DailyTech - Score One for the "Little Guys"; OCZ Launches Speedy 1.8" Vertex 2, Onyx SSDs

Submit News

Hardware Score One for the "Little Guys"; OCZ Launches Speedy 1.8" Vertex 2, Onyx SSDs
Brandon Hill (Blog) - June 17, 2010 2:09 PM

10 comment(s) - last by mindless1.. on Jun 19 at 4:01 PM

1.8" OCZ Vertex 2 SSD

OCZ launches 1.8" versions of its Vertex 2 and Onyx SSDs

SSDs have invaded the mobile computing space and are quickly making their voice heard in the desktop sector as well. For the most part, the fastest SSD solutions have been available in a 2.5" form-factor which covers the majority of the notebook market (and works just fine for desktops systems with a mounting kit).

The folks that have been left out, however, have been users of ultra-portable machines which have 1.8" drive bays. This means that customers using notebooks like the MacBook Air or Lenovo ThinkPad X3xx Series have limited SSD upgrade options.

OCZ is looking to change that with its new 1.8" Vertex 2 SSDs. Despite the smaller footprint, the 1.8" SSDs offer the same performance as their 2.5" counterparts -- that means 285MB/sec read speeds and 275MB/sec write speeds. The 1.8" Vertex 2 SSDs are also rated at 50,000 IOPS.

OCZ is also offering a 1.8" version of its "low-cost" Onyx SSDs. These models offer read speeds of up to 145MB/sec and are aimed at netbook users.

“Solid State Drives provide numerous benefits to mobile users including improved performance and reliability as well as lower power consumption versus traditional hard drives,” said Alex Mei, CMO of OCZ.

The 1.8" Vertex 2 SSDs will be available in capacities of 60GB, 120GB, and 240GB while the 1.8" Onyx SSDs will be available in 32GB and 64GB capacities.

Amazon.com lists pricing for the 60GB, 120GB, and 120GB 1.8" Vertex 2 SSDs at $244, $477, and $898 respectively. The 32GB and 64GB 1.8” Onyx SSDs are listed at $108 and $199 respectively.

Comments

Threshold

Username
Password
remember me

This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

About 4 months too late for me..

By Pandamonium on 6/17/2010 2:44:20 PM , Rating: 2

I own a Dell XT2 tablet, which is powered by an incredibly slow 1.8" 5400 RPM hard drive. The computer took almost 5 minutes from power on to a usable desktop. I bought the G2 Intel X18-M as soon as it hit retail channels, around February 2010. I suppose I might get a larger capacity Vertex if the price is competitive, but we'll see.

RE: About 4 months too late for me..

By Pandamonium on 6/17/2010 2:56:14 PM , Rating: 2

I looked into pricing...

Vertex drives
$480 for 120 GB (Amazon)
$900 for 240 GB (Mac Connection)

Onyx pricing doesn't appear to be available. Compared to the Vertex 2 series, Intel is actually cheaper on the $/GB. Sandforce controllers are definitely faster, but if I can't "feel" the difference, I'd rather take the extra capacity for half the price.

G2 X18-M
$240 for 80 GB
$465 for 160 GB

Parent

RE: About 4 months too late for me..

By therealnickdanger on 6/17/2010 3:43:20 PM , Rating: 2

Look around for one of these:
http://www.newegg.com/product/product.aspx?Item=N8...

Before Newegg sold out of them, they were selling for ~$170. The 2.5" models still are:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...

It's an Intel SSD through-and-through, but much cheaper.

Parent

RE: About 4 months too late for me..

By Pandamonium on 6/18/2010 10:41:13 AM , Rating: 2

The Dane-Elec kits contained G1 drives the last time I checked. The OOS link was definitely for a G1 X18-M in an enclosure. Since TRIM is only offered on G2 drives, I played it safe and didn't take the Dane-Elec gamble.

Also, 2.5" models aren't relevant when we're talking about 1.8" SSDs.

Parent

RE: About 4 months too late for me..

By therealnickdanger on 6/18/2010 12:01:21 PM , Rating: 2

G1 kicks butt even without TRIM. You have to try to slow it down... and then run a benchmark to even know that it happened. Your loss for missing out on the Dane-Elec kit deal.

Parent

RE: About 4 months too late for me..

By someguy123 on 6/17/2010 5:17:39 PM , Rating: 3

The pricing still looks exactly the same as it was a year ago for SSDs.

I went around looking for SSDs this year thinking the prices had dropped, but I was sadly mistaken.

Parent

RE: About 4 months too late for me..

By SAnderson on 6/18/2010 8:53:41 AM , Rating: 2

NAND prices have not really fallen since the beginning of the year. DRAM has actually gone up a lot.

Parent

RE: About 4 months too late for me..

By Taft12 on 6/18/2010 10:38:22 AM , Rating: 2

NAND demand is high and shows no sign of slowing for quite some time. Smaller fab process will probably help, but we won't see the benefit of that for (IMHO) ~1 year.

Given the slow migration away from desktops and laptops, I don't see DRAM prices going any lower either.

Parent

Whats the big deal

By geoffreymm2502 on 6/17/2010 4:24:41 PM , Rating: 2

I think may be a bit confused.

Looking at a tear down of most 2.5 drives below 120GB, the are a tiny circuit board that would easily fit into 1.8 enclosure. With new Memory Lithography coming in, that is going to get even smaller. What are the design concerns with speed and disk size ?

Now What I Want...

By mindless1 on 6/19/2010 4:01:51 PM , Rating: 2

... Is a 1.8" to IDE adapter. Being a fairly large (as in muscular not fat) person I don't mind carrying my old 17" laptop around for various business uses or light websurfing and email, but it takes IDE drives instead of SATA.

Main thing I want from it is a reduced likelihood of the HDD ever crashing along with associated downtime unable to use the system, capacity I could care less about but a bit of a performance boost would be nice too as the HDD is the current bottleneck for my uses.

Of course I'd like it even more if an inexpensive modern performancne level, say $100 32GB or 40GB SSD came with IDE interface, but I can see the reasons why SSD manufacturers don't want to go retro on that, the limited market for it as well as contemporary interface chips being SATA so a bridge chip would be needed too... tho those are not expensive or difficult to add to a PCB.