Introduction

Toshiba is a world-renowned company. Active in many fields, it also produces flash memory, so Toshiba does, just like Micron and Samsung, use their own NAND flash inside their SSDs.

Today, we have on our test bench the Toshiba THNSNH256GCST 256 GB. I find it a bit surprising that Toshiba doesn't use an easier naming scheme, but this is a telltale sign that the company is more focused on OEM customers, like Lenovo and system integrators, rather than the end-user. You can also bet that Toshiba uses these SSDs in their own extensive notebook lineup.

Dissecting the part number, we start with "THNSNH", which is the drive "model", followed by the capacity and "GCST", which indicates that this is a 2.5 inch, 7 mm thick drive (compatible with Intel Ultrabooks). Other suffixes are "GBST" for 9 mm thickness and "GMCT" for mSATA form-factor. Earlier Toshiba models used the THNSNF and THNSNC prefixes--note the difference in the last letter. Some EU shops also list these drives as of the Toshiba "HG5d" Series, which is pretty confusing if you ask me.

Toshiba THNSNHxxxGCST SSDs are some of the first drives to use 19 nanometer MLC NAND flash technology to provide better energy efficiency than older chips. Originally based on Marvel silicon controller, the Toshiba TC58NC5HA9GST is used with this SSD. Unlike traditional Marvell controllers, it does not require external DRAM cache, which helps with cost optimization.