OCZ Colossus refreshed as 'enthusiast' 1TB SSD, not worthy of enthusiasm
By Sean Hollister 
posted April 15th 2010 5:53AM
posted April 15th 2010 5:53AM
The formula for last year's OCZ Colossus 1TB solid state drive was simple: Two. Two of the company's 2.5-inch solid state drives in one 3.5-inch desktop package, with two Indilinx controllers reading and writing from two-bit MLC memory at up to 260MB / sec, over a thoroughly saturated SATA II connection. To improve the drive, the company would likely have had to upgrade to SATA 6G, support TRIM and possibly choose new controllers to boot. That's not what happened. The new OCZ Colossus LT is the exact same drive as its predecessor down to the read / write speeds, but with slightly cheaper 34nm flash memory. If the drive were substantially cheaper as a result, that might be enough, but pricing around the web shows that Colossus' price tags remain intact. You'll pay almost exactly the same -- about $1600 for 500GB, or $4000 for 1TB -- for this hefty SSD.
ROFL am I wrong when I think i could do that myself? RAID u know O.o
@Kaboof
Actually wouldn't RAID be faster? They crammed 2 drives and controllers on one SATA channel.
i supposed it runs uh cooler.
to the companies: quit making the ssd's bigger and focus on making an affordable fast ssd with reasonable space
@mrqs u mean "make it better and cheaper"? WOW that's a really brilliant statement... o.O
@Kaboof
i mean they are focusing much of their limited resources on improving the thing that doesn't need improvement (capacity) instead of the thing that does (cost)
@mrqs depends on how you see it... This is a really expensive big SSD so u say "MAKE IT CHEAPER NOT BIGGER", but take the 32GB-sub-100$ SSDs which are cheap, and u complain that they need to make them BIGGER! :/
@Kaboof
no, for those i'll complain that they need to make them faster and implement trim support (for the ones that don't)
what i'd want is a good speedy ssd to put windows and some software on (for which 32 gigs would be ideal) - other stuff don't need the speed, so might as well use magnetic drives for any mass storage
i'll stop complaining when i can get a 30-40 gig (or thereabouts) trim supported ssd that can saturate sata 3gig for well under 200€
@mrqs i think TRIM support in RAID is the most important thing. Then u should be able to set up x2 30GB sub-100$ SSDs (like OCZ Vertex) and get >200mpbs for less than 200$. But without TRIM... sucks imo...
@mrqs
Completely agree with you! I'd love to get an affordable 150 Gb SSD for my OS and apps. I'm ok with mechanical 1 Tb drive for data storage...
This makes the new macbooks sound reasonably priced.
Two SSDs RAIDed together, but only a SATA 3Gbps controller? Autofail.
@r3loaded
Why? If its the same speeds that means that it's still going slower than the maximum. It would only be a fail if they made the memory faster but kept the 3gb/s controller.
As the title suggests - I am so not enthused.
I don't think the SSD manufacturers are trying very hard to lower prices. They are still in the mindset that SSD= Premium. The prices need to start coming down quickly. The cost is not directly proportional to the old school spinning drives. We should be getting 256 GB SSDs under $250-$300 by now. This should be such a luxury still.
@Scubasteve03,
Flash memory is still to expensive to make cheaper SSD's. The next shrink to 25nm end of this year should bring the price down again by about 1/3. At least for Intel and Crucial (Micron) they share the NAND Flash memory production. Other companies that use Samsung or Toshiba memory will have to wait even longer for their 20nm process to hit the market.
Yet another post where the device's price is criticized as Chinese workers are used as slave labor to keep prices low.
@Zatx I doubt there is any manual labor involved to assemble this drives.
@SSD Of course there's! Someone's gotta punch those millions of P-N holes! :D
wouldn't it just be cheaper to buy 2 500GB ones?
@whatpoint77
It would actually be cheaper to buy 7 Intel X-25 Mainstream 160GB drives and RAID them together, and it would be faster too.