Giving SSDs some TLC
Congratulations if you're reading this, it means you weren't scared off by the word "affordable" in the title. For power users, terms like "affordable," "value," and "budget" typically translate into low performance, but that's not necessarily the case with OCZ's newly minted Trion 100 solid state drive line.
The new drives use Toshiba's Triple-Level Cell (TLC) NAND flash memory and controller technology. As a result, these SATA 6Gbps drives feature sequential read speeds of up to 550MB/s and sequential writes of up to 530MB/s, along with random read I/O performance of up to 90,000 IOPS. Granted, none of those figures are on the level of PCIe-based SSDs, but in SATA 6Gbps territory, it doesn't get a whole lot faster than this (on paper, anyway -- we haven't had a chance to test and benchmark these drives).
Here's a breakdown of how things shake out by drive:
- 120GB: 550MB/s read, 450MB/s write, 79,000 / 25,000 4K random read/write IOPS
- 240GB: 550MB/s read, 520MB/s write, 90,000 / 43,000 4K random read/write IOPS
- 480GB: 550MB/s read, 530MB/s write, 90,000 / 54,000 4K random read/write IOPS
- 960GB: 550MB/s read, 530MB/s write, 90,000 / 64,000 4K random read/write IOPS
And here's a look at the MSRPs:
- Trion 100 120GB: $56.99 (~$0.48 per GB)
- Trion 100 240GB: $87.99 (~$0.37 per GB)
- Trion 100 480GB: $184.99 (~$0.39 per GB)
- Trion 100 960GB: $369.99 (~$0.39 per GB)
The price per gigabyte has been rounded up for each drive. Nevertheless, those are some tantalizing MSRPs for high performing SATA 6Gbps drives, especially when you consider that street pricing could eventually end up being lower. In addition, OCZ tells Maximum PC that it's keeping an eye on the market and will adjust the price as necessary -- in other words, you can vote with your wallet.
This is precisely what Toshiba had in mind when it acquired OCZ's storage division. When OCZ was on its own, the company had to ride the volatile NAND flash memory market. But with Toshiba's resources, it needn't worry about fluctuating prices (not to the same extent, anyway) and NAND flash memory shortages.
OCZ's use of TLC NAND flash memory is also key here.
"As the market for solid state drives continues to mature the need for high quality yet affordably priced drives has only grown, and we are pleased to be able to provide exactly that with our new TLC based Trion Series SSDs," said Daryl Lang, CTO of OCZ Storage Solutions, a Toshiba Group Company. "To deliver more robust endurance, the Trion has been optimized with extremely tight coupling between the premium Toshiba TLC NAND flash and firmware, making it an ideal solution for value-conscious users seeking an improved computing experience for both desktop and mobile applications."
The Trion 100 series is available now. Each drive is backed by OCZ's ShieldPlus warranty for 3 years, which means no shipping costs and no hoops to jump through, like digging up a lost receipt -- just provide a serial number and OCZ will take care of the rest.
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From maximumpc
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