Legit Storage Reviews

Toshiba HG2 43nm 256GB Solid State Drive Review

Manufacturer: Toshiba
Product: THNS256GG8BBAA
Date: Fri, Feb 26, 2010 - 08:00 AM
Written By: Nathan Kirsch -
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Inside The Toshiba HG2 SSD

Since we have never seen what components are being used inside the Toshiba HG2 SSD we opened up our 256GB drive to see what the internals look like.

Toshiba HG2 43nm 256GB SSD

After removing the four Philips head screws that hold down the SSD cover plate we were able to lift it off and see what we have inside. With the cover removed we see a bare PCB, but it looks familiar. One very interesting thing was noticed once we opened up the SSD, and that is the fact that a thermal pad is placed between the metal casing and the components on the PCB. This helps transfer the heat away from the components, which helps keep them cool and the large metal casing acts like a heat spreader. This is something we have only seen on the second generation Kingston SSDNow V+ Series SSDs (SNV325-S2) that we reviewed a month ago to the day. It would appear that Kingston Technology sources the parts for their latest V+ series SSDs from Toshiba, so this drive should be identical.


Toshiba TH58NVG6D1DTG20 MLC NAND Flash

Removing the PCB from the housing and flipping it over we can see Toshiba MLC NAND Flash memory chips, a Toshiba controller and a Micron DRAM IC that serves as a cache chip. The eight double stacked TH58NVG7D7EBAK0 MLC NAND Flash memory chips that are being used on the drive.

This drive with these chips is pretty much bullet proof as it has an operating vibrating tolerance of 2.7G! The non-operating vibration tolerance is 20G, which is amazing when you think about how much force that would be.

Toshiba HG2 43nm SATA SSD Controller

The heart and soul of the drive would be the Toshiba T6UG1XBG SSD controller pictured above. This controller is manufactured on the 43nm process and includes all the latest features like native TRIM support. Sitting next to the controller on the left hand side is a single 128MB Micron 9LA17-D9HSJ DDR DRAM module that is used for cache, which helps improve the drive's performance.

Toshiba says that this configuration on their 43nm HG2 drives have a sequential read speed of up to 230MB/s and up to 180MB/s on the maximum sequential write speed.

Next Page - The Test System


Review Index
Page 1 - Toshiba's 43nm HG2 SSD
Page 2 - Inside The Toshiba HG2 SSD
Page 3 - The Test System
Page 4 - HD Tach v3.0.4.0
Page 5 - HD Tune v4.01
Page 6 - HD Tune v4.01 - Random Access
Page 7 - SiSoftware Sandra 2010
Page 8 - CrystalDiskMark v3.0
Page 9 - ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.41
Page 10 - PCMark Vantage
Page 11 - IOMeter
Page 12 - AS SSD Benchmark
Page 13 - Free Space, Degradation and Conclusion