INTRODUCTION

   All Solid State Drives are not created equal because not everyone wants one for the same purpose/use. That's what a good friend of mine in the SSD industry told me a couple of years back and to date he has yet to be proven wrong by anyone including myself. Of course the same reasoning applies for pretty much everything in life from coffee makers, smartphones, computer peripherals and TV screens up to cars and entire houses so although not something new it is what it is. Now just over a week ago we tested the latest SSD model by Kingston the SSDNow V300 which carried Toshiba's brand new 19nm toggle NAND Flash Modules. As it is quite natural however Toshiba had already announced their own SSD featuring the same 19nm toggle NAND Flash Modules back in early summer and today we will be taking a look at the 512GB variant the THNSNF512GCSS.

   Toshiba Europe Storage Products Division (SPD) has remained at the forefront of the storage industry for over 40 years and is the world's only storage supplier that owns design, development, manufacturing, sales and other infrastructure functions spanning the enterprise, mobile and retail environments for both HDD and SSD products. Customers are original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), system integrators and distributors within the EMEA region. As a leading provider of integrated storage solutions and as the principal inventor of NAND flash storage, Toshiba sets many of today’s industry standards for storage technology. Throughout its history, Toshiba SPD has revolutionized the design and development of storage devices and its drives can be found inside the world's leading GPS navigation systems, consumer electronics, computers and enterprise solutions. In addition, Toshiba Storage Products Division offers an extensive range of advanced technology drives such as high durability 24/7, extended temperature and SSDs for the consumer, industrial, enterprise and automotive sector.

   Unlike the SSDNow V300 by Kingston which is based around the SF-2281 controller by SandForce Toshiba decided to use the latest controller by Marvell Technologies (C58NC5HA9GST) to equip their entire THNSNF line of SSDs. Now overall in the past Marvell would not had been my first choice when it came to performance since solutions such as the Intel 510 were not the fastest around with SandForce based solutions taking the lead in most tests. Well i have to admit that this is no longer the case since the latest controller by Marvell managed to surpass every single controller I’ve ever encountered on an SATA III SSD (not PCIex ones) in some of the tests performed in this review and i think that alone justifies the controller selection made by Toshiba for the THNSNF512GCSS (and the rest of the line). So without further delay let's move forward and see exactly what we're talking about.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

THE THNSNF512GCSS

Unfortunately our sample was a bulk version of the THNSNF512GCSS so we basically received the drive inside a small static-free bag.

The THNSNF512GCSS has a slim aluminum body which almost feels like if the drive was designed to be used in retail systems rather than being sold separately.

A large sticker placed at the belly of the drive states the model name, serial number, electrical requirements, sector count, capacity and connectivity.

As you can see much like most SSDs out there the THNSNF512GCSS is a 2.5" 7mm drive unlike most 2.5" 9.5mm HDDs.

Right next to the SATA III power and data connectors we see 4 small pins which should be used for firmware updates (just like with Kingston SSDs).

Once i opened the enclosure i was surprised to see that all of the NAND flash modules were placed on one side of the PCB.

There are also several thermal pads ontop of both the NAND flash modules and the Marvell controller.

Toshiba has placed their logo on the Marvell controller chip (just like Kingston does on the V300 and the SF-2281).

A total of eight 64GB 19nm toggle NAND Flash Modules are placed on one side of the PCB resulting in 476,90GB of free space.

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   After roughly 5 years of testing sold state drives i have concluded that it's almost impossible for any single benchmark suite to accurately measure their performance and that's why in certain benchmark suites we see amazing read/write performance numbers with some drives while in others things are quite different. The reason behind this is that some benchmarking suites are configured to read and write random chunks of data while others read and write constant (sequential) ones. So that's why i have always used a very wide selection of benchmarking suites including AIDA64, HD Tach RW, HD Tune Pro, Crystal Disk Mark, Sisoftware Sandra Pro, AS SSD, IOmeter and ATTO. To get the most accurate results each test gets repeated a total of 6 times with the average performance numbers recorded into our charts.

   Many people made inquiries about the charts ever since the last comparison so once again please do keep in mind that the Charts have the average performance numbers of each drive recorded and not the peak (highest) ones. Also although every single one of these programs can help potentials buyer choose the right drive for their needs you should also remember that from any kind of benchmark up to real world usage the gap is not small (and usually most differences will go unnoticed by most people). All tests were performed in a fresh Windows 7 Ultimate x64 installation with every update installed up to January 20th 2013.

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

TEST RESULTS - HD TUNE PRO / HD TACH RW

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK

TEST RESULTS - AS SSD / IOMETER

CONCLUSION

     Toshiba's Storage Division once again managed to design and manufacture a great device that can easily go up against similar products in the market regardless of price and in most situations finish first. Of course this is largely thanks to the cooperation between the brand new Marvell controller chip and the 19nm toggle NAND Flash Modules by Toshiba but since firmware also plays a large part we do expect its performance to get even better in time. However much like in the past Marvell controllers have a slight compatibility issue with some benchmarking applications (which unfortunately didn't change with the latest one) like the HD Tune Pro and AIDA64 and because of that the performance numbers we recorded in those two were nowhere near the ones we got from the remaining five. I say five and not six because we are not 100% convinced that the issue in IOmeter is a compatibility problem like with the other two (although it's very possible). If this gets resolved with a future FW update we will be sure to retest the drive and post the correct performance numbers here.

   Since the Toshiba THNSNF512GCSS 512GB SSD is a brand new product (and also because i think it was initially targeted towards system builders and not consumers) we didn't really expect to encounter good availability levels around the world and unfortunately we were more than just right. So currently we couldn't find the THNSNF512GCSS for sale anywhere inside the USA (and thus we can't comment on its price) however it retails for around 440Euros inside the EU a price tag that puts it roughly 50Euros less than the Vector 512GB by OCZ (at least in quite a few countries). With that in mind you are basically getting lightning fast top of its class performance, excellent reliability and 3 years warranty for just 0.92Euros per Gigabyte and that's more than enough for us to give our Golden Award to the THNSNF512GCSS 512GB by Toshiba.

PROS

- Build Quality (Toshiba 19nm Toggle NAND Flash/Marvell Controller)
- Blazing Fast Performance
- 477GB Of Space
- 3 Years Warranty
- Price 

CONS

- Availability
- IOmeter Performance