We tested the device in the second drive slot of an Asus N76VZ, which features a SATA 6G port (max. 6 Gbit/s). In addition, we ran some benchmarks for comparison and power consumption measurements on a desktop system (also via SATA 6G). The performance differences were within measurement inaccuracy.

The reviewed Toshiba HG5d solid state drive features a Marvell N6H89400.6JW controller and 19 nm MLC NAND flash memory from its own production line. The SATA 6G is standard and the specified maximum read performance of 534 MB/s and the maximum write performance of 482 MB/s are typical for this price range.

Sequential data transfer rates

We basically compared the results to the very popular Samsung SSD 840 Pro's. The two devices are very similar in terms of price and performance. The Toshiba HG5d is with 14 vs. 25 MB/s in sequential reading and 24 vs. 35 MB/s in sequential writing slower than the Samsung 840 Pro. However, the difference is small and hardly noticeable in practice.

Data Transfer

The transfer rates differ more significantly. The rather high difference of 140 MB/s in HD Tune might become particularly apparent when moving files between two drives. In this aspect the OCZs Vertex 4 with Indilix Everest 2 controller is about on par.

The device performs significantly better in the ATTO Disk benchmark. Toshiba's HG5d SSD reaches its maximum transfer rate here. With 552 MB/s, it is only marginally slower than the competing model from Samsung, but in writing it is significantly faster with 521 MB/s vs. 468 MB/s.

4k Performance

Toshiba's HG5d cannot win any scenario in random access of 4 KB files. Samsung's SSD 840 Pro is significantly faster in writing. The difference becomes most apparent with 32 or 64 parallel accesses. However, these worst case scenarios are only of minor relevance in practice.

Copy Performance

In the copy benchmark of AS SSD, the Toshiba drive performs better than Samsung's 840 Pro in two scenarios. As the results of the copy benchmarks can vary heavily from run to run, they should be taken with a pinch of salt. As in previous tests, we also recorded the Toshiba HG5d's best results.

Access Time

According to our measurements, the HG5d performs slightly worse than the competition in terms of access time, but this will be hardly noticeably in practice. Compared to conventional hard drives, which usually take 15 to 19 ms, 0.1 ms is excellent. You'll notice this advantage in every day tasks. In, particular files and programs will open faster.