INTRODUCTION

   Solid state hybrid drives (SSHDs for short) may not pose a real threat for normal SSDs in terms of performance (not yet anyways) but they are already gaining ground against regular HDDs and that's something that has gotten the attention of many people in the industry ourselves included. We don't really need to point out that it was the latest Desktop SSHD 4TB by Seagate that really changed things since being the very first 3.5" hybrid drive in the market means that manufacturers are finally turning towards desktop drives that offer both higher performance levels and larger capacities. Of course that doesn't mean that manufacturers will just cease all development of 2.5" hybrid drives, far from it especially since such drives are quite popular especially amongst laptop and HTPC owners. Today we will be testing one of the latest SSHDs to hit the market the brand new MQ01ABD100H 1TB by Toshiba.

   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.

   Since Toshiba is the creator of NAND Flash memory when they announced the MQ01ABD100H i was expecting to see something slightly different compared to other 2.5" SSHD solutions but for good or bad the end result is actually quite similar. So just like in the case of the Seagate Laptop/Laptop Thin SSHDs (and even the Desktop SSHD) the 9.5mm thick MQ01ABD100H by Toshiba wears a total of 8GB MLC NAND Flash which this time over are paired with 32MB DRAM buffer and two 500GB plates (for the 1TB model) spinning at 5400RPM. Manufacturers have to think about the cost of such drives so i didn't expect Toshiba to offer something unique compared to for example Seagate and lose the price game in the process but i really do think that it's about time we saw SSHDs with more onboard NAND flash. Now as some of you may recall we did reveal a long time ago that manufacturers have received the green light for the development of SSHDs with 32GB of onboard MLC NAND flash but we can't really tell with certainty the when these will be available for consumers. Our job however is to test what we have in front of us so let’s see what Toshiba has brought to the table with their MQ01ABD100H 1TB 2.5" SSHD.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

THE MQ01ABD100H 1TB

Once again we received the sample inside an electrostatic free plastic bag.

As expected the MQ01ABD100H 1TB looks like your average 9.5mm HDD (it's actually roughly 9.3mm thick).

At the sticker placed on the drive you can see the factory rollout date, country of manufacture, barcode, part number, serial number, model name, capacity, electrical requirements, firmware version and several certification and warning logos.

As usual all of the chips can be found on the interior of the blue PCB for increased protection.

Aside the typical SATA data and power connectors there are also 4 pins at the rear of the drive most likely used to perform FW updates.

Here we see the 8GB Toshiba NAND Flash modules with their controller, the 32MB DRAM cache and the MARVELL 9317 controller responsible for the platter half of the drive.

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY 

     Thoroughly testing hard disk drives may require time and patience but that's just about it. Of course that doesn't mean that one must take it lightly, at least not when people base their final decision on your results. True many choose to only use 2 or 3 benchmarking suits in order to measure the performance of a drive or drives since quite honestly most benchmarking suites do tend to agree with each other (so it's not really wrong) but we always like to take things a step further not because we have to but because we want to be almost 100% certain of the results we get and post in our charts.

     So in this kind of reviews we will use a total of 7 different benchmarking suites in an effort to bring you the most accurate results across the board. Now the only reason why i say effort is because real-world usage is not always on par with what results one gets by running several benchmarks on a drive and that's mainly because there are many variables at work from ambient temperatures to hardware configurations and even firmware versions. The benchmarking applications we use are the AIDA64 suite (former Everest Pro), HD Tune Professional, HD Tach RW, ATTO, Sisoftware Sandra Pro, Crystal Disk Mark 64bit and the PCMARK7. These benchmarking tools are the best in what they do and as you will also see later on their results more or less agree. Each test is performed a total of 6 times and then the average is recorded into the charts. Temperatures are recorded using Hard Disk Sentinel and after 45 minutes of continuous testing in a 23 degrees Celsius temperature controlled room. The operating system as usual is a fresh installation of Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate Service Pack 1 with every update installed up until the 25th of March 2014.

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK

TEST RESULTS - PCMARK 7 / TEMPERATURES

CONCLUSION

   The MQ01ABD100H 1TB SSHD by Toshiba is actually the 6th hybrid drive I’ve gotten my hands onto over the years and so i really was hoping to see something new in terms of read/write performance (although i also knew that's next to impossible right now for a consumer oriented drive). Unfortunately however as was expected that didn't happen and so the MQ01ABD100H yielded performance numbers (some better and some worse) very similar to the Laptop Thin SSHD drive by Seagate we reviewed last year. Of course that doesn't mean we were disappointed far from it since at the end of the day we are still talking about an consumer oriented 2.5" drive so we didn't and can't expect miracles but still we think that hybrid technology has room for improvement (manufacturers however always have to balance cost and performance). What really impressed us quite a bit were the temperatures of the drive which never exceeded 32 degrees Celsius and although this is obviously not crucial for most people it may just be enough of an advantage to give it a head start.

   Hybrid drives currently offer the best price/performance ratio in the market and the MQ01ABD100H 1TB SSHD is not an exception to that rule since it currently retails for just USD120.35 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for 100Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk). Sure you can find many 1TB 2.5" HDD models for quite less but if you decide to house the OS inside the drive then a hybrid model is well worth the extra investment (purely for backup purposes however a normal HDD is far more suitable). Thanks to its very good performance and impressively low temperature levels the MQ01ABD100H 1TB SSHD by Toshiba is amongst the very few ideal choices for laptops and HTPCs and that's enough for it to grab our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality
- Ideal For OS Use (SSD-Like Performance For Cached Files)
- Very Low Temperatures
- Low Power Consumption (2.5W At Load)
- 3 Years Warranty
- Price (For Some)

CONS

- Mid-End Overall Performance (Un-Cached)