The test system used in this review was an HP 8200 Elite. The computer came equipped with an Intel Core i5-2400 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 1333MHz memory, Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3250312AS 250GB SATA 6 Gb/s hard drive, NVIDIA Quadro FX580 512MB PCIe graphics card and an Intel 82579-LM gigabit network card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 7 Enterprise.
To test the performance of the Toshiba Q Series Pro, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1, HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0, ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46, AS SSD, HD Tune Pro 4.61, Anvil's Storage Utilities and Iometer. For comparison, I've also included test results from the Plextor PX-256M6M, Samsung SSD 840 EVO mSATA, OCZ Vector 150, OCZ Vertex 450, Silicon Power Slim S55, Samsung SSD 840 EVO, Seagate 600 SSD, SanDisk Extreme II, Plextor PX-256M5M, OCZ Vector, Plextor PX-256M5Pro Xtreme, Samsung SSD 840 Pro, Samsung SSD 840, Kingston Ultra Plus, OCZ Vertex 4, OCZ Agility 4 and Kingston HyperX 3K.
As I mentioned earlier, the Q Series Pro is based on Toshiba's TC358790XBG controller chip. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that it performs equally well with both incompressible (0%) and compressible (100%) data.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1:
First, I ran a few quick tests using CrystalDiskMark. This benchmark tool measures the performance of a storage device by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its random read and write speeds using blocks 512K and 4K in size.
 Toshiba Q Series Pro 256GB |
 Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB |
According to Toshiba, the 256GB Q Series Pro is capable of reading at 554 MB/s and writing at 512 MB/s when connected to a SATA 6 Gb/s port. While the drive performed well, it came up a bit short of these numbers in CrystalDiskMark's sequential read and write speed tests.
 Toshiba Q Series Pro 256GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
 Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
The Q Series Pro performed equally well when using highly compressible 0x00 (0 Fill) data. This time around, the drive was able to read at 523.5 MB/s and write at 490.8 MB/s.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the Q Series Pro's read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage.
Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the Q Series Pro had average read and write speeds of 408.5.5 MB/s and 256.8 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 325.0 MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the Q Series Pro's sequential read and write speeds. The tests are run using blocks ranging in size from 0.5KB to 8192KB and the total length set to 256MB.
 Toshiba Q Series Pro 256GB |
 Samsung SSD 840 Pro 256GB |
When tested with ATTO, the Q Series Pro's read speeds topped out at about 554 MB/s and its write speeds at 521 MB/s.
