{"id":30481,"date":"2015-05-13T10:21:25","date_gmt":"2015-05-13T17:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/?p=30481"},"modified":"2025-12-11T12:20:30","modified_gmt":"2025-12-11T20:20:30","slug":"a-look-at-backblazes-toshiba-hard-drives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/a-look-at-backblazes-toshiba-hard-drives\/","title":{"rendered":"A Look at Backblaze\u2019s Toshiba Hard Drives"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"blog-toshiba-5tb\"<\/p>\n

Over the past year or so, we\u2019ve covered the virtues and vices of nearly all the different hard drives we use in our Backblaze Storage Pods<\/a>. From HGST to Seagate to Western Digital<\/a> hard drives, we\u2019ve charted drive hours, plotted failure rates<\/a>, reported on drive temperature<\/a>, and more. The one missing brand: Toshiba. We\u2019ve had one Storage Pod<\/a> filled with Toshiba 3TB drives deployed for two years and we recently deployed Pods with 4TB and 5TB Toshiba drives. In our experience with Toshiba drives, here\u2019s what we\u2019ve learned so far.<\/p>\n

A Little History<\/h2>\n

Toshiba got back into the 3.5\u201d form-factor hard drive<\/a> business in 2012, when it acquired the production assets from Hitachi as part of Western Digital\u2019s purchase of Hitachi. This acquisition meant there would be more suppliers of 3.5\u201d form-factor hard drives than the existing two (Seagate and Western Digital). After Toshiba took over the business, the early 3TB drives (model: DT01ACA300) were dual branded Hitachi 3TB drives<\/a>, model: HDS723030BLE640. While the branding is now completely Toshiba, it is safe to say that a fair amount of Hitachi technology continues to live on in the Toshiba 3.5\u201d drives.<\/p>\n

Our Toshiba 3TB Hard Drives<\/h2>\n

In January 2013 we purchased and soon after, deployed, 45 Toshiba 3TB hard drives (model: DT01ACA300). Though the current consumer channel price starts at $94.50 each on Amazon, we paid $106.73 each in early 2013. Besides the 45 Toshiba drives, we also have 10 of the Hitachi model HDS723030BLE640 drives that were the predecessors to the Toshiba drives. Given the limited number of drives for each model, a comparison is not appropriate, but here\u2019s how those 3TB Toshiba and Hitachi drives are performing in our environment:<\/p>\n

\"Toshiba<\/p>\n

Our Toshiba 4TB and 5TB Hard Drives<\/h2>\n

Toshiba added 4TB and 5TB hard drives to their line over the last couple of years. We purchased and deployed 45 drives of each size in January 2015. Here are the stats to date on those drives:<\/p>\n

\"Toshiba<\/p>\n

The confidence intervals are 0.0-48.3% for the 4TB drives and 0.3-72.9% for the 5TB drives. The one 5TB drive failure<\/a> occurred within the last 30 days.<\/p>\n

We also tracked the ability of the two drives to load data in the same fashion as previous observations done with Seagate, Western Digital, and HGST drives. Below we\u2019ve compared the Toshiba drives to an HGST 4TB drive:<\/p>\n

\"Toshiba<\/p>\n

Both drive models performed well in their respective Storage Pods. Here\u2019s how they stacked up against some of our recent data loading observations:<\/p>\n

\"Comparing<\/p>\n

As you can see, the Toshiba drives performed well, especially the 5TB drives.<\/p>\n

Why Don\u2019t We Have More Toshiba Drives?<\/h2>\n

While the data is a bit thin, the Toshiba drives do compare well to the other drives in our data center when it comes to failure rates and loading speed. There are three reasons why we don\u2019t have more of them:<\/p>\n