Toshiba N300 Pro 12TB and 20TB HDD Review: Return of the NAS

The Toshiba N300 Pro is a big drive for big data, designed for systems with up to 24 drives with a warranty that neatly counters lesser drives like the Toshiba N300, Seagate IronWolf, and WD Red Plus. It also delivers enough performance to rival the IronWolf Pro and Red Pro. The N300 Pro is optimized for network-attached storage (NAS) where multiple drives work together in a challenging environment, making for a much more reliable solution than shucked externals. Is it one of the best hard drives? Let's find out.

The N300 Pro comes with a large cache that helps it maintain performance from 10TB and up. This makes for a more professional storage solution than your everyday WD Black or Blue, or Seagate FireCuda. The holy grail for hard drives is to get high capacity, good performance, and a solid warranty. Right now that still puts things at around 20TB and below 300 MB/s with a 5-year warranty and at least a 300TB/year workload rate limit.

Off-the-shelf consumer drives are effectively limited to 8TB, while serious storage systems need better drive density. While the average user can buy external 12TB+ HDDs and shuck away, the more reliable solution for SOHO or small businesses are drives designed for NAS environments where multiple drives operate closely together.

Optimization for this sort of environment include rotational vibration sensors and, in Toshiba’s case, larger local DRAM caches that are more efficiently utilized in multi-drive arrangements with the right data patterns and workloads. Toshiba offers more cache on many of its N300 and N300 Pro capacities — the Toshiba X300 Pro gives an alternative choice for singular drive use in high-end desktops and workstations — with a reasonable warranty that falls between the lower-end WD Red Plus and higher-end WD Red Pro. This positions the N300 Pro as a less expensive alternative to WD and Seagate — if and when pricing and availability fall in line.

Toshiba’s approach, which is due in part to its late entrance into the high-capacity game, makes the N300 Pro a surprisingly good choice within the 12–18TB capacity range. The N300 Pro can perform better in this range and can be found at reasonable prices. If you need multiple drives that don’t have to be on the cutting-edge of capacity, the N300 Pro is worth a look.

Otherwise, keep an eye on it and the competition — the WD Red Pro and Seagate IronWolf Pro — so you can grab your drives at the right moment, given that availability and pricing have been volatile. Worth noting is that the N300 Pro 20TB is a recent introduction and at present prices haven't really lined up with the rest of the series, but that's something that could easily change over time.

N300 Pro Specifications Comparison

The Toshiba N300 Pro is available from 4TB up to 20TB, and today we’re looking at what would probably be the most popular capacities: 12TB and 20TB. Both capacities have the same essential specifications with 512MB of DRAM cache, a sustained transfer rate of up to 281 MB/s, and the same 5-year warranty with 300TB/year workload rate limit. 20TB is a popular size for maximum capacity while 12TB exceeds standard consumer drives and overlaps with lesser NAS drives like the WD Red Plus.

The N300 Pro’s direct competition includes the Seagate IronWolf Pro and WD Red Pro. The Red Pro has a higher workload rate limit of 550TB/year while the IronWolf Pro has models for both 300TB/year and 550TB/year, the latter mirroring the Exos X20. The N300 Pro has a larger cache than the IronWolf Pro and higher performance at 12TB but otherwise has similar specifications. The Red Pro gets 512MB of cache at 20TB and a higher MTBF. The Red Plus does have a 12TB SKU, but it’s not comparable to any of these drives.

As with the Toshiba N300, pricing and availability for drives of this caliber remain question marks. It’s important to determine what drive or drives you want and to prepare for your purchase ahead of time. WD and Seagate provide superior support, but Toshiba may be less expensive during sales and Toshiba’s technology provides a more predictable level of performance. The N300 Pro has a better warranty than the N300 and also is designed to be operated in larger storage environments, from eight to up to 24 drive systems.

Right now the N300 Pro makes the most sense in the 12-18TB range, with slightly lower price per TB. Pricing does fluctuate quite a bit, however, so keep an eye on current prices before making any final purchasing decisions.

Toshiba N300 Pro Software and Accessories

Toshiba’s software approach is fairly bare bones but that’s not the end of the world. There’s plenty of free and paid software out there for storage management, and most solutions will probably be using something other than the vendor-provided software. If you are a home user buying only a drive or two, a normal dashboard/toolbox and an OEM copy of Acronis can be convenient, but a serious NAS setup tends to be beyond what Windows and Mac users want.

A Closer Look

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Toshiba compares the N300, N300 Pro, X300, and X300 Pro right on the back of the box. Notably, only the NAS drives are rated for systems with multiple drives, and the X300 has no workload rate limit at all. The X300’s very limited warranty but extensive capacity range makes it better suited for high-end desktop and workstation use for non-critical storage. The N300 and N300 Pro are specifically designed for use in network-attached storage systems, with inclusions like rotational vibration sensors, and the Pro models have a longer warranty for peace of mind.

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The N300 Pro is non-descript, with a simple white label. The drive is labeled “NAS N300” to indicate the drive’s purpose with Toshiba’s color-coding and “Pro” above to distinguish the two models. HDDs don’t have the flashy fanfare of consumer SSDs.

Toshiba has been interested in grabbing market share away from WD and Seagate and for that its drives must simply be capable. That is, it’s a no-frills approach, but Toshiba has focused on providing larger local caches for its drives with optimization for multi-drive/multi-bay environments. The N300 Pro’s warranty fits in-between the low- and high-end as well, providing a basic alternative.

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