INTRODUCTION

   We are just months away before the new 5TB mechanical drives make their debut (perhaps sooner) but since price is one of the most decisive factors when choosing a HDD most people still seem to prefer 1TB/2TB models over the larger 3TB/4TB ones. Now as many of you know not only do we always focus to bring reviews of the latest HDD models the industry has to offer but also of the highest capacity variants available. However today we decided to change things a bit and so although we are going to test two brand new HDD models we thought it would be best to test the 1TB variants which should be more appealing to casual users and gamers. So as the title clearly states today on our test bench are the latest 1TB HDD models from Toshiba, the 5700RPM DT01ABA100 and the 7200RPM DT01ACA100.

   Toshiba Europe Storage Products Division (SPD) has remained at the forefront of the storage industry for over 40 years and is the world's only storage supplier that owns design, development, manufacturing, sales and other infrastructure functions spanning the enterprise, mobile and retail environments for both HDD and SSD products. Customers are original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), system integrators and distributors within the EMEA region. As a leading provider of integrated storage solutions and as the principal inventor of NAND flash storage, Toshiba sets many of today’s industry standards for storage technology. Throughout its history, Toshiba SPD has revolutionized the design and development of storage devices and its drives can be found inside the world's leading GPS navigation systems, consumer electronics, computers and enterprise solutions. In addition, Toshiba Storage Products Division offers an extensive range of advanced technology drives such as high durability 24/7, extended temperature and SSDs for the consumer, industrial, enterprise and automotive sector.

   Normally I’m not really that excited to test an HDD model with a rather small capacity (mainly because smaller variants have sometimes performed slightly better than their larger brothers in the past), however the Toshiba DT01ABA100 and the DT01ACA100 are not your average everyday hard disk drives since these were designed and manufactured specifically as green low-power/temperature/noise solutions (especially the DT01ABA100), or at least that's what you'd think after checking their specifications sheet. On top of that Toshiba is using the latest AF (Advanced Format) Technology which according to them is based on 4K byte-per-sector formatting and improved error-correcting code functions to provide maximum error detection and more efficient use of the storage surface area. What do all these translate to? Well let's not ruin the surprise so read on to find out.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

THE DT01ABA100 & DT01ACA100

Both drives arrived inside the usual moisture barrier bags as do most drives (bulk editions).

Compared to the Seagate Constellation ES.2 and the HGST Ultrastar 3k/4k models both the DT01ABA100 and the DT01ACA100 feel a lot lighter (and less rugged) and they are since for example the Constellation ES.2 weighs 680g while both the DT01ABA100 and the DT01ACA100 weigh just 407g each.

The usual large sticker is present at the top side of both drives and includes information such as country of origin, electrical specifications, factory rollout date, serial number, sectors, capacity, speed, model name and more. What is however worth mentioning is that the manufacturing company is actually Hitachi. Now i was aware that WD was somewhat forced to sell HGST to Toshiba (or at least part of it) but i didn't expect them to retain the company name on their drives (not that it really matters in the end).

Turning both drives upside down we see that each uses a different colored PCB (DT01ACA100 Light Blue/DT01ABA100 Dark Blue) and that as expected all of the components are placed on the interior for increased protection.

Both drives use the same SATA III connection and also have two pins at the rear (most likely for factory performed firmware updates).

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY 

     Thoroughly testing hard disk drives may require time and patience but that's just about it. Of course that doesn't mean that one must take it lightly, at least not when there are people who base their decision on your results. True many choose to only use 2 or 3 benchmarking applications in order to measure the performance of a drive or drives since quite honestly most benchmarking suites do tend to agree with each other, however we always like to take things a step further not because we have to but because we want to be almost 100% certain of the results we post in our charts (one can never be 100% certain about anything).

     So in this kind of reviews we will use a total of 6 different benchmarking suites in an effort to bring you the most accurate results across the board. Now the only reason why i say effort is because real-world usage is almost never on par with what results one gets by running several benchmarks on a drive and that's mainly because there are many variables at work from ambient temperatures to hardware configurations. The benchmarking applications we use are the AIDA64 suite (former Everest Pro), HD Tune Professional, HD Tach RW, ATTO, Sisoftware Sandra Pro and the Crystal Disk Mark 64bit. These benchmarking tools are the best in what they do and as you will also see later on their results more or less agree. Each test is performed a total of 6 times and then the average is recorded into the charts. Temperatures are recorded using Hard Disk Sentinel and after 45 minutes of continuous testing in a 23 degrees Celsius temperature controlled room. Finally we also use an ExTech HD600 dBA meter on each of the drives (5cm away) in order to accurately record their noise levels, although if you don't turn off all system fans when doing so it's quite possible that you will never even hear the drive. The operating system as usual is an up to date fresh installation of Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Service Pack 1.

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK

TEST RESULTS - TEMPERATURES / NOISE LEVELS

CONCLUSION

   Toshiba has been amongst the few industry names i trust ever since i tried their first CD-ROM drive almost 15 years ago not because it offered something really new in terms of performance (back then performance was non-existent) but because it's tray and overall build quality were a lot sturdier than what all the other CD-ROM drives at the time offered and also because it could read pretty much anything you threw at it (no matter how many scratches it had). That's also why i only trust Toshiba Qosmio notebooks (own two of them) and never had a problem with either one, to date at least. In any case up until this day Toshiba wasn't much into manufacturing hard disk drives (although i have tested some of their enterprise SAS 2.5" solutions in the past) but obviously since they own a large portion (if not all) of Hitachi this will change and if the DT01ABA100/DT01ACA100 are an indication of what's to come then I’m pretty certain they will soon hold a large percentage/share of the total HDD market. The 7200RPM DT01ACA100 proved to be faster than many of the enterprise class HDDs we've tested in the past (even all of them in some tests) while also keeping noise and temperatures below most of the competition. On the other hand the 5700RPM DT01ABA100 may fall a bit short in the performance area but its real strong point is that you can hardly hear it even if you are just 10cm away something which HTPC and NAS users will certainly enjoy.

   Both the Toshiba DT01ABA100 and the DT01ACA100 are relatively brand new HDD models so naturally they are not available in very large quantities right now (especially the DT01ABA100), however if you search really good you should find the DT01ABA100 at around USD74 inside the USA and at around 55Euros inside the EU. On the other hand however the DT01ACA100 is widely available and currently retails for USD79.99 inside the USA (TigerDirect) and for 62.90Euros inside the EU (Caseking). Other than not much really much to say, you've seen the numbers and the numbers are what counts with such reviews. For us both Toshiba models are excellent at what they were designed and manufactured to do and that's why they walk away with our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality
- AF Technology
- Performance (Especially The DT01ACA100)
- Low Power Consumption/Temperatures/Noise Levels (Especially The DT01ABA100)
- Price (For Some)

CONS

- Availability