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Today we look at the latest Solid State Drive product Toshiba – the HG6. The HG6 drives integrate NAND chips which are fabricated on the second generation 19nm process and they are available in capacities ranging from 60GB to 512GB. Shipping is due to start very soon and they sampled us with the 256GB model.
Toshiba are aiming these new drives at a wide audience including enthusiast desktop/notebooks, workstations and for read intensive enterprise applications and server boot drives. Regular readers of KitGuru will already be aware that OCZ were recently acquired by Toshiba and the latest Vertex 460 240GB drive uses 19nm Toshiba Toggle Mode MLC NAND.
The HG6 drives are using Toshiba's Advanced 19nm (A19nm) toggle 2.0 MLC (Multi Level Cell) NAND, which they claim delivers major advances in performance and also power efficiency over previous designs.
Toshiba rate the maximum transfer rate of these drives at 534 MB/s and 483 MB/s for sequential read and write speeds, respectively. They will be offering the drives in various form factors, including mSATA, M.2 and standard 2.5 inch. The 2.5 inch unit we have for review today is 7mm deep, ensuring it will fit perfectly inside the latest ultraportable laptops.
Toshiba claim that the drives have a reliability rating (MTTF) of up to 1,500,000 hours. HG6 SSD's incorporate Toshiba's Quadruple Swing By Code to improve error correction and subsequently reliability.
We didn't receive a retail package for review – just the SSD in an antistatic bag. Our sample came direct from a Toshiba factory so we therefore can't comment on the retail bundle.
Our engineering sample drive had no company stickers on the front of the chassis. The sticker on the rear of the chassis highlights details of the drive, including capacity and serial number.
One side of the drive has little adhesive thermal pads placed on all of the chips. We will remove them to get a better look underneath.
One side of the PCB is bare and would be populated with additional NAND if this was the 512GB model of the drive. This 256GB version ships with eight 32GB memory chips on one side. These are Toshiba Advanced 19nm (A19nm) toggle 2.0 MLC (Multi level cell) NAND. The drives include Adaptive Size SLC Write cache technology and optional Self Encrypting feature compliant to TCG-Opal 2.0.
When formatted in Windows 7/8, the Toshiba HG6 256GB shows 238GB free for the operating system.
On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.
For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free or easily available programs and some real world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system.
This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits.
Main system:
Kitguru Test Rig 2
Compare system:
CPU: Intel Core i7 2700k
Cooler: Thermaltake Frio OCK
Motherboard: Asus P8P67 Deluxe
Memory: ADATA DDR3 2000mhz 9-11-9-24
PSU: ADATA 1200W
Graphics: Sapphire HD6950 Flex Edition
Chassis: Thermaltake Level 10 GT
Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit
Other Drives
OCZ Vertex 460 240GB SSD
Samsung 840 EVO 1TB
OCZ Vector 150 240GB
ADATA Premier Pro SP900 128GB
Visiontek Racer Series 120GB
Kingston HyperX 3k 120GB
OCZ Vertex 4 512GB
OCZ Vertex 4 128GB SSD Review (firmware 1.4 update)
Transcend SSD720 128GB
Kingston SSDNow V+200 90GB
OCZ Octane 512GB (V1.13 fw)
Mach Xtreme MX-DS Turbo 120GB
Corsair Performance Pro 256GB
Samsung 830 Series 512GB
Patriot Pyro SE 240GB
Patriot Wildfire 240GB
MemoRight FTM Plus 240GB SSD
Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD
OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB
Patriot Wildfire 120GB SSD OCZ Agility 3 240GB
OCZ Vertex 3 240GB
OCZ Vertex 3 MAX IOPS 240GB
ADATA S511 240GB
Intel 510 120GB
Corsair F100 100GB
OCZ Vertex 2 120GB
Crucial Real SSD C300 64GB
MemoRight FTM.25 115GB SSD
Samsung SpinPoint F3 1TB
PCIe drives test system:
OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB HDD/SSD &
OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB
Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark
CrystalMark
AS SSD
PCMark 8
IOMeter
All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration this ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active.
Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0.1 x64.
4K QD32 performance is excellent, averaging just below the Vertex 460 240GB. Read performance is actually higher, but the much reduced write performance lowers the final result.
We can see that the Toshiba controller delivers stellar results, hitting 510 MB/s sequential read and 484 MB/s sequential write with both incompressible and compressible data streams.
Above, some included compares from other leading solid state drives which we have reviewed in the last year.The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.
Sequential read and write performance is very strong, peaking at 552 MB/s read and 521 MB/s write in ATTO.
Some comparison results from other leading products available on the market today.
AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.
AS SSD only deals with incompressible data and as such it highlights the strengths of the Toshiba controller inside the HG6 drive. The drive scores 1,037 points which is almost identical to the Vertex 460 240GB which we reviewed at the start of March.
Some other comparisons from leading manufacturer drives, which we have tested in recent months.
PCMark 8 is the latest version in our popular series of PC benchmarking tools. Improving on previous releases, PCMark 8 includes battery life measurement tools and new tests using popular applications from Adobe and Microsoft. Whether you are looking for long battery life, or maximum power, PCMark 8 helps you find the devices that offer the perfect combination of efficiency and performance for your needs.
Scores are strong, showing good all round performance. The results again are only a few points ahead of the Vertex 460 240GB drive which we reviewed earlier this month.
IOMeter is another open source synthetic benchmarking tool which is able to simulate the various loads placed on hard drive and solid state drive technology.
We test with both random read and write 4k parameters, as shown above. There are many ways to measure the IOPS performance of a Solid State Drive, so our results will often vary with the manufacturer’s quoted ratings.
Random 4K IOPS performance is particularly strong in the read test, claiming 88,480 IOPS. Random 4k write performance is weaker, which would tie into some of the results we have seen earlier in the review. The drive scored 57,800 IOPS in this test. Due to the PCB layout and controller design we should see a better 4k random IOPS write result with the 512GB version of this drive.
The Toshiba HG6 is a balanced, high performance solid state drive, designed to deal with both incompressible and compressible data streams – the demanding enthusiast user would be well advised to include this drive on a final shortlist. Additionally, Toshiba's recent acquisition of OCZ is going to cement their development position in the Solid State marketplace … the future is bright for Toshiba.
We have already reviewed the latest OCZ Vertex 460 240GB Solid State drive which features 19nm Toshiba Toggle Mode MLC NAND. Results between the Vertex 460 and Toshiba HG6 are closely matched although OCZ's Indilinx Barefoot 3 M10 controller delivers marginally better write performance.
The Toshiba HG6 256GB drive scored well in all our tests today, and the results highlight benefits over the ever popular LSI Sandforce 2281 controller when dealing with incompressible data.
Performance in ATTO highlighted peaks over 550 MB/s in sequential read tests, and around 520 MB/s in sequential write tests, slightly better than the manufacturers official claims.
Overall IOPS performance is excellent, achieving close to 89,000 IOPS in our 4K random read test. The 4k random write test wasn't quite so impressive, hitting a final result around 58,000 IOPS.
As we go to press, the drives are not available to buy, however Toshiba did send over their expected UK retail pricing:
Toshiba HG6 128GB: ~£78
Toshiba HG6 256GB: ~£140
Toshiba HG6 512GB: ~£300
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Pros:
- 4k IOPS performance.
- controller exhibits balanced results, no weaknesses.
- strong sequential performance.
Cons:
- Facing stiff competition in a growing market.
Kitguru says: A very capable well priced drive, targeting a wide market.
