By GG-Kaboom 1 year, 6 months ago • 0 Comments
The OCZ Vertex Series 120 GB Solid State Drive promises high end performance at a lower price per gigabyte than others currently on the market. This SSD was also the first to use the Indilinx Barefoot controller while having 64MB of onboard cache memory and crazy fast read/write speeds.
Coming from an old fashion hard disk drive, I wasn’t sure what to expect. To clarify about disk drives, the main difference from the older hard disk drives and the new solid state ones is what’s inside.
Older hard drives rely on a motor driven spindle to read/write data onto what’s called “platters” so in a way, you can say they’re more mechanical. Solid state drives rely on pure technology, which means you won’t find any moving parts, just a microchip. Without the moving parts, SSD’s are more durable and less prone to damage and are so durable that the Vertex Series has an average life time of 1.5 MILLION hours. That comes out to about 62,500 days of pure playtime.
Great Googly Moogly, right?!
Since there’s no need for all the extra space traditional disk drives have, SSD’s are smaller in size. The OCZ Vertex series measures in at only 2.5 inches! At first, I figured if they were smaller they must be more fragile, but after handling one they seem just as sturdy, if not more, than older models.
Ready for an interesting fact? Solid State Drives DO NOT need to be defragmented. How crazy is that? On my old computer I was running defragmentations once or twice a week. It was a hassle since it can take upwards of a few hours to finish them and they slow down your computer while you do it. Learning I didn’t have to defragment again was such a relief.
Did I mention this thing was fast? It has a read speed of up to 250MB a second and a write speed of 180MB a second unlike older generation models (which used the Jmicron controller and have no onboard cache), which experienced a plague of problems!
That’s not the case for Vertex series though; it operates much smoother and efficient than past models.
During both these test I let my computer sit idle for the most accurate readings. As you can see, the SSD stayed more consistent and linear as opposed to my old hard drive. Besides, the proof is in the numbers.
Let me just point out again that this thing is FAST. Multitasking is an ease now. At first I had to wait one by one for my programs to start and now I can start up 3-5 at the same time. Compared to my old hard drive, the read/write/response times are incredibly faster. Although there isn’t as much space as my old hard drive (500GB > 120GB), the speed compensates for it. I may not be able to hold as many games as I want but I get to play without all the wait time like my last computer suffered from.
You can pick up a OCZ Vertex Series SSD 120GB on Newegg for $310.00 (with a $10 mail in rebate). Yes, it’s more expensive than your traditional hard disk drive, but it will last you a while, and it’s not a bad investment to make. If sitting around for minutes waiting for your programs to open up isn’t your thing, then I’d say take the chance, buy a solid state hard drive.
120GB, Hard Disk Drive, Kaboom, Newegg, OCZ Vertex Series SSD, Revie, Solid State Hard Drive
