Toshiba revamps its SSD line with
some cutting edge MLC NAND technology
Being the originators of NAND memory,
Toshiba has a vested interest in the success of SSD technology, and understandably
has its own product range.
They make the SSD drives that Apple uses in
its MacBook range, and the THNSNF512GCSS closely resembles one of those silver
encased units. This is a 'slim' 7mm mechanism that will fit into any laptop
with a 2.5" SATA mechanism, even the svelte ultrabook designs.
Toshiba
THNSNF512GCSS 512GB SSD
What's special about this drive is that
it's the world's first to use a 19nm toggle mode MLC NAND, theoretically
allowing for both greater capacities, lower power consumption, high reliability
and better performance.
Some of these aspects I can reasonably
test, and with some certainty I can substantiate Toshiba's opinion that this
drive is fast. It claims a read speed of 524 MB/s and write transfer rate of up
to 461 MB, where I recorded reading of 509.2MB/s and writing at 477MB/s. These
discrepancies are easily attributed to system variations, and I found nothing
to suggest that this SSD isn't one of the quicker models on the market. Quick,
yes, but not actually the quickest unit out there.
Such is the pace at which this technology
is developing, had this product come to market earlier I'd be banging a drum on
its behalf, but I've seen multiple drives that can outperform this one, all
using previous NAND fabrication technology.
What's far more difficult to quantify than
the outright speed of this drive, given that I only got to test it for a few
weeks, is the value of some extra features Toshiba has introduced to extend and
improve the product lifespan. Thus we pretty much have to take the improvements
offered by features such as Quadruple Swing By Code Technology (QSBC; which
protects against read errors), a deterministic zeroing TRIM function and some
advanced power management hardware (that reduces the load power consumption to
2.24 watts) on faith.
One thing that did slightly confused us
regarding the drive's use of power was an idle consumption of 0.64 watts,
appreciably higher than it should be. We're not at all sure of the root cause
of the anomaly, but clearly it shouldn't still be consuming a third of the
power it does in full operation when not doing anything.
What we also noticed was that the fuller
the drive got the more write performance suffered. Most SSD designs suffer to
some degree with this issue, but this drive seemed to get really bogged down in
the last 20% of capacity, and we have to question the efficiency of the garbage
collection it's doing to free previously used space.
The hideously named THNSNF512GCSS didn't
quite live up to our expectations. It's fast, but the Samsung 840 Pro is faster
though, at around 72p per GB, it's mid-price status (more expensive than the
Crucial M4 series, but cheaper than the Samsung and OCZ high-end drives) may
attract some interest.
I think the second generation of this new design
will iron out some of the obvious wrinkles that Toshiba couldn't quite work out
of this one, and it might well be worth waiting for that product.
This is a good product, and if you don't
let the drive overfill it performs admirably. It could have been amazing,
though, which is a shame.
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Details
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Price: $591 (Span.com)
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Manufacturer: Toshiba
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Website: www.toshiba.com
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Required Spec: SATA III port and an
SSD-friendly Operating System
Verdict
·
Quality: 7
·
Value: 7
·
Overall: 7
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