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OCZ Vertex EX Series 120GB SLC SSD Review

Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 9:19 am
by Apoptosis
OCZ Vertex EX Series 120GB SLC SSD Review

The OCZ Vertex EX 2.5” Solid State Drives use SLC NAND Flash and are designed to meet the stringent demands of server environments and enterprise applications. As a result these next-generation drives feature speeds of up to a 260MB/s read and 210MB/s write to bring you insane system responsiveness and data access!

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Article Title: OCZ Vertex EX Series 120GB SLC SSD Review
Article URL: http://legitreviews.com/article/988/1/
Pricing At Time of Print: $1299.99 shipped

Re: OCZ Vertex EX Series 120GB SLC SSD Review

Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 10:14 am
by Illuminati
Very nice review... Now to just solve the issue of performance degradation so we get the advertised speeds $1299 pays for! :shock:

Re: OCZ Vertex EX Series 120GB SLC SSD Review

Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 11:07 am
by gwolfman
Wow, very nice. So who wants to buy me one? Thanks for the review!

Btw, the pictures on page 9 are swapped.

Re: OCZ Vertex EX Series 120GB SLC SSD Review

Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 11:41 am
by Zertz
Now the question is... how long will it take for performance to degrade when running an OS on it daily

Re: OCZ Vertex EX Series 120GB SLC SSD Review

Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 11:44 am
by Apoptosis
Zertz wrote:Now the question is... how long will it take for performance to degrade when running an OS on it daily
Once I get the firmware v1.20 from OCZ I plan on flashing the drive... updating a few of the benchmark results and finding that out. I think Everest is the main issue with the drive performance... If you look at the Everest Linear Write chart you can see performance just getting killed during that benchmark and after that the drive is fubar. I'm not sure that Everest Disk Benchmark is even worth including anymore to be honest with you guys/gals.

Re: OCZ Vertex EX Series 120GB SLC SSD Review

Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 12:22 pm
by gwolfman
Apoptosis wrote:
Zertz wrote:Now the question is... how long will it take for performance to degrade when running an OS on it daily
Once I get the firmware v1.20 from OCZ I plan on flashing the drive... updating a few of the benchmark results and finding that out. I think Everest is the main issue with the drive performance... If you look at the Everest Linear Write chart you can see performance just getting killed during that benchmark and after that the drive is fubar. I'm not sure that Everest Disk Benchmark is even worth including anymore to be honest with you guys/gals.
Not if it'll junk your SSDs. I think the other benchmarks you select are enough to cover what Everest shows.

Re: OCZ Vertex EX Series 120GB SLC SSD Review

Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 1:34 pm
by Gomeler
Great review but a damn shame the drive was utterly destroyed at the end of it. This whole TRIM garbage is nuts, the firmware should scan for degradation and repair automatically in the background.

Re: OCZ Vertex EX Series 120GB SLC SSD Review

Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 2:30 pm
by FZ1
Gomeler wrote:Great review but a damn shame the drive was utterly destroyed at the end of it. This whole TRIM garbage is nuts, the firmware should scan for degradation and repair automatically in the background.
It's a little more complex than that but soon they will support native TRIM in Win 7 so it will be a moot point.

Re: OCZ Vertex EX Series 120GB SLC SSD Review

Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 2:47 pm
by Illuminati
FZ1 wrote:
Gomeler wrote:Great review but a damn shame the drive was utterly destroyed at the end of it. This whole TRIM garbage is nuts, the firmware should scan for degradation and repair automatically in the background.
It's a little more complex than that but soon they will support native TRIM in Win 7 so it will be a moot point.
But only with a firmware update for the drive to support TRIM so the OS can use it... Oh, and the firmware update will destroy all data on the drive, so it will still be a daunting task for some.

Re: OCZ Vertex EX Series 120GB SLC SSD Review

Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 2:52 pm
by Apoptosis
agreed... and for an enterprise/server application it would be a huge issue... We've talked a lot about trim support on Windows, but what about linux? I have a good feeling that many buying this drive will run it under Linux 64-bit rather than a Windows based OS.

Re: OCZ Vertex EX Series 120GB SLC SSD Review

Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 3:10 pm
by gwolfman
Apoptosis wrote:agreed... and for an enterprise/server application it would be a huge issue... We've talked a lot about trim support on Windows, but what about linux? I have a good feeling that many buying this drive will run it under Linux 64-bit rather than a Windows based OS.
good point, especially the enterprise-class computing this drive is targeted towards

Re: OCZ Vertex EX Series 120GB SLC SSD Review

Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 4:01 pm
by FZ1
Illuminati wrote: Oh, and the firmware update will destroy all data on the drive, so it will still be a daunting task for some.
Not true with the latest firmware updates.

Re: OCZ Vertex EX Series 120GB SLC SSD Review

Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 6:30 pm
by Apoptosis
I think he was talking in reference to this specific drive. Going from FW v1.11 to v1.20 will wipe all the data.

Re: OCZ Vertex EX Series 120GB SLC SSD Review

Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 6:40 pm
by Zertz
Apoptosis wrote:I think Everest is the main issue with the drive performance... If you look at the Everest Linear Write chart you can see performance just getting killed during that benchmark and after that the drive is fubar. I'm not sure that Everest Disk Benchmark is even worth including anymore to be honest with you guys/gals.
I'm pretty sure any write benchmark will kill the drive's performance or it might just be the way Everest works... The software writes a bunch of small files all around the drive and with the way SSDs work it's to be expected it will happen.

Hopefully we're not expecting too much out of TRIM and it really fixes this major issue.