Toshiba X300 14TB HDD Review: A Swing and a Miss

The Toshiba X300 is a budget desktop hard drive that’s most compelling at capacities over 8TB, offering extra storage without needing an enterprise or NAS label. Unfortunately, its performance is lackluster despite its 7200-RPM speed, plenty of cache, and versatile Conventional Magnetic Recording (CMR) technology. The price per terabyte at higher capacities is also relatively high, so the drives are close to the cost of the pricey 14TB Seagate IronWolf and 14TB WD Red Plus. Aside from peak write speed, those two NAS drives are generally superior to the X300.

There are definitely superior options on our list of best hard drives if you only need 8TB or less in an HDD. The WD Blue is good for those on a budget, while the Seagate FireCuda offers strong performance and a good warranty. If you need a drive for NAS, particularly if you want a five-year warranty, there are better options with the Seagate IronWolf Pro and WD Red Pro. The Red Plus is also a quieter, more efficient alternative. However, if you're focused on a drive designed specifically for desktop PCs, the Seagate BarraCuda Pro excels in everything over the X300 but is significantly more expensive. That leaves the X300 as being best if you need a specific amount of capacity in a single drive and can compromise on general performance.

Specifications

The current X300 lineup has capacities of up to 18TB, and cache up to 512MB. Our older 14TB X300 only has 256MB of cache, but it still uses CMR tech and spins at 7200 RPM. Like the WD Blue and Seagate BarraCuda, the X300 is only warrantied for two years, but the X300 has higher capacity options.

Excluding enterprise and NAS drives in the >8TB space, one possible competitor is the Seagate BarraCuda Pro, but that drive comes with a full five-year warranty. However, the 14TB X300 at $245.99 is significantly cheaper than the $330 14TB BarraCuda Pro. If we include NAS, we’re looking at the three-year WD Red Plus at about the same price, but that drive is optimized for running in a different environment.

Software and Accessories

Toshiba’s software support is bare bones, but it does exist. Looking up your specific model on Toshiba’s website will yield a link to the downloadable Toshiba Storage Diagnostic Tool to inspect the health of your drive. 

A Closer Look

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The X300 is exceptionally plain, aside from the blue PCB. There are not many HDD manufacturers still in business - just compare the number of brands to SSDs! However, Toshiba’s drives fill some gaps that may cater to you. The X300 has characteristics similar to the entry-level WD Blue but has a higher spindle speed with higher capacity options. It’s not a NAS or enterprise drive, so it is best described as being for high-end desktops or workstations. 

Here we can see that the drive adheres to the standard 3.5" form factor and comes with the ubiquitous 6 Gb/s SATA connector. 

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