TOSHIBA3.5-Inch 3TB 7200 RPM SATA3/SATA 6.0 GB/s 64MB Hard Drive DT01ACA300

[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.

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.

Easy replacement. Works fine

OK - I'm convinced: nothing but Western Digital drives for me from now on.I bought this Toshiba drive to serve as a full backup for another 2TB drive. I made the mistake of thinking the higher than usual number of bad reviews here were a fluke.I unpack the drive, carefully load it into the drive bay waiting for it, and start to fill it up. It takes about a day for it to fill up, duplicating the drive it was purchased to be a clone of, as nearly all the space is used, much of it with small files.The next time I go to use it? Nothing. It spins up slightly, then nothing at all. Computer never registers it is even present. The drive that was feeding it all that information (so: was getting the exact same wear)? Works fine. It is a Western Digital. That's what I'll be replacing this one with.