Are Toshiba HDD trustworthy?

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nathanj_15

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May 26, 2016
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I was about to buy a new HDD which, happened to be a Toshiba and I was looking at the reviews and lots of people were saying theirs were failing after about 2 years. I know it's not from a professional standpoint but, it's a bit concerning. Can I trust Toshiba or do I need to go with Western Digital or Seagate. (Would like to go with Toshiba because they have better prices)
 
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Our experience with Toshiba HDDs parallels that of JaredDM. FWIW, here's our fairly recent experience with Toshiba P300 3 TB HDDs...

About two years ago a local supplier offered our computer club members a very attractive discount on a quantity of those Toshiba drives. I believe our members purchased about 10 units (including myself who purchased two of them). AFAIK, not a single drive has become defective or failed and all of them are currently in use to the best of my knowledge. I fully realize this is merely anecdotal evidence that those model drives are just fine but I thought I would relate our experience with them.

I also have been using a 1 TB & a 4 TB Toshiba HDD for some time now with no problems. Again, I realize this is...
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10tacle

10tacle

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Dec 6, 2008
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I have only had two Toshiba 2.5" laptop drives, but it was years ago. One came with a Dell laptop at 120GB, and I bought another to upgrade my 60GB PS3 that was a 7200RPM 320GB. The 120GB was manufactured in 2005 and the 320GB in 2008. I have never owned any 3.5" desktop Toshiba HDDs. But both drives still function as backup drives for my PCs.

With that said, it could be a case older drives had better quality (which is true no matter the brand). These days, I'm sticking with Seagate and Western Digital (FYI Seagate now owns Western Digital but they are still separate drives).
 
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10tacle

10tacle

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Huh. Well I stand corrected. I just remember reading news a few years ago about an upcoming buyout and assumed WD was still operating as their own division under Seagate. I never really looked into it further and obviously it never happened. This was one of those articles:

https://www.storagenewsletter.com/2014/04/01/seagate-acquires-wd-for-16-billion-new-company-named-seawest/
 
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JaredDM

JaredDM

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Jul 8, 2015
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Toshiba drives are very good. In fact among 2.5" models I'd say they are the most reliable out there. Part of this has to do with their architecture and the fact that all adaptive information is stored in a ROM chip on the PCB rather than storing it on the platters like most other drives do. It makes them immune to most firmware issues which is a leading cause of failure with many models.

As to their 3.5" drives, most Toshiba desktop sized drives are actually HGST drives. HGST, though it is owned by WD is built using Hitachi architecture and they are very solid drives. HGST is generally accepted to be the most reliable of the 3.5" models. So, by all means, Toshiba drives are great quality.

I work in data recovery and we always return data to customers on Toshiba drives if they buy them from us. Otherwise we run the risk that people will expect a free recovery when a drive we sold them fails.

As to other brands of hard drives, here goes...

WD is pretty good.
Seagate is complete crap for all newer drives.
Samsung is OK if it's actually a Samsung you're getting, but many are actually Seagate garbage in disguise, so you have to know what model you're actually getting.
HGST are the best for 3.5" and make very good 2.5" as well.
Toshiba makes the best 2.5" drives, most 3.5" Toshiba branded are actually HGST, but they have recently started building some of their own. We'll have to wait and see how good their own 3.5" drives actually are, but I suspect it'll be good.
 
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ArtPog

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Sep 17, 2014
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Our experience with Toshiba HDDs parallels that of JaredDM. FWIW, here's our fairly recent experience with Toshiba P300 3 TB HDDs...

About two years ago a local supplier offered our computer club members a very attractive discount on a quantity of those Toshiba drives. I believe our members purchased about 10 units (including myself who purchased two of them). AFAIK, not a single drive has become defective or failed and all of them are currently in use to the best of my knowledge. I fully realize this is merely anecdotal evidence that those model drives are just fine but I thought I would relate our experience with them.

I also have been using a 1 TB & a 4 TB Toshiba HDD for some time now with no problems. Again, I realize this is also merely anecdotal evidence re the quality of Toshiba HDDs.

The real reason for this post is when it comes to actually determining quality, performance, longevity of HDDs you've got to remember one crucial point. It's a crapshoot pure & simple. All of us who have worked with various makes & models of HDDs can point to experiences that confirm one & only one conclusion...

A HDD WILL FAIL AT SOME POINT IN TIME.

When that time will come...no one knows...but it will come. It may come within days or weeks or months or years. But it will come.

I point that out because no matter what HDD you, or any PC user purchases your focus MUST BE ON ENSURING THAT YOU CREATE & MAINTAIN COMPREHENSIVE BACKUPS OF YOUR SYSTEM(S). You can achieve this through undertaking disk-cloning operations on a reasonably current basis so that you ALWAYS have on hand a reasonably up-to-date comprehensive backup of your entire system.
 
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jnkweaver

jnkweaver

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Nov 11, 2011
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I think you fell for an April's Fool Joke. Look at the date of the letter.
 
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