craig5320

OCZ Vertex 120GB SSD Review
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OCZ have targeted the SSD market in a more aggressive manner than any other manufacturer in the last 12 months, they also halved the retail prices with the release of the Core series, followed by the release of the Core V2 series which utilized a second revision JMicron controller a month later.

After Intel released expensive faster drives, OCZ developed the Apex series drives which utilized two JMicron controllers paired together via a integrated RAID chip and offered them at much lower retail prices. But as enthusiasts began feeling uneasy about buying drives utilizing JMicron chips and Intel made bold price drops, OCZ felt that a new high performance SSD was necessary.

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comp_ali

Nice review ,btw why didn't you use charts in this review , it is way easier to follow than just numeric values.

swimtech

Thanks Grace - really enjoyed that review!

For me, that is the most interesting SSD review yet. The comparison with both laptop and desktop hard drives, and the recently reviewed Apex series, throughout the review process was very thoughtful. Those comparisons give a great perspective to many who are likely running those exact drives, or drives very close in performance, in their computers right now.

I would think also, that when these become truly mass market, a lot of energy will be saved worldwide relative to standard desktop drives that consume 10 watts or so (2 watts for these - half a nightlight!), and much less waste/energy consumption/pollution in the manufacturing process.

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It's not so much getting your way that matters or not - what matters is how you go about getting it.

Stop It

Very nice review there, great to see the comparison between the 2 generations of OCZ SSDs too.

Anyway, while SSD is clearly the future, especially for Laptops thanks to its lower power use, I still am waiting for prices to come to a more mainstream level, £289 for a 120GB storage device is still too much, but it's getting there.

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mkk

It's especially interesting to see such a broad range of tests when SSD's are compared to regular drives.

Is is possible to estimate a arough average valoe for the write speed degradation effect? It shouldn't take long for the degraded level to become the norm for typical use.

Asmoday

A great review of a seemingly very fast product, it's a shame that they are quite expensive still..

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Lowfat

Once ever cell on the drive has been written to once, degradation will occur. It is estimated that on average 10 - 20GB of data is written to an OS drive daily. So expect the drive to degrade within a few weeks on a 120GB.

The TRIM tool available is pretty good for most parts. And hopefully the next firmware update (2-3 days away hopefully) will bring native TRIM support w/ Windows 7. Which means the cells are cleared immediately when erased. So no degradation ever.

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1: i7 920 * E760 Classified * 6GB DDR3 * 9800GX2 * 8800GTS * ioXtreme * X25-M * Enermax 1050W Revo85+ * CM Stacker 832 * 2 x HDDVD + 1 BD
2: i7 920 * X58A-UD7 * 6GB DDR3 @ 687MHz * 9800GX2 * 8800GS * Antec 1000W * Silverstone FT01BW
3: Q8200 @ 3.2GHz * P5Q Pro* 4GB @ 914MHz * 9500GT * Auzen Prelude * 30GB Vertex * 11.5TB * Seasonic 420 M12-II * Silverstone LC17B * HDDVD/BD

macbiter

unfortunately once again windows plays catchup to OSX. In the last 10.5.7 update there were algorithms applied to stop all of these issues. snow leopard is meant to be killer with SSDs when its released.

Lowfat

where do you get this info?

About the Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update

Nothing in regards to SSD's. Nor does Leopard support TRIM and I have my doubts if Snow Leopard will either.

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1: i7 920 * E760 Classified * 6GB DDR3 * 9800GX2 * 8800GTS * ioXtreme * X25-M * Enermax 1050W Revo85+ * CM Stacker 832 * 2 x HDDVD + 1 BD
2: i7 920 * X58A-UD7 * 6GB DDR3 @ 687MHz * 9800GX2 * 8800GS * Antec 1000W * Silverstone FT01BW
3: Q8200 @ 3.2GHz * P5Q Pro* 4GB @ 914MHz * 9500GT * Auzen Prelude * 30GB Vertex * 11.5TB * Seasonic 420 M12-II * Silverstone LC17B * HDDVD/BD

Mac Daddy

Excellent review Grace and a nice looking product

There is only one thing I don't understand in the writeup though although I do agree it's placement and application is useless.

How much current does a surface mounted LED draw?

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"My mom said the only reason men are alive is for lawn care and vehicle maintenance." - Tim Allen

Zardon

I think what he means is that a system similar to trim is built into OSX by default. I don't think its identical to the OCZ application but from the tests ive read OSX is more efficient with SSD's (a silent update they made actually at the time they started offering the Macbook Air with SSD drives). I have ran tests on an intel SSD in both operating systems and after a day of use with the same amount of data being written to and from the unit, the drive is marginally faster on OSX. It is rather difficult to keep a similar test procedure across the operating systems however as Vista pages a lot more to and from a drive.

Zardon

The issue is with such huge scale variances in some of these tests some of the graph bars would be visually non existant in relation to those massively higher up the scale. Sometimes simple text is easier to follow with such complex results.

swimtech

Ok, I'll bite - quick nibble...
Little blue ones I looked up briefly at Digikey (smd led), a large component supplier, that measure 1.2 x 0.8 mm draw 5ma worth of current at a minimum and up to 20ma typically. Some others draw as little as 1 or 2 ma - but not blue ones (470nm wavelength). These figures are using a forward bias voltage of 2.9 volts. So, let's see, that's .0145 watts up to .058 watts - but the exact part number of the diode would be needed to reference the specifications.

That's actually a rather small fraction of the 1.8 to 2.0 watt draw of the SSD - and could be useful as an activity or power indicator if allowed to be seen during use - and if designed in the circuit that way of course. May be used in forthcoming external Esata w/power configuration?

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It's not so much getting your way that matters or not - what matters is how you go about getting it.

Mac Daddy

Thanks for the reply Swimtech and I felt it was negligible towards the total power consumption of the drive as well.

I was looking more at the possible reason for it being there as I am sure Grace was. I am thinking perhaps because this is SSD and not mechanical maybe for diagnostics? That would include initial firmware and low level formatting .. just a thought

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"My mom said the only reason men are alive is for lawn care and vehicle maintenance." - Tim Allen

Godsfist

What We Did Not Like
"OCZ offers a BETA application called "TRIM", which is very simple to use and will reset all of the blocks of your Vertex drive, but doing so manually every once a while would annoy most users."

This is a ludicrous statement, I've got the 60GB Vertex and I use the trim tool once a week and it takes 10 to 15 seconds to run

If I compare that to my Velociraptor I'd have to defrag a couple of times a week and it could take up to 5 minutes per run

Grace

Sorry for the late reply folks, I just can't check the forums too often lately...

The particular LED needs about 0.065W (if I'm not mistaken), not much compared to the overall power consumption of the drive. But taking into consideration the power this drive needs, that's about 10% of its total power requirements while the drive is idling (it draws 0.16A from the 5V line while not in use, I've measured it). It just wastes power. Only very little power, but power nonetheless.

I'm not even sure if they are using it for diagnostics, it just lights up when the drive gets power and stays on all of the time.


Godsfist, I do agree that TRIM only takes half a minute to run, but you still have to do that manually. And most people dislike doing manually anything that can be easily done automatically and in the background.



Thanks everyone.

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Mac Daddy

Thanks for the reply Grace and if it does absolutely nothing not even for diagnostics it is wasted power. If it flashed for firmware updates or indicated error codes by a number of flashes then it might have a purpose.

Thanks again for the great writeup Grace

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"My mom said the only reason men are alive is for lawn care and vehicle maintenance." - Tim Allen

Godsfist

I just stuck it in startup and it runs automatically

Grace

Clever you. But you still had to do that manually.

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Godsfist

Well I guess all these delicate souls you are referring to would probably baulk at buying a computer in the first place anyway.. you know having to start it manually with that pesky start button every morning

Zardon

guys seriously lets stop the bickering. you joined up to make a point godsfist, you made it, move along.

Altermatik83

I know it's been a while but I found this if it's any good?

"Samsung controllers with recent firmware take an entirely different approach. Without any interaction from the OS, the Samsung firmware is able to 'read' the drive data in the background. When the drive has been idle for a period of time, the firmware reads any NTFS volume bitmaps present and automatically frees up flash blocks not allocated by that partition. The end result is similar to using the Indilinx tool, but Samsung has the advantage in that it does not suffer from controller / driver incompatibilities and other OS-related issues. If a Samsung drive with auto-trim firmware contains an NTFS partition and is idle, it will automatically auto-trim itself in the background. Simple."

PC Perspective - Using TRIM features on SSDs before or without Windows 7

Altermatik83

Also..

I have compiled a build list for which I'm aiming to start harvesting by next march, I was thinking about starting a new thread to show this list and maybe get some feedback as there are a few bit's I am unsure of, ie "SSDrives". However, I didn't know where to post the thread or if I should just place it anywhere... thanks and sorry!

Godsfist

I joined up to make a point? Perhaps you should move on, your career as a mind reader appears to be faltering.