Solid State Drives Break the 50 Cents Per GiB Barrier, OCZ ARC 100 Launched 183
MojoKid (1002251) writes Though solid state drives have a long way to go before they break price parity with hard drives (and may never make it, at least with the current technology), the gap continues to close. More recently, SSD manufacturers have been approaching 50 cents per GiB of storage. OCZ Storage Solutions, with the help of their parent company Toshiba's 19nm MLC NAND, just launched their ARC 100 family of drives that are priced at exactly .5 per GiB at launch and it's possible street prices will drift lower down the road. The ARC 100 features the very same OCZ Barefoot 3 M10 controller as the higher-end OCZ Vertex 460, but these new drives feature more affordable Toshiba A19nm (Advanced 19 nanometer) NAND flash memory. The ARC 100 also ships without any sort of accessory bundle, to keep costs down. Performance-wise, OCZ's new ARC 100 240GB solid state drive didn't lead the pack in any particular category, but the drive did offer consistently competitive performance throughout testing. Large sequential transfers, small file transfers at high queue depths, and low access times were the ARC 100's strong suits, as well as its low cost. These new drives are rated at 20GB/day write endurance and carry a 3-year warranty.
Cheaper drives (Score:5, Informative)
Good drive, for sure, but keep in mind that the Crucial MX100 broke that barrier at its launch in June (and at $0.44/GB).
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/S... [pcper.com]
Re:Huh... (Score:5, Informative)
OCZ's storage division was bought by Toshiba, who now sells Toshiba drives under the OCZ brand.
Not sure what the thinking was on that one.
Re:Cheaper drives (Score:4, Informative)
I don't believe they make those claims explicitly, no, though they do tend to source higher-quality components, in general.
When it comes to SSD quality, most of the distinctions would be in terms of the controllers that are used (which will play a large factor in reliability and speed) and whether it's an SLC, MLC, or TLC (single-, multi-, or triple-level cell) design. SLC has one bit per cell, MLC most often refers to two bits per cell (though it technically refers to more than that as well), while TLC has three bits per cell. 2-bit MLC and TLC are the most common in consumer-grade SSDs, with TLC becoming more common in the last year or two (e.g. Samsung 840 EVO).