reliable is also non-existant now.

I bought the external 5tb for £105 a while ago and took the drive out (it's £109 now on Amazon) - much better value per gigabyte.

What drive is inside those? (other than a 5 TB drive I mean!)

ye I bought a few wd 5tb for £90 this I'd maybe buy for £120-£125 but no more.

1.This HDD is top of the range, comparable to WD Black and enterprise-rated drives, not value oriented external HDDs
2. It is much faster rated than your 5TB (double the cache and much faster read/write speeds), and doesn't have/risk having the forced sleep firmware issues that your external one does. Some of the external 5TBs had 64MB cache and much slower transfer speeds, so if someone doesn't want to play the HDD lottery and wants the extra space, this drive would make sense.

Also remember that your external drive has no warranty whatsoever out of its caddy, while this one comes with a 2 year warranty, if I'm not mistaken...

Mine was a MD04ACA500

So almost identical performance then :-)

I've got 2 external Toshiba 5TBs one is coming up to its first anniversary, hasn't missed a beat, I've not removed it, since my raid setup can't handle bigger than 3TB, but on USB3 the performance is pretty good, certainly enough for a server.

I got mine from Bespoke in one of their price match deals, after cashback cost me around £70 ;-)

mike

Nice storage drive, although speed is not really an issue if you use it as such. Reliability is more my concern, Toshiba's seem average and comparable to WD etc. Hitachi is always by far the best in this aspect, but you'll pay more for it.

Hitachi's HDD division are owned by WD and therefore no longer exist or manufacture their lines of drives (and haven't for a long time). In fact, if you read the forums/reviews, people have brought up the worrying fact that WD currently only use Hitachi's name as the dumping ground for lower-binned drives to kill off the brand name as quickly as possible (very similar to what Seagate did to butcher Samsung's line-up), so your point no longer stands in that regard.

And adding to all the above, Toshiba use WD's plants and equipment to manufacture their drives, so the point of WD being more reliable is also non-existant now.

​excellent and interesting posts, thanks

I think you are getting a bit confused between Hitachi and HGST.


https://www.backblaze.com/blog/a-look-at-backblazes-toshiba-hard-drives/

TL;DR. HGST = WD, Hitachi = Toshiba

At some point today, a husky member will make an oily comment trying to milk this thread for all it's worth. You'll know it when it happens.

Good deal OP. Heat added.

Reliability??? It's a lot to lose had a few failures lately duh!

You could buy a 240GB SSD and strip the drive out of an external 5TB drive for the same money. You'll get much better performance from Windows by running it on the SSD, without sacrificing much storage.

I probably should have been more clear as the situation to most would be confusing! Hitachi as a consumer brand name at least by itself is pretty much dead under Toshiba that part you have gotten right, just the wrong owner you are thinking of.

So I guess I should have made it clearer I meant HGST under WD. I still refer to them as Hitachi as the Toshiba branded Hitachi is pretty much history. I would say most people in the tech industry still refer to HGST as Hitachi. Likely the source of confusion you have.

Even so, HGST drives had plenty of unique technologies that separate themselves from WD products. HGST's market is really enterprise customers compared to the more consumer side that WD use. They cost more.

It has meant that HGST drives often had technologies incorporated first before WD have sold them to consumers. For example WD only just started using the helium technology in their largest most expensive consumer drives. It's been in HGST drives for years.

Drives fail, no matter who makes them and how much you pay. I'd rather pay less and keep a copy of the data on a 2nd drive.

Personally, I run my NAS with four 3TB drives in it - 3 are Seagate drives pulled from external enclosures, one is a Samsung bought as a bare drive. The array is backed up to two 4TB Toshiba USB3 external drives.

If you have important data multiple backups are always wise. I split most of my critical data across various sources simply because I haven't always got the room for it all on one drive and it's a good idea anyway. Although enterprise class HGST drives are astoundingly reliable.

HGST was formed when Hitachi bought IBM's drive business - I know it's unfair, but I find it hard to disassociate HGST with the word 'Deathstar'.

I think a lot of people immediately think deathstar lol. However even just a few years ago everybody I talk to referred to them still as hitachi despite the confusion. I think back blaze were told off about their reliability stats by WD as they were still calling their HGST drives Hitachi lol

Has anybody ordered one of these from amazon previously?
Picture shows a retailed boxed drive, which should have a 2 year warranty.
Comments suggest some received OEM drives (1 year warranty), though reviews for all sorts of Toshiba drives seem to be clumped together - 2, 3, 4 & 5TB drive capacities seem to be mentioned in various reviews.
I suppose if it is OEM it can go back.

It's funny isn't it - there was a spate of failing IBM Deskstar drives, someone comes up with a catchy name and boom. Never forgotten. IBM Deskstars were actually really good disks up to that point.

This is still only £0.21 per gig. HDD space has been pretty much static in price for years now. I remember the days when it was just constantly flying down in price.

And the point of mentioning Deathstars presumably is to show just how dramatic and fast a fall from grace can be, and perhaps more importantly, how reliability figures really don't matter unless they refer to the exact model, manufacturing period and capacity, which of course these days, they never do.

Backblaze are my favourite example of how not to draw conclusions from your stats. They run their disks so far out of the normal, well beyond the tolerances most manufacturers would recommend for heat, vibration and tight packing, all they prove is who's are the best drives in that configuration, not when stuck individually in a desktop or server.

mike

I paid 103 quid a while back for a 7200RPM 4TB Toshiba drive and whilst the perfomance is very good, the drive is so noisy that it sounds like a gerbil is trapped inside it, scrabbling away :-) I hope this 6TB Toshiba isn't as cruel to small animals...

Just arrived and it was in a retail box. Thankfully not one of the noisy ones, and running a SMART self-test on it at the moment.

Now £142.08 on amazon, im not going to make a new deal seeing as this is here. You might want to update the deal? Just bought one now myself :smile: