14 DAY TRIAL // It hasn't even been a week since the formal release of HGST's Ultrastar 15,000 RPM hard drive storage devices, and Toshiba has come forward with its own set of high-speed magnetic data storage devices.
There are actually two new Toshiba HDD series available, called AL13SXB and AL13SXQ, and the only notable difference between them is that the latter comes with self-encryption protocols and the former does not.
There are two more assets to take into account, but they are not divided by product series, like FIPS certification and the Sanitize Device Feature.
For those unfamiliar with FIPS, or Federal Information Processing Standards, they are a set of guidelines meant to ensure that all federal government and agencies adhere to the same guidelines concerning security and communication.
Since the new Toshiba HDDs will probably land in the servers and data centers of various corporations and government organizations, this is highly relevant.
In truth, only three AL13SXQ series HDDs are FIPS-certified, the one bearing the xB suffix: AL13SXQ600xB, AL13SXQ450xB, and AL13SXQ300xB, with capacities of 600 GB, 450 GB, and 300 GB, respectively.
But we may as well look at the drives in order, lest we cause more confusion instead of demystifying what makes the newcomer tick.
First off, the AL13SXB line. It is composed of two sets of 600 GB, 450 GB, and 300 GB units. None of them has self-encryption and they also lack FIPS. But one of the sets supports the Sanitize Device Feature set, which makes it possible to quickly invalidate data recorded on the magnetic disks if the need ever arises.
Secondly, the AL13SXQ series. Again, there are two 600/450/300 GB sets, but all the storage devices have self-encryption and Sanitize Device Feature set support. Thus, the only difference between them is that, as we said above, the ones with xB at the end have been FIPS-certified.
All Toshiba AL13SXB and AL13SXQ have 15,000 RPM (rotations per minute) platter speeds, good for mission critical enterprise storage applications.
The 600 GB ones also benefit from industry standard 512n sector lengths, despite the use of the 2.5-inch form factor instead of 3.5 inches. Along with the 4K native sector and Toshiba's persistent write cache technology, it leads to better data integrity and performance. Sustained read and write rates should reach up to 243 MB/s and 228 MB/s, respectively.
Sadly, the prices haven't been mentioned, since these aren't consumer-oriented, retail products, but subject to deal negotiations. They are antimony-free and RoHS-compatible though, so they have the green factor to add a bit to the price on top of everything else.