Jump to content

Toshiba N300 NAS or X300 Performance 4TB HDD?

Hans Power
By Hans Power
in Storage Devices
 Share
Go to solution Solved by Oshino Shinobu,

The N300 will have some NAS specific features, where it can handle running alongside other drive for long periods, but from a heat and vibration perspective. But for desktop use, you're really not going to see much difference.

 

Both have 512/256MB cache, depending on the capacity of the drive.

 

I'd say go for the N300 for the 1 year longer warranty (3 years vs 2 years) if they're similar in price.

Posted

So, my Seagate 4TB ST4000DM005 seems to be dying according to Crystal Disk Info. Shows a Current pending sector count and an Uncorrectable Sector count yellow warning. Also, my latest backup via Macrium Reflect just failed with a CRC error and I'm currently running chkdsk /f /r on that drive. I assume that I'll have to replace that HDD asap. I heard good things about the longevity of Toshiba HDDs but I wonder which one I should go for. This is my data drive, so it's not meant as a gaming drive but it does get backuped frequently so good reads would still be appreciated. Also both seem to be 7200RPM drives but the X300 performance has more cache so I wonder what the actual difference is apart from that and what makes the N300 a 24/7 rated HDD. Some advice and/or background knowledge would be appreciated.

CPU: AMD R5 5600x | Mainboard: MSI MAG B550m Mortar Wifi | RAM: 32GB Crucial Ballistix 3200 Rev E | GPU: MSI RTX 2070 Armor | Case: Xigmatek Aquila | PSU: Corsair RM650i | SSDs: Crucial BX300 120GB | Samsung 840 EVO 120GB | Crucial m500 120GB | HDDs: 2x Seagate Barracuda 4TB | CPU Cooler: Scythe Fuma 2 | Casefans: Bitfenix Spectre LED red 200mm (Intake), Bequiet Pure Wings 2 140mm (Exhaust) | OS: Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
  • Solution

The N300 will have some NAS specific features, where it can handle running alongside other drive for long periods, but from a heat and vibration perspective. But for desktop use, you're really not going to see much difference.

 

Both have 512/256MB cache, depending on the capacity of the drive.

 

I'd say go for the N300 for the 1 year longer warranty (3 years vs 2 years) if they're similar in price.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
12 hours ago, Hans Power said:

So, my Seagate 4TB ST4000DM005 seems to be dying according to Crystal Disk Info. Shows a Current pending sector count and an Uncorrectable Sector count yellow warning. Also, my latest backup via Macrium Reflect just failed with a CRC error and I'm currently running chkdsk /f /r on that drive. I assume that I'll have to replace that HDD asap. I heard good things about the longevity of Toshiba HDDs but I wonder which one I should go for. This is my data drive, so it's not meant as a gaming drive but it does get backuped frequently so good reads would still be appreciated. Also both seem to be 7200RPM drives but the X300 performance has more cache so I wonder what the actual difference is apart from that and what makes the N300 a 24/7 rated HDD. Some advice and/or background knowledge would be appreciated.

Also you don't always have to replace a drive with bad sectors. If you can get the bad sectors to reallocate (by either a full format, or using a 3rd party tool like victoria), then recheck the drive again with a surface scan (and no more bad sectors show up), then the drive should be safe for use again.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
  • Author
15 minutes ago, Ryker Robb said:

Also you don't always have to replace a drive with bad sectors. If you can get the bad sectors to reallocate (by either a full format, or using a 3rd party tool like victoria), then recheck the drive again with a surface scan (and no more bad sectors show up), then the drive should be safe for use again.

Well, actually that just happened. While chkdsk didn't finish and hung up during the process I did a full "fix all" run with Seagates Seatools and after that the faulty sector count went from 8 back to 0 in Seatools' smart readouts as well as in Crystaldiskinfo. Now I gonna run a full backup with Macrium Reflect and if that runs without any CRC errors then I'm probably lucky this time.

CPU: AMD R5 5600x | Mainboard: MSI MAG B550m Mortar Wifi | RAM: 32GB Crucial Ballistix 3200 Rev E | GPU: MSI RTX 2070 Armor | Case: Xigmatek Aquila | PSU: Corsair RM650i | SSDs: Crucial BX300 120GB | Samsung 840 EVO 120GB | Crucial m500 120GB | HDDs: 2x Seagate Barracuda 4TB | CPU Cooler: Scythe Fuma 2 | Casefans: Bitfenix Spectre LED red 200mm (Intake), Bequiet Pure Wings 2 140mm (Exhaust) | OS: Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
56 minutes ago, Hans Power said:

Well, actually that just happened. While chkdsk didn't finish and hung up during the process I did a full "fix all" run with Seagates Seatools and after that the faulty sector count went from 8 back to 0 in Seatools' smart readouts as well as in Crystaldiskinfo. Now I gonna run a full backup with Macrium Reflect and if that runs without any CRC errors then I'm probably lucky this time.

I would still do a surface scan afterwards to make sure they don't come back, since it sounds like they didn't get reallocated? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
  • Author
8 minutes ago, Ryker Robb said:

I would still do a surface scan afterwards to make sure they don't come back, since it sounds like they didn't get reallocated? 

Seatools should reallocate the faulty sectors same as chkdsk - the "fix all" option is basically a full sector scan + repair. Also took about 9hrs give or take. Btw, even with the faulty sector count before I did the "fix all" scan, the seatools smart values showed an "ok" evaluation other than crystaldiskinfo which showed a yellow warning. Still, I gonna keep an eye on the smart values and also the logs of Macrium Reflect - it will discover and log any CRC errors since it does a sector copy. I might still write zeros to the drive after backing it up, though, just to make sure.

CPU: AMD R5 5600x | Mainboard: MSI MAG B550m Mortar Wifi | RAM: 32GB Crucial Ballistix 3200 Rev E | GPU: MSI RTX 2070 Armor | Case: Xigmatek Aquila | PSU: Corsair RM650i | SSDs: Crucial BX300 120GB | Samsung 840 EVO 120GB | Crucial m500 120GB | HDDs: 2x Seagate Barracuda 4TB | CPU Cooler: Scythe Fuma 2 | Casefans: Bitfenix Spectre LED red 200mm (Intake), Bequiet Pure Wings 2 140mm (Exhaust) | OS: Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
4 minutes ago, Hans Power said:

Seatools should reallocate the faulty sectors same as chkdsk - the "fix all" option is basically a full sector scan + repair. Also took about 9hrs give or take. Btw, even with the faulty sector count before I did the "fix all" scan, the seatools smart values showed an "ok" evaluation other than crystaldiskinfo which showed a yellow warning. Still, I gonna keep an eye on the smart values and also the logs of Macrium Reflect - it will discover and log any CRC errors since it does a sector copy. I might still write zeros to the drive after backing it up, though, just to make sure.

Did the "reallocated sectors" count go up? Because if it didn't, that means the drive put those sectors back into service. Not necessarily a bad thing, just something to be aware of. If they don't reappear after a full read test, then it should be fine. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
  • Author
6 minutes ago, Ryker Robb said:

Did the "reallocated sectors" count go up? Because if it didn't, that means the drive put those sectors back into service. Not necessarily a bad thing, just something to be aware of. If they don't reappear after a full read test, then it should be fine. 

No that is still at 0. I will do a full read test after the backup is finished and report back in a day or whenever it's all done.

CPU: AMD R5 5600x | Mainboard: MSI MAG B550m Mortar Wifi | RAM: 32GB Crucial Ballistix 3200 Rev E | GPU: MSI RTX 2070 Armor | Case: Xigmatek Aquila | PSU: Corsair RM650i | SSDs: Crucial BX300 120GB | Samsung 840 EVO 120GB | Crucial m500 120GB | HDDs: 2x Seagate Barracuda 4TB | CPU Cooler: Scythe Fuma 2 | Casefans: Bitfenix Spectre LED red 200mm (Intake), Bequiet Pure Wings 2 140mm (Exhaust) | OS: Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
  • Author
13 minutes ago, Ryker Robb said:

Did the "reallocated sectors" count go up? Because if it didn't, that means the drive put those sectors back into service. Not necessarily a bad thing, just something to be aware of. If they don't reappear after a full read test, then it should be fine. 

Reported Un-correctable is at 10, though, so it apparently did block and/or replace a few sectors.

CPU: AMD R5 5600x | Mainboard: MSI MAG B550m Mortar Wifi | RAM: 32GB Crucial Ballistix 3200 Rev E | GPU: MSI RTX 2070 Armor | Case: Xigmatek Aquila | PSU: Corsair RM650i | SSDs: Crucial BX300 120GB | Samsung 840 EVO 120GB | Crucial m500 120GB | HDDs: 2x Seagate Barracuda 4TB | CPU Cooler: Scythe Fuma 2 | Casefans: Bitfenix Spectre LED red 200mm (Intake), Bequiet Pure Wings 2 140mm (Exhaust) | OS: Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
  • Author

Welp, unfortunately, after initial success, after another Chkdsk scan it showed more faulty sectors in SMART. And now it increased from the initial 8 faulty sectors to 16. Luckily I could back up the drive completely and now I ordered a Toshiba N300 HDD.

CPU: AMD R5 5600x | Mainboard: MSI MAG B550m Mortar Wifi | RAM: 32GB Crucial Ballistix 3200 Rev E | GPU: MSI RTX 2070 Armor | Case: Xigmatek Aquila | PSU: Corsair RM650i | SSDs: Crucial BX300 120GB | Samsung 840 EVO 120GB | Crucial m500 120GB | HDDs: 2x Seagate Barracuda 4TB | CPU Cooler: Scythe Fuma 2 | Casefans: Bitfenix Spectre LED red 200mm (Intake), Bequiet Pure Wings 2 140mm (Exhaust) | OS: Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted
7 hours ago, Hans Power said:

Welp, unfortunately, after initial success, after another Chkdsk scan it showed more faulty sectors in SMART. And now it increased from the initial 8 faulty sectors to 16. Luckily I could back up the drive completely and now I ordered a Toshiba N300 HDD.

I was afraid that was going to happen. You could still try a full format and see if they get reallocated.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share
Go to topic listing Storage Devices

×