OCZ intros Vertex line of 2.5-inch SATA II SSDs

What's this? A solid state drive family with prices not hidden deep within telephone menu trees? Yep, OCZ Technology is so sure you'll be unable to resist the speed and agility packed within its Vertex series that it has proudly produced MSRPs to go along with 'em. The 2.5-inch SATA II crew is MLC NAND-based and includes up to 64MB of onboard cache, 200MB/sec read speeds, 160MB/sec write speeds and a 1.5 million hour mean time before failure (MTBF). If your current machine could use a little bit of this, you can pick up a 30GB, 60GB, 120GB or 250GB edition right now for $129, $249, $469, and $869, respectively.

[CVMagic @ Dec 11th 2008 7:15AM]

It makes you wonder if the increased cache of 64MB has reduced the write performance issues that plague most MLC SSDs (with exclusion to Intel's SSD which has an internal File system with controller designed to handle random writes more effectively).

[lpppppl @ Dec 11th 2008 7:37AM]

how smart it writes is independent on how much cache it has


unfortunately

[CVMagic @ Dec 11th 2008 8:14AM]

Yes, you're correct on that at this point if the cache were to be used exclusively for writes only writing would be at most burstable up to a 64mb chunk, after which then it bottlenecks completely to the devices maximum write speed on continuous data stream and pull your hair out slow in situations of random writes.

If SATA were to have support direct memory access to attached devices, one would figure at that point that operating systems can take advantage of SSDs and start writing in a very intelligent way or at the very least have a FS that is completely journalized with a moving tree. Similar to how MTD devices are handled in Linux.

[Kris120890 @ Dec 11th 2008 7:22AM]

Still Not low enough. When the 80GB is around $100 I will think about it.

[Brandon @ Dec 11th 2008 7:46AM]

No kidding, the $469 price tag for 120gb is not low enough to put up with the more-than-likely necessity for RMA on another OCZ product.

[mark balcerak @ Dec 11th 2008 7:47AM]

I'm with you on that, I'm all about storage so the minor speed benefit and durability isn't worth the money.

[tom @ Dec 11th 2008 8:33AM]

I think the price of SSD has gone down quite a bit. Much cheaper than what it was 6months ago.

[Vidikron @ Dec 11th 2008 10:48AM]

Sure, the price has gone down, but at this point drives less than 1TB are nearly worthless to me. I'd love to have the performance these drives offer, but I need the storage. So I'll keep on eye of these, but until I can get a drive in the neighborhood of 1TB for less than $200 I'll be spending my money elsewhere.

[RoboDan @ Dec 11th 2008 7:50AM]

Me want engulf SSD

[Gubatron @ Dec 11th 2008 7:53AM]

Can't wait for those but at $150 for 1.5Tb, one day.

[Labrador @ Dec 11th 2008 8:13AM]

Yeah, I can't afford it either.

[pball_inuyaha @ Dec 11th 2008 8:19AM]

Don't know if I just haven't seen the read/write speeds on SSDs lately but that seems quite good. I'd like to see some numbers on read/write speed for your average sata II HDD, I know sata II is 3 Gbit/s but they don't use that whole bandwidth do they?

[JeffM @ Dec 11th 2008 11:18AM]

As far as raw data is concerned, not even close. Some 500GB Seagate SATA-II drives I have run at around .4Gb/s or around 50MB/s according to HDD benchmarking software

[sam @ Dec 11th 2008 8:36AM]

That's a coincidence, I was just thinking last night, wouldn't it be nice if my Mac Mini's HD was silent. (The fan probably makes more noise, but still.) This would be a nice upgrade if it didn't cost (at least) $249, and that with a slight capacity reduction. :) Maybe next year...

(Or maybe sometime Apple will make a fanless, SSD mini with no moving parts except the Blu-ray drive? Yeah, I can dream...)

[ricosuave @ Dec 11th 2008 11:06AM]

I was looking into the same thing. I can't stand fan noise. I read somewhere in the series of tubes someone running tiger on an apple tv.

I have one and it is silent. It is perfect.

[Arran @ Dec 11th 2008 8:37AM]

Everyone seems very negative. These have gone down in price by more than half in less than a year. Very exciting.

[tiuk @ Dec 13th 2008 1:35PM]

Absolutely. These are finally getting to a place where I'd be willing to buy one soon.

[D @ Dec 11th 2008 8:58AM]

MTBF = mean time *between* failures

Not that there is any solid data on failure rates of SSD's. It'll be a while before they penetrate the 'serious' server market.

[Roadrunner @ Dec 11th 2008 9:06AM]

I am with Arran on this. Everyone seems to be pretty negative about this, but I am quite excited. Personally, I would never spend that much for a hard drive either, so I understand where some of your are coming from. However, the fact that the storage capacity has greatly increased and the price has been greatly reduced in just the last year is great news. I can not wait for these to become even more practical in the near future.

[Tom @ Dec 11th 2008 10:05AM]

You would be negative too if you tried one of OCZ's Core SSDs. What a trainwreck. They better do something beyond just throwing some more cache on there. Do yourself a favor and check their support forum at least a few weeks after release before you buy one of these things.

[Roadrunner @ Dec 11th 2008 10:32AM]

You are right, I have no hands on experience with OCZ's SSD. I appreciate your advice too, and I will steer clear of them until I read more about them. I just find the fact that SSDs in general are becoming larger and cheaper.

[ran @ Dec 11th 2008 10:49AM]

Somehow I think there are just rebadged Intel drives like the old OCZ ones where rebadged Samsung drives.

[Akshat @ Dec 11th 2008 11:03AM]

Very logical, considering Intel sells 80GB SSDs at about $550-$600, while the 120GB OCZ has a retail price of $469.
Not to mention that currently Intel only makes 80GB consumer grade drives, with the 160GB out early next year.

[RobE @ Dec 11th 2008 10:49AM]

I've setup a 120GB OCZ v2 SDD (off ebay) in my Mac mini and it flies. The SSD has made a huge difference and I've not noticed any of the problems that others have mentioned.

These look faster and cheaper so it's all good.

[sonicwind @ Dec 11th 2008 11:30AM]

Alright, I'm ready to buy. Where can I get one of these?

[Joe Dombrowski @ Dec 11th 2008 11:53AM]

The important question: What controller will they be using? The older Core series used a cheap jMicron controller that was woefully incompatable with a wide array of chipsets including the nVidia 650i and 780i. Stuttering and freezing made the drive completely unusable as a boot drive unless you got lucky with your chipset. I threw it in my laptop (Dell Inspiron 6400), and it works like a charm, but I was looking forward to fast boots and quiet operation in my gaming PC...

I think I'll hold off until there are a LOT of reviews out.

[Joe Dombrowski @ Dec 11th 2008 11:54AM]

I should add: this isn't a rant on OCZ, just their low price SSDs. I use their RAM in all 4 of my computers, and am buying PSUs to match. Generally their quality and performance is top notch, but they just can't seem to make a good SSD yet.

[ArtemisGoldfish @ Dec 11th 2008 12:59PM]

I'm thinking that the 30GB model, with it's read/write performance, would be well-suited to housing just your OS and Page file, while keeping your files on a disk-based solution. Just thinking out loud here.

[Alistair @ Dec 11th 2008 2:33PM]

Actually, I was thinking that 2 or more 30Gb drives in RAID 0 would be perfect as an OS/apps drive. Assuming that they scale reasonable well (I'd have to see a test before taking the plunge), the read/write speeds could be astonishing and would combine with the ultra low latency for very high system performance. A couple of fast terabyte hard drives in RAID 1 would then be used for data and backup of the boot drive. You could have it all for $500 or so. Holy crap!

[Maneki Neko @ Dec 11th 2008 4:06PM]

Page file should definitely stay on your data hard drive and not on the flash drive. You don't want to wear our your SSD, and traditionally (though the numbers here on paper look high, but given OCZ's track record...) writes are the weakness of SSDs.

[bob dobbes @ Dec 14th 2008 3:36PM]

My thoughts exactly. Right now I use a small, fast Raptor drive for my OS and program files, and a larger, slower drive for media and other stuff.

The 30gb would be fine for OS and program files.

[BigJim @ Dec 11th 2008 1:45PM]

I have put an OCZ SSD 128Gb SATA II (previous generation) drive in my MacBook Pro and it ROCKS! First no heat on the left side of the MBP. Second, load times are blazing FAST, OSX load in less than 20 sec. and third application launch is almost instantaneous... So it's well worth the money if it's your everyday machine. For media storage use a regulard 1TB HDD but for cheer working speed (OSX/Apps/some docs) the SSD is way to go !

[balls @ Dec 11th 2008 2:09PM]

When they double in size, and decrease in price by half, I'm in for two.

RAID-0 for games and OS.

[Ian @ Dec 11th 2008 5:38PM]

Considering OCZs previous speed claims /wrt to their SSDs were totally bogus I seriously doubt their claims here. Read the reviews at newegg, nobody gets the speeds OCZ claims. I run a 32GB "core" SSD as the boot disc in my HTPC, and while adequate for the task it is not as performant as OCZ claimed. Not even close.

[nikster @ Dec 11th 2008 8:18PM]

120GB for under $500, I am sold.

I guess I don't need my entire pr0n collection with me on my laptop at all times. Sigh.

[The DNE Group @ Dec 11th 2008 11:41PM]

Personally I think that the price point that makes these commercially viable will be the 120/128GB size for under $200. Above that, and even with the lower reliability, higher energy cost, and higher failure rate, it still makes better economic sense to stick with RAIDed SCSI, SATA, or SAS drives for pretty much all applications. It's only in notebooks and subnotebooks where these really make sense currently (and MP3 players, but the cost is still too high).

You have to think about the sort of use these drives are best suited to. If you're thinking about mass-storage in your PC, and you're reluctant to buy these as opposed to a 1TB spinning-disk drive, a regular hard drive is the way to go. These SSDs (in general) are best suited to low-write situations (such as a system/software disk (but with swap file on a separate spinning disk)), and situations where data is written then stored indefinitely, read frequently but rarely erased or changed, such as some database server applications. In the long run, they are potentially a replacement for the high-performance, high-cost, low-capacity SCSI drives used in higher-end servers and HPC systems--they're not a replacement for cheap, mass-storage devices like regular SATA2 hard drives.

[laobaixing0 @ Dec 14th 2008 9:22AM]

The discussion about price / performance is rather misguided.

Kind of like a Porsche buyer complaining about the cost per cubit foot of carrying capacity vs. a tractor trailer combo.

Almost every technology product that have come along initially cost far more than the incumbent, and did not necessarily perform better.

With SSDs, they have a performance envelope that require careful tweaking of legacy OS like Vista, XP, and apps in order to really perform well.

When properly tweaked, they perform quite well, and in specs like IOPS per $, which most HDD users that simply want cheap capacity have never heard of, mid priced SSDs runs circles around most HDDs.

OCZ's forum is a good place to review the arguments pro and con for SSDs.

[mike @ Dec 26th 2008 5:07PM]

you guys are too impatient... the guy writing about LCDs was right. I remember paying $500 for my 15" Samsung LCDs (Samsung being the only manufacturer worth buying from back them because they had far fewer dead pixels and much better quality screens than the others)... and $1000 for my Samsung 191T 19" LCD.... well worth the money back then since I work on my computer and was far better than CRTs. Point is, this was only back in 2001 or 2002... a few years back only.

With OCZ Vertex and similar SSDs, SSDs have already achieved desirable speeds at affordable prices. Sure you need to have a job to afford them, but they are not astronomically priced anymore for decent enough (120GB storage).

Just imagine what the landscape will be like in another year or 2... 2009 should be a great year for this business, 2010 even better.

Luckily for the people that "will never buy this SSD at these prices", I don't think OCZ is trying to sell them to you. And you already have respectable enough affordable choices... namely 72000 RPM notebook drives. But if you really want an SSD, have a little patience, wait a year or 2 or 3 until SSDs come to your price range.

I just hope none of the guys complaining about the high price of these (now affordable) SSDs, are the same rich kids who spend a couple thousand dollars on their gaming rigs...