Technology X Tomorrow's Technology Today! 
ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL (BETA)
You may not see this for long (and it’s definitely not common) but you get a freebee simply for reading! Over the last little while, we have been assisting with beta testing new benchmark software called Anvil Storage Utilities which is an absolutely amazing SSD benchmarking utility. Not only does it have a preset SSD benchmark, but also, it has included such things as endurance testing and threaded I/O read, write and mixed tests, all of which are very simple to understand and use in our benchmark testing.
Anvil Storage Utilities doesn’t really show us anything new, but to confirm what we have seen thus far and to provide full system and cSSD identification. This is one of our favorite benchmarks as it is by far the most encompassing within one software package.
The SSD Review uses benchmark software called PCMark Vantage x64 HDD Suite to create testing scenarios that might be used in the typical user experience. There are eight tests in all and the tests performed record the speed of data movement in MB/s to which they are then given a numerical score after all of the tests are complete. The simulations are as follows:
- Windows Defender In Use
- Streaming Data from storage in games such as Alan Wake which allows for massive worlds and riveting non-stop action
- Importing digital photos into Windows Photo Gallery
- Starting the Vista Operating System
- Home Video editing with Movie Maker which can be very time consuming
- Media Center which can handle video recording, time shifting and streaming from Windows media center to an extender such as XBox
- Cataloging a music library
- Starting applications
TOSHIBA 512GB cSSD PCMARK VANTAGE RESULTS
The Toshiba 512GB notebook cSSD cane in with a Vantage Total Score high of 63377 and a high transfer speed of 384MB/s which kind of surprised us once again as both other cSSD variations had results over 70K with this software. Once again, I am wondering if the controller we are seeing on this cSSD is different than the other two.
Due to the size that our Hierarchy Chart has grown to, it simply cannot accommodate scoring below 70K at this point however, we have no problem listing the results of all four Toshiba SSDs for comparison:
REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS
There is no doubt that Toshiba has moved leaps and bounds from where they once stood in the SSD arena and both their client and retail SSDs are living proof of that. The Toshiba HG5D Series Client cSSD is an upper tier SSD and a great product to find in any PC system. Having said that, we are just a bit troubled that performance of this cSSD dropped significantly in two areas, compared to the other two reviewed cSSDs linked in the report, these being low 4K scoring and PCMark Vantage Total Scoring. It just seems a bit odd that we would achieve low 4K random write performance of over 107MB/s in the mSATA and M.2 SSDs, yet not in the 2.5″ cSSD when all of the components are exactly the same. This performance then carried on to Vantage resultys where we saw a Total Score drop of 7000 points.
The unexpected end result of this was that this SSD still displayed amazing performance in throughput at 551MB/s, great IOPS at over 92K, and easily positioned itself as a top tier SSD, just as the other two cSSD’s had done in their evaluations. Combine this with the performance and low pricing that we recently saw in our analysis of the Toshiba Q Series pro and we are certain of one thing; Toshiba means business!
FINAL THOUGHTS
Between Technology X and the SSD Review, we have been fortunate to get our hands on all of the latest Toshiba cSSD form factors, as well as their newest Q Series Pro SSD which earned our Top Value Award. Heck, the Toshiba M.2 SSD has still only been reviewed here and we thank Toshiba for that honor. At the end of the day though, we wanted to put a final grade on the Toshiba cSSD from the perspective of having looked at all three form factors, the M.2, the mSATA and the 2.5″ Toshiba cSSD. With this in mind, we have decided that the Toshiba client family of cSSDs is deserving of our Gold Seal Standard.
