Though many gamers have moved onto solid state drives, Toshiba is still making a case for good old fashioned spinning media, and specifically its new 8TB-capacity X300.
The new 8TB model is the largest capacity available in Toshiba's 3.5-inch X300 family, which is the company's "Pro" line designed for creative professionals and PC gamers. The X300 series is also available in 6TB, 5TB, and 4TB capacities.
Part of the reason why Toshiba pitches the X300 family as a performance option is because it has a 7,200 RPM spindle speed. These models (including the new 8TB capacity) also feature 128MB of cache, which is twice as much as Toshiba's P300 and L200 drive families. This is supplemented with an onboard cache algorithm and buffer management to optimize cache allocation between read and write cycles.
Other features include dual stage actuators, ramp loading technology to reduce wear to the recording head and media, a secured motor shaft at both ends to reduce vibrations and stabilize the platter, and NCQ support.
Trusting a single drive to store 8TB of data takes a leap of faith that it isn't going to cough up a hairball. While this is a new capacity in the X300 family, early data from cloud storage provider Backblaze shows that 8TB capacity drives are pretty reliable. Its latest reliability report also shines a mostly positive light on Toshiba, albeit in both cases the sample size is comparatively small.
You can find the 8TB capacity X300 HDD at Newegg for $270, plus $9 and change for shipping. That works out to about three and a half cents per gigabyte. The drive is backed by a 2-year warranty.
