I have had this specific hard drive (Toshiba P300 HDWD110UZSVA) for a little over a month now. Obviously, it is too early to form any accurate opinion about its stability and reliability. On the day I received it, I properly installed it in the case (an old budget Cougar from 2015), disconnected the SSD, and immediately installed Windows 10 to see how it performs as the main drive and to run some tests simultaneously, mainly to check if it is defective and to get a first impression of its reliability.

One of these tests was CrystalDiskMark 8, where the speeds were more than satisfactory for an HDD. Specifically, it managed to reach up to 200MB/s Read and 195MB/s Write (SEQ1MQ8T1) in the first benchmark I ran, while using only 4% of its capacity.

Here I should mention and clarify that it is perfectly reasonable for an HDD to have noticeably slower boot times compared to almost any SSD (the Samsung 870 EVO I have had for a year initially powered on in 20-23" with fast startup disabled, now it takes around 30", and the Toshiba took about 40" to reach the desktop, also with fast startup disabled, but you have to wait a few seconds for it to stabilize). Overall, the system was quite responsive and applications opened relatively quickly for this type of drive. I was not disappointed with its performance as the main drive, although a SATA SSD, let alone an NVMe, is clearly more suitable, no doubt about it.

The next day, after leaving the Toshiba running continuously for over 15 hours during which I ran several benchmarks, I booted from the Samsung and wiped the Toshiba using the "clean all" command in diskpart (which essentially destroys the disk's files by writing 0s and 1s to each sector of the disk and takes quite some time). It started the process with Write speeds of 190-200MB/s, and just before it finished, the speed had dropped to 110MB/s. In other words, it wrote continuously at a speed of 110+MB/s for about two hours, and its temperature did not exceed 36°C! That is truly impressive for a mechanical drive.

After going through all of that without any issues, it is obviously not DOA and gave me the impression that it has the potential to prove reliable over time, which is why I trusted it with my files.

Since then, I have been using it as a secondary storage drive, mainly for storing files such as photos and videos, and I have run dozens of benchmarks and tests in general.

The speeds have now decreased significantly (120-130MB/s Read & Write) because I am using almost half of the capacity (43%). Completely normal.

It is slightly noisy, but I discovered this when I turned on the PC with the Toshiba disconnected and recorded the case's sound both with and without the drive in operation to confirm it. Even in the recording, the difference is negligible. Even under load, it does not make more or less noise compared to idle, unless you literally put your ear on the drive, then you can hear a faint hum. Additionally, the motor makes a minimal noise during startup and a noticeable click when it "parks" during shutdown, but nothing worrisome.

Regarding temperature, at room temperature, without cooling, it has never exceeded 36°C (as mentioned before, it stayed at that temperature for at least 2 hours continuously when I reset it, and since then it hasn't gotten any hotter).

So far, I am completely satisfied in every aspect. Fast, almost silent, low temperatures, and reliable for now.

My humble system:
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-H110M-S2
CPU: Intel Pentium G4400
GPU: Intel HD Graphics 510
RAM: 12GB [8GB Corsair DDR4 3000Mhz + 4GB DDR4 2400Mhz (the processor supports up to 2133Mhz)]
Main Disk (SSD): Samsung 870 EVO 500GB

That's all from me, I know I wrote quite a bit, I don't want to become tiresome. I will come back in the future.

P.S. The Toshiba P300 HDWD110UZSVA is CMR technology and has a similar, if not the same, architecture as Hitachi, so there is a high chance it will withstand the test of time.

Purchased on February 27, 2020 for 40€. It replaced a 2010 Hitachi HDD that died after 10 years of full operation in gaming and data storage as a secondary disk. It had also been used as a primary disk in the past and had undergone several formats. It had accumulated over 28,600 hours of usage with 7,600 startups. I was lucky because there are new HDDs that come with factory defects and fail within 1, 2, 3, or 5 years, but this one lasted 10 years. Overall, Hitachi is very reliable, especially in data centers. WD and Seagate, which are popular brands, have failed for me within 4-5 years. However, no HDD is suitable for use as a main disk for the operating system nowadays due to their slower speeds. Since 2012, SSDs have been constantly used in new computers, and older computers are being upgraded with SSDs. As a secondary disk for storing games and videos for editing, a large HDD is cost-effective due to its high capacity and low price per GB. The performance of the computer (e.g., FPS in games) is not affected by the disk, but rather by the processor, RAM, and graphics card. The disk only affects loading times into RAM, after which the system takes over processing. Regardless of the type of disk (HDD, SSD, NVMe, PCI-e), if you don't have a good computer, the performance will be the same. The only difference will be in the speed of copying large files and the startup time of the operating system and programs. SSDs have a specified TBW (terabytes written) limit after which they start to degrade, but new SSDs have high endurance in terms of TBW and can handle many hours of usage with great reliability. On the other hand, an HDD, which operates with magnetic disks, theoretically has infinite endurance in terms of writes and reads. However, in practice, endurance decreases significantly due to mechanical parts (motor, heads, vibrations, etc.), temperature, and factory defects. Regarding the Toshiba P300:
- It is worth its price because it runs at 7200 RPM, has 64MB cache, and according to Toshiba, it is a budget disk for gamers and professionals.
- Its performance in write and read is similar to that of the more expensive WD Black.
- In tests with NTFS file system and after the first format using CrystalMark with triple testing of 1GB, it reached 187.3 MB/s write and 186.2 MB/s read in Seq Q32T1, which is a very good speed for a 3.5" HDD. However, it struggles with small files (4KiB Q8T8) with 1.5 MB/s write and 1.4 MB/s read due to mechanical parts.
- Internally, it has one disk platter for data writing, unlike older 3.5" HDDs with 2 platters for 1TB. Therefore, it has a much lower power consumption in watts compared to older 1TB HDDs, which had about 5-6 watts more.
*Update on October 1, 2020: It has been functioning flawlessly since the day I bought it as a secondary hard disk for my main computer. It has been used for storing games (Steam, Uplay, Epic) and video projects that I render and export, and it performs quite fast and reliably in these tasks. I have also uploaded a photo to show that it is in good health. I hope it lasts as long as the reliable Hitachi HDD, which lasted 10 years. I didn't go for WD and Seagate because most of the times I had them as new, they failed within 4~5 years, and that's why I went for Toshiba.

Update December 7, 2023, it's going okay after major updates in games as a second disk.

I will re-evaluate it after some time to see how it performs.