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Hard drives are still alive and kicking, and companies such as Toshiba continue to push the envelope in terms of performance and data density.

And this is exactly what the company is doing with their new 2TB P300 of hard drives featuring shingled magnetic recording (SMR) technology -- a technology that has been in use since 2015 and makes use of overlapping data tracks to enable higher density on the data platters inside the drive. 

The term "shingled" is used because the recording tracks overlap, similar to roof shingles.

Compare this to conventional magnetic recording (CMR), where each track is distinct and has to be separated by a small distance; this means that compared to CMR, SMR allows for more data to be squeezed onto each platter in the hard drive.

In order to boost performance, the new P300 drives incorporate a 256MB buffer, and this allows for a sustained transfer rate up to 210 MiB/s, which is a massive 19% increase in data transfer rates compared to Toshiba's regular P300 Desktop PC series.

Also: The best rugged hard drives and SSDs

Toshiba is aiming the P300 drives at all PCs where capacity and performance are needed -- from regular desktop PCs and all-in-one systems to desktop workstations and gaming PCs. Toshiba also claims these drives are ideal for portable storage in the form of external enclosures.

The P300 drives are rated as having a typical read/write power consumption of 5.21W, with that dropping to 2.92W during idle. 

The new SMR P300 drives are 7200RPM high spin models and feature a 6Gbit/s SATA interface for easy connectivity.

The SMR P300 hard drives will be available in 3Q 2022, and no price has been announced at the time of writing.

Hardware

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