Toshiba N300 18TB Internal NAS Hard Drive, 3.5’’ SATA HDD, 7200 RPM, 24/7 Operation, Supports 1-8 bay systems, 512MB Cache, 180TB/Year workload, 3yr Warranty (HDWG51JUZSVA).

12 months ago I bought four of the 6tb versions of this drive for my new NAS and they have been rock sold and reliable. As I now needed more space I was quite happy to replace them with another 4x 8tb Toshiba drives.Bad mistake as within 24 hours one of the drives showed a S.M.A.R.T error and went faulty and when replacing another, that one made a grinding noise and wasn’t recognised.So I ordered another two drives to replace them, finished the upgrade and within 12 hours one drive was again reporting as S.M.A.R.T = Bad.So 75% of the drives I purchased were faulty so I had completely lost faith in Toshiba’s reliability.Toshiba seemed to have a serious quality control issue or there was a bad batch in circulation.All the drives came from a batch with Serial Nos beginning 62H0A, from June 2022.So I gave up on Toshiba as the last thing you want with a NAS is dodgy disks.Now ordered 4x Seagate Iron Wolf 8tb NAS drives which hopefully will be more reliable.UPDATEIn the end I decided to give Toshiba drives a 2nd chance as my previous experience with them had been absolutely fine and they are faster than the Seagate Iron Wolf so waited a few days and ordered another another set of four.This time they had a completely different set of Serial number (6270A) so hopefully from another batch.And this time everything has been fine so far with no S.M.A.R.T or other issues fingers crossed.I can only assume that the faulty first batch was an unfortunate one off.So I am happy to recommend them.

*** Update - three years laterI've now had 5x 4TB N300 drives running continuously between three and three and a half years across my two NAS', and thus far all of them have been operating smoothly. 2x 8TB N300 drives have been running for more than 10k hours, so a bit over a year, similarly without issue. So no issue with longevity to-date.Some of my HGST drives have now been running for more than 6 years, so will probably pre-emptively order a drive or two as replacements.*** Update ~ six months inI now have four 4TB N300 drives running across my two active NAS servers (the DS1019+ and 412+), and so far they have been running flawlessly. They seem to run around 2-3 degrees cooler than the 4TB HGST drives they are now mostly paired with (39-40 degrees, vs. 42-43 for the HGSTs), though obviously a bit warmer than the remaining 5400rpm Seagate drive (at 36 degrees).*** Original reviewI previously used a mix of 7200rpm HGST and 5x00rpm Seagate NAS drives and Samsung EcoGreen ones in my NAS servers (Synology DS1019+, 412+ and an older QNAP TS-210). These have replaced the Samsung ones, and I will probably get some more to replace some of the Seagate ones as they have been in continuous daily use for over five years.After around two months of use I can’t comment on longevity or reliability, but in terms of performance they have been a big improvement in the older 5x00rpm drives, and they haven’t increased the noise levels (which means at least they are quieter than the 7200rpm HGST drives).The 'bulk' drives just came in individual simple cardboard boxes with padding to stop the drives moving around - which is a step up from a single cardboard box for three drives with no padding I got most of my previous Seagate drives in.

Good running speed can last up to 200MB/s for a long time. High temperature but understandable as a NAS disk. The noise can be accepted after fixing with sponge pad. Most importantly, it is not SMR. But I noticed that it was for the Chinese market and I had no idea why it was in the UK in plain packaging. So its provenance may be a bit suspect and after-sale service is worrying. The packaging of the hard disk itself is very simple and crude , In a ziploc bag between two sponges. What's even more ridiculous is that Amazon simply put it in its much larger and less fixed delivery box. This will definitely cause the hard drive to crash in the box and damage, rather than just mail the hard drive. In summary, if you need a high speed CMR hard disk and don't want to buy a more expensive WD product, could try it. But be prepared for the possibility of receiving a damaged hard drive. Hope Amazon improves the packaging and offers a retail version

It's the cheapest of the three big drive manufacturers for this particular 4TB model, at least from what I saw. It's a bit noisy and I'm yet to see just how reliable it will be, but it looks to be running perfectly fine so far.

Great harddrive. No issue after a year of use. Brought to add to my Unraid Plex server. Works a treat. It's quiet and sits in my tower server in my living room next to my TV, I don't really notice it much. Very slight background noise occasionally, but not distracting at all.

I've had a N300 6TB for 2 years now: hasn't missed a beat. This was an order for 2 8TB equivalents, intended for installation into a NAS as a ZFS mirrored pair. It's only been two days, but their S.M.A.R.T. statistics are all that I could have hoped for -and definitely prove the drive is factory-fresh. They arrived extremely well packaged, which is not always true of hard disks sourced from Amazon, and a reason for me having generally bought disks from alternative, electronics-specialist, online vendors in the past couple of years. However, the price for these was too good to miss, so Amazon it was and fingers crossed for the packaging... except, as I say, they came in individual cardboard boxes, three pieces of thick white foam each, good antistatic bags and lots of bubblewrap, too. So: zero complaints.As for this particular brand of disks: as I say, nothing but reliable in the 6TB version. I've seen other people say they are noisy: these are currently installed in a 1U server which sounds like a rocket taking off at the best of times, so I can't complain about any additional disk noise even if it existed (which I don't think it does).Short version: nicely packaged, good quality, very decent price, thoroughly recommended.