Toshiba announced the highest-capacity N300 and N300 Pro hard drive models, built for private cloud storage and network-attached storage (NAS) systems. These 24TB drives add 2TB more capacity to the company’s current largest offerings, allowing users with limited drive bays to expand their capacity by replacing drives instead of adding new systems.
Toshiba says that the N300 series supports up to 12 drive bays and has a workload rating of 180 TB/year, while the N300 Pro works with up to 24 drive bays and up to 550 TB/year workload.
“Toshiba’s 24TB N300 and N300 Pro set new benchmarks in storage capacity and density, while also enhancing power efficiency through our advanced helium-sealed design,” says Toshiba Senior Director for Product Sales and Marketing Koji Sakamoto. “These models reflect Toshiba’s dedication to innovating HDD design to address the evolving storage demands for performance and small office NAS applications. With files continuing to grow in size, the 24TB capacity will allow NAS users to store and access large volume of data more efficiently.”
These 3.5-inch drives also feature industry-standard speeds of 7200 RPM and a 1GB buffer. They have integrated sensors that compensate for rotational vibrations, increasing their reliability.
While SSDs have become cheaper and have larger capacities in recent years, hard drives are still the more affordable option. This still makes them the go-to choice for organizations and individuals that need to store massive amounts of data via a NAS or a personal cloud.
The N300 series isn’t the first hard drive model to reach 24TB capacity, especially as the company has already launched its CMR 24TB and SMR 28TB models for data centers and hyperscalers. Seagate has even unveiled the 36TB HAMR Mozaic 3+ extended drive, which is the highest-capacity drive available at the moment. However, these drives are designed for enterprise use, and you might be hard-pressed to find them on consumer platforms.
On the other hand, the N300 drives are readily available on e-commerce websites, allowing anyone to purchase them. Unfortunately, the 24TB N300 isn’t listed online yet, but the 24TB N300 Pro is currently priced at $649.99 on Amazon. They’re significantly more expensive than the other options in our best hard drives list; however, these 24TB drives might be your only option if you need to expand your capacity without investing in further hardware.
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