backtop

Print E-mail del.icio.us 78 comment(s) - last by ZoZo.. on Aug 21 at 9:30 AM

The mini-USB port can be seen in this picture beside the SATA power port.
OCZ announces larger, faster SSDs with a built-in mini-USB port for firmware upgrades.

Things are really moving quickly in the solid state disk (SSD) market. On July 1, OCZ shook the storage market with its new OCZ Core Series SSDs which were priced at $169, $259, and $479 respectively for 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB models -- street prices were actually a bit lower after a mail-in rebate that OCZ offered on the drives.

The other key selling point -- besides the price -- for the drives were their rather remarkable performance ratings. The drives featured read speeds of 120 to 143 MB/sec and write speeds of 80 to 93 MB/sec.

OCZ is not resting on its success with the OCZ Core Series and today announced its brand new Core Series V2 SSDs. With the Core Series V2 drives, OCZ not only ratcheted up the storage capacity, but also performance.

The SSDs will be available in 30GB, 60GB, 120GB, and 250GB storage capacities. In addition, read speeds have increased to 170MB/sec while write speeds are now listed at 98MB/sec across the whole product family.

Another interesting feature of the drives is the addition of a mini-USB port which allows end-users to increase the performance of their drives with future firmware updates from OCZ.

"OCZ continues the trend of enabling consumers with the latest in cutting edge solid state disc technology with the introduction of the new Core V2 SSD," said OCZ Technology CEO Ryan Petersen. "As SSD technology progresses, OCZ will continue to release updated and enhanced solutions to ensure our customers stay on the leading edge. The new Core V2 drives offer consumers and system integrators increased capacities up to 250GB, improved read and write performance and faster seek time, all coupled with a new mini USB port empowering customers with the ability to further improve performance and compatibility by updating firmware in the future."

Pricing and availability for the Core Series V2 SSDs aren't known at this time, but DailyTech will keep you informed as more information rolls in.

Comments     Threshold


This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled
Change in size.
By Mr Perfect on 8/14/2008 7:12:36 PM , Rating: 3
Just out of curiosity, do they give a reason for changing from the usual capacities? From 32 to 30, 64 to 60, etc?




RE: Change in size.
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 8/14/2008 7:14:45 PM , Rating: 5
This is in the small print on the product page:

quote:
*Consumers may see a discrepancy between reported capacity and actual capacity; the storage industry standard is to display capacity in decimal. However, the operating system usually calculates capacity in binary format, causing traditional HDD and SSD to show a lower capacity in Windows. In the case of SSDs, some of the capacity is reserved for formatting and redundancy for wear leveling. These reserved areas on an SSD may occupy up to 5% of the drive’s storage capacity. On the Core V2 Series the new naming convention reflects this and the 30 is equivalent to 32GB, the 60 is equivalent to the 64GB and so on.


RE: Change in size.
By Screwballl on 8/14/2008 7:33:01 PM , Rating: 5
all I can say is it is about d**n time... I would rather see both companies use one or the other... not this 1TB = 931GB crap... this is a move in the right direction by OCZ


RE: Change in size.
By clavko on 8/15/2008 2:24:33 AM , Rating: 2
Well, actually, hard drive manufacturers are right, "giga" means 10^9, not 2^30... It's the OS that usually gets it wrong. Sure it's been nice thing to lie about it long ago because 1024~1000, but it ain't so no more. The key is to have OS reporting actual capacity, and that brings us again to OS wars. One Linux to rule them all :)


RE: Change in size.
By William Gaatjes on 8/15/2008 6:41:43 AM , Rating: 5
quote:
Well, actually, hard drive manufacturers are right, "giga" means 10^9, not 2^30... It's the OS that usually gets it wrong. Sure it's been nice thing to lie about it long ago because 1024~1000, but it ain't so no more.


Rubbish.

Since the invention of the computer it worked with the binary system. This means powers of 2.
When you talk about a kB it means 1024 bytes.
or 2^10.It always was.Every part of the computer works with powers of 2.If that maybe software or hardware. Even your hdd works like that. Or do you think that the controller inside the hdd calculate in a decimal system ? No it doesn't, it is a digital system working with powers of 2.

K =1024.

M = 1024 * 1024.

G = 1024 * 1024 * 1024

in the digital domain.

But since some marketing scheme of the hdd manufacturers K can mean 1000 or 1024. Manufacturers should just write the unformatted correct amount on the hdd. The storage on the hdd is used for error correction, formatting, partitioning, File allocation tables and the data it self. The amount of space varies depending on which filesystem you use.

In if they have to make it easy for people just write the amount of data that can be stored when :

Formatted as 1 partition in FAT32.
Formatted as 1 partition in NTFS.
Formatted as 1 partition in EXT3.
Formatted as 1 partition in HFS.

Simple, nobody being tricked.


RE: Change in size.
By yacoub on 8/15/08, Rating: 0
RE: Change in size.
By clavko on 8/15/2008 7:49:44 AM , Rating: 5
I disagree. You can express storage values with binary prefixes, however, you can't use the same prefixes as if they were decimal - there are adequate binary prefixes that are to be used. Everywhere "kilo" is considered 10^3 of something, kg, km, kWh, you name it; it's a convention. It's "defined" that way - you cannot change definitions if you want standards.

Mind you, digital systems are hardly "all binary", as you stated - its enough to look at e.g. network speeds. Lots of inconsistency there :)

Furthermore, sure it is atm convenient for hard drive manufacturers to do business this way, but just because it is doesn't change the fact that it's the right way to do it. The problem should be handled at OS level - showing clear difference between 4,7GB and 4,7GiB.


RE: Change in size.
By William Gaatjes on 8/15/2008 9:49:50 AM , Rating: 2
That all maybe, But that some smart salesman tricked you is your own fault. In the pc you work with the binairy system, everybody knows that. If you are not aware , i suggest you should do some reading on how computers do the works.

1GB of main memory is very clear.
512MB of video memory is very clear.
But 30GB of storage memory is not very clear.
I don't find that normal but you do i guess.

Besides what is the big deal anyway, you are going to loose some storage space anyway because of the reasons i mentioned in my previous post.

And when it comes to network speeds. Is that not logical.
You are using the tcp/ip protocol. To protect your data some bandwith has to be sacrificed for error detection and correction. Also the way bits are encoded on the hardware level you loose some bandwith. But that is normal. It is very understandable that a 4096Kbit line does not give you 512KB/sec of bandwith.

A rule of thumb is your raw bandwith / 10. That would make 400kB/sec and that is a number that you can reach in reality under good conditions.


RE: Change in size.
By TomZ on 8/15/2008 10:22:42 AM , Rating: 4
What some people fail to realize is that the computer industry uses the same prefixes as SI for a meaning that is similar but different. And it has been this way for decades. You can't change the history. For example, one kilobyte has always meant 1024 bytes - it has never meant 1000 bytes, ever.

There are two general cases that I'm aware of that brought in standard SI prefixes for "byte":

1. Communication systems, which are typically based on powers-of-ten clocks, e.g., Ethernet

2. Disc storage, where the marketing folks figured out long ago that defining a "megabyte" to equal 1,000,000 bytes increased the apparent storage capacity compared to competitors that defined it equal to 1024*1024 bytes. Marketing gimmick, pure and simple.

There probably are other cases as well.

But really, the debate is pointless. They are two different units of measure - we just have to accept that both are being used and be clear about that.


RE: Change in size.
By clavko on 8/15/08, Rating: 0
RE: Change in size.
By TomZ on 8/15/2008 2:58:24 PM , Rating: 2
I'm using Windows Vista, and when I view the HDD properties, I get two measures of the capacity: 250,024,554,496 bytes and 232GB. So, I would say that Windows is reporting my "250GB" drive in a reasonable way, especially since Vista pre-dates general acceptance of the "GiB" type standards.


RE: Change in size.
By mindless1 on 8/15/2008 5:55:49 PM , Rating: 2
It doesn't really matter when Vista came out, MS et al should not cater to the HDD manufacturers mislabeling their drives. The industry settled on standard capacity terms before any hard drives were sold with the mislabeling. People just didn't raise as much of a stink about it years ago because the smaller the drive was the less difference there was in GB (as a whole # instead of a %) between the lie and the truth.


RE: Change in size.
By William Gaatjes on 8/15/2008 3:01:51 PM , Rating: 2
Well, let me just put it this way.
When you have 170GB or GiB (as you like) of free space you will not be able to put 170GB of data in a real life situation. The platter is divided into sectors. Let's say 1 sector is 512 bytes in size. Even if you have 1 byte of data you still use 512 bytes. Together with error correction, formatting, partitioning, File allocation tables and the data, you will normally not be able to use what is specified on that hdd anyway pure for data alone.
That's what i mentioned above.

I think people should not worry to much about losing a little bit of free space. And if there really was a lawsuit, well that is just insane.


RE: Change in size.
By mindless1 on 8/15/2008 5:52:04 PM , Rating: 2
Don't blame windows for the HDD manufacturer's mistake.

Fact is, data on a hard drive is stored binarily. Fact is, the HDD manufacturers already knew the entire computer industry had settled on the binary definitions of terms when they deliberately used a deceptive system to make it seem as though their products had more capacity than they really did.

There was a standard in place long before HDDs, and that standard is still used today for most everything else including memory which directly addresses ratings of a SSD since it is only logically a drive, physically it is memory. Even logically it still stores binarily.

What OCZ has done is make a huge mess out of a standard that was pretty simple, if I understand their statement properly. They should express the size as the total available capacity before formatting, in the binary computer industry standard form. It should not include capacity unavailable because it's reserved, just as with a HDD you don't have spare sectors contributing to their total.


RE: Change in size.
By clavko on 8/15/2008 7:26:40 PM , Rating: 2
> Fact is, data on a hard drive is stored binarily.

Fact is, data on a hard drive is stored on a flat magnetic surface that has nothing to do with binary nor decimal system whatsoever.

> There was a standard in place long before HDDs

Why, yes... it's called sth like...um... Système International. And it defines some prefixes and says precisely what they mean. These are decimal prefixes - they are defined via powers of 10. They shouldn't be used for something else. If you need binary prefixes, there is IEC standard, so use these.

Nobody says you shouldn't use binary values. You only shouldn't say that something is "giga", if it's not equal to 10^9. If it's 2^30, just say it's "gibi", no harm done. I don't see hard drive manufacturers stating their drive capacities in gibibytes, right? So why do you expect them to be in gibibytes? Because Microsoft tells you gigabyte is gibibyte.

Talking of consisteny - why does Windows use KB? What does K mean, actually? If it means 'kilo', then why don't they use lowercase 'k'? If it means 'kibi' (it does), why did they rip-off binary prefixes uppercase 'K', as in KiB? Just a coincidence? I don't think so :)
quote:
Fact is, data on a hard drive is stored binarily.


RE: Change in size.
By danrien on 8/20/2008 1:02:44 PM , Rating: 2
NO, FACT IS DATA IS STORED IN BITS. BINARY. how else do you expect us to store data? Quaternary? An off, sort of off, sort of on, and on switch? Or should we wish the data on there? The data is stored in a bit, a magnetic polar positive or negative, changed by a head that flips the polarity depending on the data given with an electric charge. Thus the data is stored in binary. On or off. Binary. Thus, we measure how many bits, or memory allocations for an on or off switch, can be stored on the drive. The actual medium that the data is stored on is inconsequential when it comes to measuring storage capacity.

And giga kilo mega etc. have been in use in the computer industry since long before my time, so I somehow doubt that Microsoft has much to do with a commonly accepted standard. I may hate them and use Linux myself, but to lay the blame on Microsoft for this is to blatantly ignore oh 30-40 years of computer history.


RE: Change in size.
By sirokket16 on 8/15/2008 2:47:54 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Mind you, digital systems are hardly "all binary", as you stated - its enough to look at e.g. network speeds. Lots of inconsistency there :)


You are not comparing two "digital systems". Network speed and hard drive capacity are two different realms of computing. Digital means "binary", 1s and 0s.