Today we’re reviewing Toshiba’s budget A100 SSD. The 120GB model we’re testing goes for around £60 on Amazon, putting it a little higher than some competitors from Sandisk, Crucial and Kingston. Does it offer better performance? Let’s find out!
Design
The A100 is a standard 2.5-inch, 7mm thick SSD, suitable for use in desktops or (older) laptops. To hook it up, you’ll need a SATA data cable and a SATA power cable, ideally SATA III.
The A100 adopts Toshiba’s standard branding; a silver chassis with a black and red sticker. This is a basic SSD, so we don’t get any exciting visuals, promises of exceeding high performance, etc. No worries. Let’s get on with testing.
Testing
In order to test the speed of the drive, we ran four synthetic benchmarks with varying payloads: CrystalDiskMark, AS SSD, ATTO and HD Tune Pro. Combined, these should give us a good idea of the drive’s performance compared to others at a similar price.
We’re most interested in how the drive performs against the similarly priced Drevo X1 Pro drive (£48 for 120GB), but comparisons to faster drives are also useful.
To see the test rig’s specifications, check out our component breakdown here!
CrystalDiskMark
CrystalDiskMark has been one of my favourite benchmarks for evaluating storage speeds for a while now, thanks to its varied incompressible workload and extremely readable results. Here’s the 3.0.3 x64 version of the benchmark; all results are in MB/s.
| CDM 3 Read | Seq | 512K | 4K | 4K QD32 |
| Toshiba A100 SSD | 490 | 328 | 33 | 350 |
| Drevo X1 Pro SSD | 342 | 229 | 35 | 278 |
| Toshiba P300 HDD | 150 | 48 | 0.6 | 1.6 |
| Toshiba H200 Hybrid | 115 | 38 | 0.6 | 2.5 |
| Toshiba Canvio Premium | 118 | 43 | 0.5 | 0.6 |
| Samsung T3 | 386 | 351 | 33 | 35 |
| Sandisk Z410 | 508 | 357 | 13 | 146 |
| Samsung 850 Evo M.2 | 502 | 447 | 45 | 368 |
| Samsung 850 Evo | 513 | 472 | 38 | 408 |
| Samsung 840 Evo | 515 | 473 | 35 | 397 |
| Corsair Neutron GTX | 450 | 376 | 27 | 328 |
| CDM 3 Write | Seq | 512K | 4K | 4K QD32 |
| Toshiba A100 SSD | 438 | 406 | 84 | 315 |
| Drevo X1 Pro SSD | 269 | 272 | 88 | 269 |
| Toshiba P300 HDD | 155 | 69 | 0.6 | 1.0 |
| Toshiba H200 Hybrid | 114 | 52 | 22 | 24 |
| Toshiba Canvio Premium | 117 | 50 | 1.3 | 1.3 |
| Samsung T3 | 357 | 352 | 69 | 77 |
| Sandisk Z410 | 407 | 355 | 97 | 250 |
| Samsung 850 Evo M.2 | 474 | 394 | 113 | 316 |
| Samsung 850 Evo | 504 | 479 | 68 | 352 |
| Samsung 840 Evo | 500 | 390 | 86 | 313 |
| Corsair Neutron GTX | 480 | 468 | 69 | 158 |
We get quite strong results from the A100 initially, particularly when it comes to sequential read speeds which hit 490 MB/s. This is nearly as fast as much more expensive SSDs from a few years ago. The drive isn’t quite as competitive for writing lots of smaller files, but still shows good results and offers a noticeable upgrade over a mechanical hard drive or hybrid.
AS SSD
AS SSD is another benchmarking tool quite similar to CrystalDiskMark, which uses predominantly incompressible data across a range of workloads including sequential tests, random performance and access times. First three numbers are MB/s and access time is in ms.
| AS SSD Read | Seq | 4K | 4K QD64 | Acc. Time | Score |
| Toshiba A100 SSD | 489 | 37 | 319 | N/A | 405 |
| Drevo X1 Pro SSD | 325 | 27 | 249 | N/A | 308 |
| Toshiba P300 HDD | 155 | 0.5 | 1.6 | N/A | 18 |
| Toshiba H200 Hybrid | 73 | 1.8 | 15 | 26.3 | 15 |
| Toshiba Canvio Premium | 113 | 0.5 | 0.6 | 23.021 | 12 |
| Samsung T3 | 345 | 24 | 32 | 0.100 | 91 |
| Sandisk Z410 | 501 | 11 | 145 | 0.045 | 206 |
| Samsung 850 Evo M.2 | 493 | 40 | 328 | 0.093 | 417 |
| Samsung 850 Evo | 516 | 34 | 382 | 0.059 | 467 |
| Samsung 840 Evo | 513 | 32 | 330 | 0.059 | 413 |
| Corsair Neutron GTX | 507 | 25 | 334 | 0.068 | N/A |
| AS SSD Write | Seq | 4K | 4K QD64 | Acc. Time | Score |
| Toshiba A100 SSD | 430 | 74 | 288 | 0.209 | 405 |
| Drevo X1 Pro SSD | 258 | 76 | 247 | 0.046 | 349 |
| Toshiba P300 HDD | 114 | 0.5 | 0.6 | 16.7 | 13 |
| Toshiba H200 Hybrid | 46 | 19 | 5 | 18.2 | 39 |
| Toshiba Canvio Premium | 111 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 17.6 | 12 |
| Samsung T3 | 367 | 56 | 71 | 0.055 | 163 |
| Sandisk Z410 | 407 | 78 | 215 | 0.237 | 333 |
| Samsung 850 Evo M.2 | 475 | 95 | 251 | 0.075 | 393 |
| Samsung 850 Evo | 497 | 66 | 299 | 0.051 | 415 |
| Samsung 840 Evo | 497 | 69 | 207 | 0.054 | 326 |
| Corsair Neutron GTX | 473 | 62 | 295 | 0.062 | N/A |
The A100 again impresses, outperforming the X1 Pro SSD in sequential tests. Again, the sequential read is one of the higher scores we’ve seen. There appears to be a bug with reading access times in Windows 10; there is always an error message for that portion of the test and no result is rendered.
ATTO Disk Benchmark
| Atto Read | 1KB | 4KB | 64KB | 256KB | 1MB | 8MB |
| Toshiba A100 SSD | 76 | 286 | 552 | 548 | 561 | 561 |
| Drevo X1 Pro SSD | 71 | 232 | 348 | 347 | 348 | 348 |
| Toshiba P300 HDD | 27 | 85 | 129 | 123 | 135 | 190 |
| Toshiba H200 Hybrid | 9 | 20 | 26 | 26 | 26 | 26 |
| Toshiba Canvio Premium | 9 | 33 | 117 | 117 | 117 | 118 |
| Samsung T3 | 18 | 67 | 329 | 371 | 377 | 404 |
| Sandisk Z410 | 78 | 247 | 518 | 531 | 536 | 533 |
| Samsung 850 Evo M.2 | 83 | 286 | 537 | 553 | 552 | 553 |
| Samsung 850 Evo | 80 | 269 | 538 | 551 | 558 | 558 |
| Samsung 840 Evo | 94 | 280 | 535 | 551 | 555 | 555 |
| Corsair Neutron GTX | 15 | 61 | 336 | 452 | 530 | 540 |
| Atto Write | 1KB | 4KB | 64KB | 256KB | 1MB | 8MB |
| Toshiba A100 SSD | 53 | 231 | 524 | 533 | 534 | 543 |
| Drevo X1 Pro SSD | 68 | 201 | 270 | 270 | 267 | 271 |
| Toshiba P300 HDD | 16 | 74 | 120 | 113 | 123 | 128 |
| Toshiba H200 Hybrid | 3 | 25 | 37 | 55 | 53 | 53 |
| Toshiba Canvio Premium | 10 | 41 | 115 | 115 | 116 | 116 |
| Samsung T3 | 20 | 71 | 315 | 365 | 366 | 388 |
| Sandisk Z410 | 69 | 184 | 419 | 423 | 426 | 428 |
| Samsung 850 Evo M.2 | 79 | 251 | 510 | 526 | 525 | 525 |
| Samsung 850 Evo | 83 | 255 | 519 | 529 | 534 | 534 |
| Samsung 840 Evo | 81 | 260 | 515 | 527 | 533 | 534 |
| Corsair Neutron GTX | 15 | 142 | 474 | 470 | 493 | 498 |
Atto is always an interesting test because it shows the relationship between data set size and read and write speeds in considerable detail. You can see that the A100 performs best for data sizes of 64KB or larger, reaching its maximum speed soon thereafter.
It’s the fastest drive we’ve tested when it comes to reads and writes at the 64GB marker, perhaps due to its more modern 3-bit-per-cell flash memory. Note that read and write speeds are nearly level too, whereas older drives tended to have strong read speeds but weaker write speeds.
HD Tune Pro
We conclude with HD Tune Pro, a benchmark which produces three scores for average read speed, read access time, and burst read rate.
| HD Tune Pro 5.50 Read | Average | Access Time | Burst Rate |
| Toshiba A100 SSD | 330 MB/s | 0.042 ms | 99 MB/s |
| Drevo X1 Pro SSD | 356 MB/s | 0.042 ms | 248 MB/s |
| Toshiba P300 HDD | 126 MB/s | 14.6 ms | 294 MB/s |
| Toshiba H200 Hybrid | 90 MB/s | 16.9 ms | 87 MB/s |
| Toshiba Canvio Premium | 114 MB/s | 17.9 ms | 140 MB/s |
| Samsung T3 | 269 MB/s | 0.090 ms | 171 MB/s |
| Sandisk Z410 | 358 MB/s | 0.035 ms | 140 MB/s |
| Samsung 850 Evo M.2 | 321 MB/s | 0.087 ms | 221 MB/s |
| Samsung 850 Evo | 370 MB/s | 0.044 ms | 250 MB/s |
| Samsung 840 Evo | 358 MB/s | 0.041 ms | 231 MB/s |
| Corsair Neutron GTX | 340 MB/s | 0.059 ms | 231 MB/s |
The HD Tune benchmark shows a relatively low average speed, a fast access time but a worryingly low burst rate. It’s hard to tell whether this is an issue with HD Tune Pro itself (as highlighted here) or whether the drive actually has an issue. Toshiba have reportedly released a firmware update for the drive, so we will re-test to see if the issue is fixed afterwards.
Wrapping up
The Toshiba A100 shows better performance than many older drives, even those which were once flagship material. If you want to experience faster boot times and minimise app load times, then it’s well worth upgrading. Write performance has also improved significantly, and the A100 seems well priced for its performance at around £60. You can see the latest prices on Amazon linked below.
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