14 DAY TRIAL // Japanese electronics giant Toshiba has just introduced two new hybrid hard drives (HHD) that feature SLC NAND memory and come in a modest 2.5” format. The new drives feature disappointing technical specifications and likely won’t offer impressive performance.
Toshiba’s new drives feature only a 8 GB SLC NAND buffer and, while SLC flash memory is much more reliable and durable than MLC or TLC NAND, the quantity is abysmal when compared with what a HDD should deliver proper performance.
Intel and Western Digital got separately to the same conclusion, namely that, for a decent performance increase, the ratio between magnetic storage capacity and the flash NAND buffer should be a maximum of 20 to 1.
Therefore, a 1 TB HHD should have at least 52 GB of NAND, while a 750 GB model should integrate at least 38 GB of flash memory.
Unfortunately, Toshiba’s new HHDs only come with 8 GB of SLC NAND, no matter what capacity the drive has.
The first model is officially called Toshiba MQ01ABD075H and comes with a 750 GB storage capacity, while the second is called Toshiba MQ01ABD100H and features a 1 TB storage capacity.
To further deepen our disappointment, Toshiba has apparently decided that a 5400 RPM spindle speed is enough for today’s performance requirements, but we’d beg to differ.
On the other hand, the drives are also very fat, literally. Both models are 9.5mm thick and this is quite surprising in a period where most companies launch 7mm or even 5mm hard disk drives.
We would have thought that a HHD with a modest 1 TB capacity can surely be slimmer than a 2 TB HDD in the same 2.5” form factor.
