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.