The DT01ACA is the first consumer-oriented 3.5-inch hard drive lineup from Toshiba. We will be reviewing the 1 TB model in this article, codenamed DT01ACA100.
Specifications
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The DT01ACA lineup has four different capacities, from 500GB up to 3TB. All models utilize a SATA 3 (6 Gbps) interface and the rotational speed is at 7200 RPM. Only 3.5-inch form factor is available.
The 500 GB and 1 TB models are paired with a 32 MB cache, while the 2 TB and 3 TB models have 64 MB of cache. They are advertised to have data rates at around 226 MB/s.
Unboxing
The packaging of the HDD may defer depends on your locations and resellers. The particular DT01ACA100 unit, that I purchased, has a pretty generic design from Xander International, with a white and blue background.
The hard drive is contained in an anti-static bag. The sticker on top shows information like the model number, drive revision and serial number. No user manual or warranty information can be found in the package.
Toshiba 1TB HDD (DT01ACA100)
On the actual HDD, you can see a very similar sticker with model number, serial number and capacity of the drive. The DT01ACA100 hard drive is manufactured in China.
Standard 3.5-inch HDD mounting holes are located on both sides.
The blue printed circuit board (PCB) on the bottom houses the drive controller and the 32 MB of cache. The SATA III connector has a theoretical bandwidth of up to 6 Gbps, around 750 MB/s. In real life, the speed is significantly reduced and limited to about 550 MB/s.
Review
Testing Methodology
To test the performance of the solid-state drive, we use three well-established storage benchmarking software. They are CrystalDiskMark, ATTO Disk Benchmark, as well as AS SSD Benchmark.
CrystalDiskMark can measure both sequential and random 4KB read/write speeds with a queue depth of 32. ATTO Disk Benchmark can test how the drive performs across different transfer block sizes, mostly in a sequential environment. AS SSD Benchmark can provide both normal read/write speed and the IOPS performance of the drive.
We also recorded the time to transfer three files of 10 GB, 500 MB and 250 MB from a RAM disk to the SSD, which is used to simulate a real-world situation.
- CPU: Intel Core i5-8400 @ 2.9 GHz (65W TDP)
- Motherboard: ASRock Z370 Killer SLI
- RAM: HyperX Predator RGB DDR4-3600 16 GB kit (its review here)
Performance
In CrystalDiskMark, the DT01ACA100 reached sequential read/write speeds at 203 MB/s and 202 MB/s respectively, which were slightly lower than the advertised 226 MB/s. Random 4K performance was bad at around 1.2 MB/s to 1.4 MB/s, but was normal for a mechanical hard drive. Standard SATA-based SSDs often sits at under 300 MB/s.
Sequential read/write speeds dropped down to 189 MB/s and 168 MB/s in AS SSD Benchmark. Random 4K operations decreased to only 0.28 MB/s to 1.08 MB/s.
IOPS number represents how well a drive handles random input and output operations. The highest number sat at 277 IOPS, while the the DT01ACA100 HDD scored 48 in the benchmark.
The DT01ACA100 HDD’s performance leveled off when the test file sizes increased from 8 KB, which achieved around 200 MB/s in both read and write.
It took 60.05 seconds for a total of three files, sized around 15 GB, to transfer from a RAM disk. The write speed stabilized at around 194 MB/s, after the cache buffer was full.
Comparison
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Compared to the Seagate BarraCuda 1TB HDD (its review here), the Toshiba DT01ACA100 had similar sequential performance with slightly better write speed in CrystalDiskMark. Though, the results were different in AS SSD Benchmark. The BarraCuda HDD had a higher sequential write speed than the DT01ACA100. All hard drives did bad in random 4K read/write operations, which is as expected.
Conclusion
The Toshiba DT01ACA100 1TB HDD did reasonably well by mechanical hard drives’ standards. It averaged around 200 MB/s in sequential read/write speeds, but decreased drastically in random 4K operations as expected.
A 2-year warranty is provided to the hard drive. Only 1 error would occur for every 12.5 TB of data read, according to Toshiba. It is priced at $46 USD (MSRP), which can be purchased for much cheaper at around $36 USD at the time of this review. As large capacity solid-state drives are more affordable now, I would highly recommend buying one for the operating system, because of its better random 4K performance.
You can purchase the HDD from your local/online resellers or the links below from Amazon and Newegg.
- Amazon US: Toshiba 1TB HDD (DT01ACA100)
- Newegg US: Toshiba 1TB HDD (DT01ACA100)
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