Toshiba 1TB SSHD (MQ01ABD100H) Review

Introduction

Toshiba over the years has maintained a pure OEM position from a marketing perspective in the HDD market, with many of their drives being included within notebooks, netbooks and many of the external storage devices we review here at TweakTown.

Now that we have all major players in the HDD market onboard with this hybrid drive technology, WD with their OEM only solution, Seagate with many models including the Laptop Thin SSHD we reviewed, and Toshiba with four capacities, it's a safe bet to say each manufacturers sees a certain amount of value in this market segment.

The driving force behind the SSHD value has always been its rather low cost to performance ratio, where the implemented caching algorithm and NAND flash combine to offer SSD-like performance for your daily activities.

Last month, along with the release of both the 320GB and 500GB capacity SSHD's, Toshiba launched the much larger 750GB and 1TB SSHDs in the 9.5mm z-height. These drives share the same features we found with the smaller capacities including Toshiba's own implementation of caching and what they call "Usage Pattern Optimized Self-learning Caching Algorithms".

Today, we will put the 1TB Toshiba SSHD next to comparable products like the Seagate Laptop Thin SSHD in the 500GB capacity and see where the best bang for your buck lies in this emerging market.

Specifications, Pricing and Availability

The larger 9.5mm z-height allows Toshiba the opportunity to offer their SSHD's in both 750GB and 1TB capacities. Each of these drives feature 8GB of NAND flash from Toshiba and 32MB of DRAM cache based on the SATA III specification, while also maintaining backwards compatibility with the older SATA I and II specs as well.

A little further down the specification list, we find that Toshiba has allowed a maximum areal density of 744.1GB per square inch complemented by a 5400RPM spindle speed. The ABDH series of drives both feature a two platter design, offering 12ms average seek times with non-operating shock listed at 900G and operating shock at 400G.

Warranty of the Toshiba ABDH series is listed at three years from date of purchase. Pricing of the 1TB capacity is listed at $199.99.