Toshiba launches M.2 1TB SSD - Don't buy these!

[TrigrH]

Source:

http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2016/02/17/1tb_pc_ssd_from_toshiba/?mt=1455715846791

Quote

The new drives are intended for commercial notebook and desktop PCs, consumer upgrades and higher end notebooks, with Toshiba betting on flash drives replacing disk drives. The capacity points include 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB, and 1TB. All the drives use a 6Gbit/s SATA interface.

They read at up to 545MB/sec (520MiB/s) and write at up to 388MB/sec (370Mib/s). IOPS figures have not been provided and neither have any endurance numbers.

- SATA interface

- Write at up to 388MB/sec

- Planar 15nm TLC flash

- No endurance numbers provided (I wonder why)

 

These drives will not last, the write endurance of planar TLC flash is too low, even Samsung had issues with the 840 EVO series providing multiple firmware updates to circumvent performance degradation.

 

However:

Quote

The product features Quadruple Swing-By Code (QSBC) error-correction technology but we’re not told how much this improves things..

These drives will probably be rather cheap, you get what you pay for with this one.

 

EDIT: lets keep Toshiba's hard drive reliability ect off the thread, its not really relevant to SSDs

[tomoki]

I've hated Toshiba drives since my very first laptop had one and that was the first thing that died on me. That's why whenever someone recommends a Toshiba drive to them, I GIVE THEM THE LOOK. 

[barkloaf]

I love M.2, I use it myself. I hope to see 1TB becoming more useable and better. I can see Toshiba isn't doing a good job of that.

 

Or any storage device for that matter

 

 

[Sors]

1 minute ago, tomoki said:

I've hated Toshiba drives since my very first laptop had one and that was the first thing that died on me. That's why whenever someone recommends a Toshiba drive to them, I GIVE THEM THE LOOK. 

 

I have had nothing but Toshiba drives in all of my laptops, and none has ever fail.  The older laptop is like 8 years old, and still kicking without issues.

[Roawoao]

Another thing that has me worried about TLC is not just write endurance but with the read degradation Samsung had problems with it also means retention time may be absymal and get worse with age. I'm wondering if a TLC drive can actually store data for say 3 years with no power and still not be corrupt after that. 

 

Many USB drives probably slap TLC memory in due to the lower cost but I wonder if the rule of 10 years for flash memory offline retention is still true for things like worn TLC memory. Definitely don't go sticking a USB key or SD card into a time capsule.

[PlayStation 2]

3 minutes ago, tomoki said:

I've hated Toshiba drives since my very first laptop had one and that was the first thing that died on me. That's why whenever someone recommends a Toshiba drive to them, I GIVE THEM THE LOOK. 

Funny thing is, I've had nothing but good experiences with Fujitsu/Toshiba hard drives.

[Virtual01]

Toshiba is pretty much infamous for selling products with defective drives. I'm not hopeful for it, guessing it will be mediocre at best.

[vanished]

As soon as I saw these I was suspicious since what they were announcing didn't sound like a real breakthrough in any way, and now I see there is even more to it

[AresKrieger]

I never buy brand new products due to my mistrust of quality, and though I have a Toshiba HDD it was vetted before hand, and the dirve model seems to hold up if you don't get a DOA one.

 

Regardless solid state drives are not something I would consider them for, and due to early SSDs being so bad I stayed away until the 850 evo arrived on the scene, so trusting this thing was never going to happen in my mind, Toshiba seems to be unfocused in their current ventures in my view

[tomoki]

3 minutes ago, Sors said:

 

I have had nothing but Toshiba drives in all of my laptops, and none has ever fail.  The older laptop is like 8 years old, and still kicking without issues.

 

3 minutes ago, Dan Castellaneta said:

Funny thing is, I've had nothing but good experiences with Fujitsu/Toshiba hard drives.

Okay either you guys are lucky or I'm lucky for getting bad drives. 

I'm starting to dislike Seagate and Western Digital. Perhaps losing all mechanical drives is the way to go for me. 

 

EDIT: Funny thing is, my very first laptop rarely moved from it's spot. The mechanical drive failed by itself rather than me moving it around, dropping it or moving it before the disk has completely stopped. 

[PlayStation 2]

Just now, tomoki said:

 

Okay either you guys are lucky or I'm lucky for getting bad drives. 

I'm starting to dislike Seagate and Western Digital. Perhaps losing all mechanical drives is the way to go for me. 

ripe

I've had good experiences with the Western Digital and Seagate drives I had.

[tomoki]

Just now, Dan Castellaneta said:

ripe

I've had good experiences with the Western Digital and Seagate drives I had.

dammit it's probably just me. My Seagate 1TB 7200rpm drive I bought 3 years ago, gave me bluescreens from time to time even after wiping the drive and reinstalling OS multiple times. I recently swapped it out for a Samsung 850 PRO and haven't had any issues since. 

 

With Western Digital, I've pulled them out from laptops that have died... well at least out of Toshiba, Seagate and Western Digital, next time I need a mechanical, I'll try Western Digital. 

[TrigrH]

4 minutes ago, Roawoao said:

Another thing that has me worried about TLC is not just write endurance but with the read degradation Samsung had problems with it also means retention time may be absymal and get worse with age. I'm wondering if a TLC drive can actually store data for say 3 years with no power and still not be corrupt after that. 

 

Many USB drives probably slap TLC memory in due to the lower cost but I wonder if the rule of 10 years for flash memory offline retention is still true for things like worn TLC memory. Definitely don't go sticking a USB key or SD card into a time capsule.

another thing that impacts write endurance is the lithography so 15nm TLC is even worse than 19nm TLC

[AresKrieger]

Just now, tomoki said:

 

Okay either you guys are lucky or I'm lucky for getting bad drives. 

I'm starting to dislike Seagate and Western Digital. Perhaps losing all mechanical drives is the way to go for me. 

Some of their models are bad, you have to look in depth to how well the drives hold up, it's really hit or miss with toshiba same goes for segate, WD seems fine for everything but green based on forum opinions, and blacks are not worth the price hike since they are about = to blues, with reds being great quality by all accounts.

[Roawoao]

2 minutes ago, TrigrH said:

another thing that impacts write endurance is the lithography so 15nm TLC is even worse than 19nm TLC

Probably another reason why everyone is switching to 3d NAND and in the same time usually went back a planer node or two to gain back some of that reliability loss. Even with 3d NAND there are definitely going to be limits to how many layers you can practically manufacture without side effects popping up.

[TrigrH]

2 minutes ago, Roawoao said:

Probably another reason why everyone is switching to 3d NAND and in the same time usually went back a planer node or two to gain back some of that reliability loss. Even with 3d NAND there are definitely going to be limits to how many layers you can practically manufacture without side effects popping up.

yup thats why the 850EVO even with TLC can outlast some planar MLC drives

[Roawoao]

6 minutes ago, TrigrH said:

yup thats why the 850EVO even with TLC can outlast some planar MLC drives

I remember there was that techreport ssd endurance experiment where they tested cycle life someone should do a extremely passive experiment and get a whole pile of SSDs and just load them up with hashed files and check on them every year or so to test TLC drive retention time. (They would have to act fast every time to prevent the drive from being able to refresh everything when it was powered on and only test a portion of the drive)

[zacRupnow]

My 840 EVO is a 500Gb Brick that Samsung doesn't accept support contact, so much for their warranty.

[Roawoao]

13 minutes ago, zacRupnow said:

My 840 EVO is a 500Gb Brick that Samsung doesn't accept support contact, so much for their warranty.

I've had a 840 pro instantly brick on a power loss. Did you contact their US support they are the only ones that deal with SSD returns in north america. It took a few weeks for them to respond it was quite a poor service experience.

[zacRupnow]

2 hours ago, Roawoao said:

I've had a 840 pro instantly brick on a power loss. Did you contact their US support they are the only ones that deal with SSD returns in north america. It took a few weeks for them to respond it was quite a poor service experience.

I went to the warranty claim site provided in the SSDs box and also tried just using their standard support section of their main website. Their support sites require you to select product info before they give you contact information. Product Type>Storage>Desktop>SSD>ProductID>Problem. When I select the 840 EVO 500Gb the next step is not select-able so I can't get the contact info, email or phone. When I select a different SSD and use the contact info they turn me away when I say what product it is and say to select that...

I have a 128Gb and 256Gb 850 Pro neither of them have any problems.

[mikat]

4 hours ago, Sors said:

 

I have had nothing but Toshiba drives in all of my laptops, and none has ever fail.  The older laptop is like 8 years old, and still kicking without issues.

ssd or hard drive?

ssd toshiba = not good

hdd toshiba = good

[LukeTim]

Quadruple Swing-By Code?

If they're going to use ECC why use some nonsense Trademarked term and not a proven coding scheme like LDPC or something?

[Doobeedoo]

Would like to see SLC M.2 NVMe drive. That would be great for boot drive and constant usage.

[demonix00]

So, Toshiba is betting on SSD's taking over from mechanical hard drives as the storage medium of choice, but when they decide to bring out a range of M.2 SSDs they back the wrong horse in the interface stakes and go for the bottleneck that is SATA III instead of PCIe.

 

The words epic and fail spring to mind, and toshiba will most likely have turds (pun intended) on their faces when this all backfires and they don't sell that many or none at all.

 

It's safe to say that I won't be getting one when (and if) they come out since if I'm going to be building a PC that has a motherboard with an M.2 slot, I'll be getting an M.2 SSD that uses the PCIe standard.

[Sakkura]

1 hour ago, demonix00 said:

So, Toshiba is betting on SSD's taking over from mechanical hard drives as the storage medium of choice, but when they decide to bring out a range of M.2 SSDs they back the wrong horse in the interface stakes and go for the bottleneck that is SATA III instead of PCIe.

 

The words epic and fail spring to mind, and toshiba will most likely have turds (pun intended) on their faces when this all backfires and they don't sell that many or none at all.

 

It's safe to say that I won't be getting one when (and if) they come out since if I'm going to be building a PC that has a motherboard with an M.2 slot, I'll be getting an M.2 SSD that uses the PCIe standard.

Your post is as ridiculous as the OP. Toshiba did the right thing here, this is "meant to" be a slow SSD - with the TLC NAND, the drive isn't even rated for 400 MB/s sequential write, so SATA isn't a serious bottleneck. Going PCIe would just add cost, making it a worse buy.