It’s not all the time, you come across a review of a standard Hard Drive, well this is just like that, this is not a review of an SSD or an M.2 Drive, this is a simple 3.5” storage drive from Toshiba.
I received the Toshiba High-Performance X300 6TB Hard Drive, I was not expecting a retail version when it arrived, but it does make thing a little easier when I need to talk about its specifications, so on that note here they are;
Form factor
3.5-inch
Interface
SATA 6.0 Gbit/s
Capacity
6 TB
Rotational speed
7200 rpm
Buffer size
128 MB
Dimensions
147 (L) x 101.6 (W) x 26.1 (H) mm
Weight
ca. 770g
Box content
3.5-inch internal HDD – X300 High-Performance Hard Drive
Quick Start Guide
Warranty Leaflet
One thing that stands out is the term ‘Buffer’, this is the same as Cache or Ram, it is a portion of Ram used to speed up access to data on the disk, this can be part of the Hard Drive, which this one is, or some Hard Drives grab the ram from the computer itself and reserves it for the Hard Drive, this is normally called Soft Disk Cache. Soft Disk Cache, I have to admit, there is not that many disk manufacturers that do this as an option, possible because it would be frowned upon by the consumer, I know I would.
As this is a retail version, the Hard Drive was packaged away great, with plenty of cushioning, there was no way this Drive would have broken in transit, also came with a quick start guide for people new to this field and a warranty leaflet.
From a selling point of view, everything you want to know about this drive is displayed on the box, from the speed to the buffer size and everything in between, but you are not going for that, are you? you are going for the size of the drive, a huge 6TB of storage, for me as a gamer this is AWESOME, as games are getting bigger and bigger and my old storage if still in use would be disappearing at a fast pace.
This new drive will be able to hold approx 350 games at an average size of around 50GB each, and as we are in a digital would now and PC has moved past physical media, storage is a concern.This is a different story when it comes to console gamers, Damn, they love to live in the old days, and it does not help when the likes of Gamestop threaten to boycott a system when there are rumours that, the new system will be digital media only and dropping physical media. Consoles gamers do not help with the issue either, as the same rumour circulates via click bate media, or what trump loves to say FAKE NEWS, they also join the bandwagon and moan about not getting physical media and saying, ‘WE SHALL NOT BOY’.
I am so glad I am part of the PC universe, for one, I have all my games from years ago and do not need to re-buy them, I can make backups of all my games onto external drives and be being in the games industry and a review artist, you can really see how small a universe the console games are in, for example in 2016 our percentage of games that were console based where 10.1% the rest of the games where PC, from indie hits to exclusives, PC is a much bigger fish, when it comes to gaming.
But back on track to the review and enough comparing PC to Console, we all know PC is the bigger platform, “That’s enough you, move on”. As the Drive is a 3.5″ internal Hard Drive, the majority of PC cases will accommodate such a drive and its easy to install, depending on your case, mine was a simple, click, push, done, some cases you would need to screw the HDD in place. When installed just grab an eSATA cable, which does not come with the HDD, the majority of the time, these come with the motherboard, but if you are are not building a new PC or built this one originally, you going to need to purchase one from a reputable retail outlet. When you got your new eSATA cable, attach it to the HDD and find the correct connection on motherboard, its not that hard, as it will only attach to one type of connection and that will be the right connection, then find a power cable, this comes from the PSU (Power Supply Unit) and attach that to the other connection on the HDD. Both connections look like ‘L’ shapes, one small, one bigger, and easy to install, just push on, very easy, can not go wrong.
Well, see the image before, if you still a little confused.
Now for the technical rubbish, which is not going to be great based on an SSD, but like I have said before you are not buying this for speed, you are buying this for mass storage, for me it’s all about the games, and I have a shed load, on steam alone I have 384 games, that’s not including GOG, Uplay, Origin & Battlenet. From what I know, steam alone requires just under 3TB of storage to hold what I have, Of course, I do not need to install them all, and how can I play them all, well you simply can not, have I completed them all? not a chance, but I do love having them all, like a digital hoarder.
So how fast is this drive, well I compared it to a 3TB Drive with a 64mb cache these are the findings;
3TB HDD 64MB Cache
Toshiba X300 High-Performance Drive
As you can see there is for sure an increase in speed from the 64MB cache drive to this drive, not much, but it’s better than nothing at all, but you are also paying almost double the price, but what do you expect, you are getting double the storage capacity and double the buffer, come on.
Is it worth it, that’s a dumb question, YES! if you are a PC gamer and want storage for all your games, recordings, and everything else in-between, then this is a no-brainer, its a must have. Is there anything wrong with the HDD? well, speed, ok it is not fast, but an SSD with max storage of 2TB would cost you around £400.00+ and this HDD is easily below half that price and offers shed loads more storage
So a score, this is not going to be easy and I sat down thinking for a while to make sure I have it right, in the end, I gave it a 9/10 – highly recommended, well I would still like it faster, but other than that the storage is huge, the buffer does help increase speed to a degree and Toshiba does sell the product rather well, when it comes to selling to the consumer from a shelf, with its retail box.
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