TOSHIBA DT01ACA300 3TB 7200 RPM RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive

Pros: As others have pointed out, these drives are basically just re-branded Hitachi 7200RPM drives. I just did a benchmark on the drive and it has a sequential read speed of 190MB/sec and a sequential write of 138MB/sec! That's insanely fast for a hard drive, I'm totally satisfied! It has a 3 year warranty and I've never really had any problems with Hitachi's internal hard drives, so I'm expecting that this one will be the same.

Cons: None

Other Thoughts: I bought one of these drives a month or two ago, and it showed up as a Hitachi drive in Device Manager (proof that it's just re-branded)

This one shows up as Toshiba. So it looks like they finally got around to changing the firmware on the drive - but either way, it's the same guts and as I mentioned, it's still very fast.

Pros: Not DOA. Works fine on the first day. (Will update if necessary. See other thoughts).

Size - This is a 3TB drive. 2.72TB formatted. Windows 7 recognized it immediately on first boot. (Remember to select GPT to get the max amount of storage space).

Noise - This drive is extremely quiet. No head parking sounds like some of the Seagates out there. I have two of them and they are annoying.

Fast transfers - getting roughly 150mb/s (see other thoughts for system info)

Price - got it on sale for 119. As of the time of writing this review, this is the best consumer price/gb that I could find. Perhaps you can get a better deal in bulk or in a combo.

Cons: Heat - Drive runs a little warmer than my Seagates (Right now about 32C when the rest of the drives are around 27C). Ambient temperature is around 25-26C. This machine as pretty good cooling. This temperature is not a concern but it is interesting and I guess it could be a potential con for some. Definitely not worth docking an egg.

Support? - Toshiba website is harder to navigate than Seagate, Western Digital, etc. There does not seem to be as much support such as firmware updates when compared to the competitors. Maybe links exist, but I spent a few minutes on the website and could not find them. If you need help, an RMA number is listed. (See other thoughts for phone number). For the most part, this is not a big deal. I will address a firmware update if it becomes a necessity.

The warranty, as of May 2013 is in fact only 2 years. I do not know where people are seeing 3 year warranties, but the website is crystal clear (http://storage.toshiba.com/storagesolutions/pc-notebook/dt01aca-series). Two years is all you are going to get on this one.

Other Thoughts: Will update if I have any issues. Lots of people have reported DOA drives, but I guess I got lucky. I will say that the packing is consistent with the reviews of others - mine did not have much bubble wrap and it was clear the drive could have moved around in the box during shipping. I would really like to see more bubble wrap/better packaging when it comes to hard drive shipments Newegg!!

Hitachi? Fujitsu? Toshiba? - Many reviewers have tried to figure out whether this drive uses Hitachi parts. I don't know. I don't need to know for my purposes. Everything on the drive says Toshiba and Crystal Disk and HD Tune both bring up the drive as Toshiba.

Bad reviews for this drive? - Honestly, this drive is really underrated right now at 3/5 eggs. Many of the negative reviews seem to be repeat reviewers seeking revenge and lots of the 1 egg reviews are not by verified owners. Additionally, lots of reviews indicate that this drive is not "Windows 7 compatible." Come on people!! Learn how to build and operate a computer before you write reviews like this. Call the 'geeks' or something if you can't install a hard drive. I'm sure some drives come DOA. Mine didn't. All manufacturers will have some DOA. Shipping causes many DOA's as well. Lots of the negative reviews are garbage. Again, if I have any problems with this drive, I will be sure to update and dock as many eggs as necessary.



System:
Mobo: GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD5H
Proc: Intel i5-3570k (OC'ed to 4.5ghz)
Mem: 16gb (4x4gb) Corsair XMS
SSD: Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2CCA (128gb)
HDD: Various, including this drive.
GPU: EVGA GeForce GTX 570
Cooler: COOLER MASTER Hyper 212 EVO (push pull)
PSU: OCZ Z Series Gold OCZZ1000M (1000 Watt) - this is overkill, but OCZ sent this to me as an RMA upgrade from a faulty (loud) ZT Series 750W. Pretty good deal if you ask me.
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit
Case: Antec Gaming Series One (Now discontinued, but I really like this case for entry level gaming case). Antec Three Hundred Two is similar except it has two spots for intake fans in the front, but it is not painted on the inside).

Toshiba Contact Numbers
Return Material Authorization (RMA) center at 1-877-689-4899. Available Monday-Friday (excluding holidays) 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. PST.
General Technical Support center at 1-510-651-6798, available Monday-Friday (excluding holidays) 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. PST.

Pros: one worked, the single egg is for that.

Cons: problem is, I have had 3 now, and kind of scared of going to a 4th and possible data loss... to update my below review, the RMA replacement arrived, started up fine, but the next day my system was stalling on reads, and sure enough when I left it opened up, it would make the same clicking sounds the dead one made about every 5 minutes or so (while stalling reads/writes). SMART data indicated it was starting to reallocate sectors and do other bad things...

Other Thoughts: Thanks Newegg for letting me order some different ones!!! Spending a little more for some mental health

Pros: a quiet, fast, large drive that doesn't create a great deal of heat.

Cons: imminent failure messages after less than two months of operation.

now i have to deal with the manufacturer as soon as i can figure out how.

toshiba drives, apparently, are not good quality...

Other Thoughts: this is my first 3tb drive and i am very disappointed in toshiba or hitachi or whoever actually made this drive. i guess i should have stuck with the 2tb drives.

it seems the bigger the drives, the higher the failure rates are...

i barely had time to get this drive loaded with data before it started failing. now i have to find a way to put all the data back where it was and probably lose some data (because i haven't got the space for everything now) and buy a new unit to hold me until the replacement for the bad drive arrives.

there was a time when hard drives were built to operate well beyond their "expected-lifetime-of-usefulness". i've got fifteen year old drives that show no signs of stopping, though they are too small to be of any use today. in recent years however, we can consider ourselves very lucky if we get four years out of an hd unit.

what has this industry come to, that now hard drives are less reliable than the dye base optical media that inevitably gives up the ghost after five years no matter what the promises of the manufacturers are?

obviously the industry is pushing some other technology by making the hard drive market so bad that hard drives are no longer a viable storage medium but what new form of storage are they pushing us towards? are we really supposed to move on to the strict use of these tiny, exorbitantly priced ssd drives? you couldn't install enough disk controllers on a single pc to hook up 12tb of ssd's and it would cost you over a thousand bucks, even if you could...

Pros: works great, decent price, lots of storage space

Cons: none

Other Thoughts: not a con: but my wife's 1.5 year old windows 7 rig could not format the drive for the full 3tb, I had to use to use my recent windows 8 built rig to format this drive.

My wife now has more than enough space for her photos and documents, needless to say she is very happy.

Pros: Seems to be a solid choice for a 3 TB, SATA-III HDD at an attractive price point (especially if you catch it on sale). Runs quiet and cool for such a large 7200 rpm drive. At a time when the reliability of many large (2+ TB) HDDs appears to be problematic, these drives have evidenced no defects or problems so far for me after 6 weeks of near continuous operation.

Cons: None so far. Very minimal OEM packaging, but adequate for delivery protection.

Other Thoughts: Bought two of these drives for use in a RAID 0 array on a Marvell 9128 SATA 6.0Gb/s controller. Formatted (GPT) to 5588 GB. No problems with the array set up or operation. Performance has been up to expectations. As I said above, they have proven reliable so far with over 50% of the space on the array in use with regular read/write accesses.

Pros: I bought 3 of these in Cuba,mine doesn't says Hitachi anywhere,not even in hd tune,it says it's made in china, and later Toshiba GMBH that means it's a germany subsidiary of toshiba,copy speeds between them : 177 mb/s ,min 162 mb/s ,max 190 mb/s,i'm very pleased with these drives, i was concerned because my preferred drives were samsung but that division doesn't exists anymore,and i think i found a decent substitute.I'm overwhelmed bacause it's too fast.I don't use RAID

Cons: none so far

Other Thoughts: Temps has never exceeded 37 degress c
My advice is to buy this drive,people complain about dead drvies,but we don't know what happens in the proccess of shipping,it could die in this proccess because HDDs are very sensitive to shocks.

Pros: Cheap for a 3TB drive.
7200 RFP
Reasonably quiet
SATA 6.0gb/s
Actually manufactured by Hitachi (China)

Cons: No screws sent with this bare drive but no real loss, so no eggs off.

Other Thoughts: I bought this drive to replace the WD Green 2TB hard drive I had on my media server. Although quiet, the WD was slow to access and prone to stutter while streaming.
This HDD has eliminated the stutter and is quick to access files. I really can not hear this any more than a slight ticking with my ear right next to the media server. I have an extra TB to boot. All in all great value speedy drive. Not sure if it will be reliable longterm as I usually buy Seagate or Samsung, but will post back if I notice any issues. Recommended.

Pros: None since 2/2 drives failed

Cons: Ordered 2 drives for a WIN7 system, so there are no concerns about 3TB compatibility. 1 of 2 was DOA (clicking and non-responsive to OS. I RMA'd immediately and paid return shipping-ouch. 2nd drive seemed ok. Four days later... clicking and dead. RMA number 2 and return shipping cost AGAIN. NOT HAPPY.

Other Thoughts: I have ordered a few dozen drives in my life, these are my first DOA and first short term failure.. both in same shipment. I guess you can draw your own conclusions. I must rethink ordering drives from a source that will not cover return shipping on defective items.

Pros: The one that worked passed a 4.5 hour hard drive test in Ubuntu with no worries at all. Good Speed, great price, medium temps.

I bought these for a mythbox/home server I am running, Figured going from 2.6 TB to 8 TB should be an improvement ha ha. But I run software RAID (mdadm) so don't quite get that much space...

Cons: The one that didn't work spins up fine, but then starts repeating a weird beep/click sound followed by 2 click sounds. Keeps motherboard from posting if it's plugged in before booting, and never shows up if started after booting. Also does the same thing just plugged into a power supply and turned on without the data cable being plugged into anything.

Other Thoughts: Last time I ordered 2 drives, the first batch was both bad. But the RMA Replacements have been fine for 2+ years. Hopefully this will be the same experience.

They were packaged fine and the outside brown box didn't look like it had been roughly handled at all...