By: Jonathan Kwan
March 7, 2014
As time progresses on, it has become quite a wakeup call to me that I am really not that young anymore. Being a person born in 1990, I have witnessed the end of the non-digital age (You know, where people did not have cell phones and actually talked to each other, went outside to ride bikes, and actually did homework research in the library by reading real books), and the massive shift in people's lifestyle as we embrace the changes brought upon us in the consumer electronics and internet revolution of the early 2000's. To see how generations have adapted to this change, I went around and asked some people if they know what a fax machine is. The first person I asked was someone born in 1997. "Of course I know what a fax machine is," she said. "I just never really used one." I then asked someone who was born in 1999. "Oh, I know about the fax machine. It sends documents and stuff. But why didn't people just use email instead?" Finally, I asked someone born in 2003. "Fax machine? Is it that thing where you type things and it prints onto a page?" Looking back, we have really gone a long way. This is no different in the digital storage world. Roughly ten years ago, the Western Digital Raptor 36GB 10,000RPM hard drive was a seriously fast hard drive. I remember reading a review that said the Raptor "manages the best transfer rates ever for an ATA drive", quoting its "impressive" 45MB/s minimum transfer rate. Trying using the same Raptor now, and you will be so frustrated by its slow sequential performance, poor IOPS capability, and high access time, you would have wished you had a 5400RPM drive from 2014 instead. Today, SSDs continue to shatter performance barriers as OCZ shows off their flagship Vector 150. Promising a 150% increase in write endurance over the original Vector -- hence the name -- do we have yet another winner in our hands? Read on to find out!
Our review unit of the OCZ Vector 150 240GB arrived to us here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada from the company's American headquarters in California, USA. Its travel buddy include the OCZ Vertex 460 240GB, which we will write a full review on shortly. That said, benchmark results for both drives will be included on our graphs today. The package was shipped to us in a very familiar UPS medium sized corrugated cardboard box using the speedy Saver service from the company's American headquarters in warm and sunny California, USA to us here in -30c "freezing cold is a severe understatement" Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Anyway, everything arrived in excellent condition, so we moved the drives right along to our standard photo session.
Hollowing up the packing material from inside the shipping package is the retail box of OCZ's Vector 150 240GB SSD. It comes in a compact and lightweight box, with a design that is almost the same as the Vector 256GB. The blue color scheme is present as always; the only difference is the '150' designation appended to the end of the Vector branding. With a photo of the SSD itself front and center, count how many times the model appears on the packaging -- more than enough to get the point across, haha. A series of bullets at the bottom highlights the features on the Vector 150, where the usual "SandForce Driven" being replaced by the "Indilinx Infused" logo at the top right corner should not come at much of a surprise to you at this point. Before we move on, let's take a look at the specifications of this drive, as obtained from the manufacturer's website:
Sequential Read Speed: 550MB/s
Sequential Write Speed: 530MB/s
Random Read Speed (4K, QD32): 90,000 IOPS
Random Write Speed (4K, QD32): 95,000 IOPS
Steady State Random Write (4K QD32): 21,000 IOPS
NAND Components: 19nm Multi-Level Cell (MLC) Flash
NAND Controller: Barefoot 3 M00
Interface: SATA 3 6Gb/s (Backwards compatible with SATA II 3Gb/s)
Form Factor: 2.5 Inch, Ultra-slim 7mm
Dimension (L x W x H): 99.7 x 69.75 x 7mm
Weight: 115g
MTBF: 2.3 million hours
Data Path Protection: BCH ECC corrects up to 44 random bits/1KB
Encryption: 256-bit AES-compliant
Product Health Monitoring: Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) Support
Endurance: Rated for 50GB/day of host writes for 5 years under typical client workloads
Inside the retail box is familiar black package, consisting of a foam tray enclosed by a cardboard flap to house its internal contents. Despite the natural ability of SSDs to withstand high impact forces, OCZ made sure everything will end up safe and sound for the end user. After all, despite the price drop in recent years, this is still pretty expensive stuff. Out of the box, you will receive an OCZ Vector 150 240GB SSD inside an anti-static bag, 3.5" adapter bracket, eight screws (Four for attaching your SSD to the adapter bracket, with the remaining four for installing it into your chassis), installation/warranty guide, and a "I <3 my SSD" sticker with OCZ's logo in the heart icon. The company also includes a license key for Acronis' True Image HD software for transferring data from your old drive to this one. No CD is included, so if you are still stuck in the dinosaur age without internet, then you are out of luck. Frankly, I don't know anyone who has an SSD without internet access, so this is really a moot point.
Page Index
1. Introduction and Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Installation, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 3.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0
7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 4.60
8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 8.0
9. Benchmark: PCMark Vantage
10. Conclusion
