256 Gb OCZ Vector SSD Drive Overview

Solid state drives are already essentially the standard for most expensive laptops and ultrabooks, many enthusiasts have already put the SSD in home computers, the technology is torn by the people with terrible force. Among a fairly wide range of drives, those manufacturers are clearly distinguished who do not hesitate to bring different models to the market without being hung up on one successful controller. OCZ is certainly one of these representatives. While the SandForce SF-2281 controller became the basis of most SSDs on the store shelves, an unusual OCZ Vector disc appears on Indilinx Barefoot 3. The high read and write speeds announced by the manufacturer draw attention to the product. I will tell about real indicators and whether it made sense to make a garden with a unique controller under the cut.

I will begin, as usual, with the hanger. The box with the disk is no different from the vast majority of solid-state counterparts. Compact packaging is painted in black and blue colors. The box shows the drive itself, in addition, there is information about the amount of memory, the delivery set (desktop adapter in the 3.5 "bay) and the software included. OCZ gives its users Acronis True Image HD for easy transfer of information when replacing the hard drive. By the way, lovers of additional bonuses there is still a pleasant surprise, when buying OCZ Vector 256 or 512 GB - as a gift, the manufacturer gives a copy of the game Far Cry 3. Details here .


The reverse side is less informative, there is a description of the product in twelve languages, including Russian and a description of key features in English.

OCZ manufactures almost all of the components for solid-state drives — the controller, the printed circuit board, the software. Only NAND memory is purchased from third-party manufacturers, but in the best traditions of Apple and Kingston is remarked by its own label.

Indilinx Barefoot 3 is an eight-channel SATA controller based on an ARM Cortex processor with a 32-bit OCZ Aragon coprocessor.

OCZ warranty lasts for a period of five years, but is limited to a recording resource, which is 20 gigabytes per day.
Simple math allows you to calculate that it is about 36.5 terabytes in five years. Check the remaining disk resource can be easily read SMART and looking at the attribute with the index E9. It shows as a percentage the remaining time of the SSD drive.

Technical specifications put in one plate for ease of perception

Drive Manufacturer and Model	OCZ Vector 256 Gb
Disk interface	SATA 6 Gbps
NAND memory type	MLC synchronous
Controller used	Indilinx Barefoot 3
Drive power consumption	0.9 watts in idle 2.25 watts under load
Working temperature	from 0 to 55 degrees Celsius
Maximum read speed	up to 550 MB / s
Maximum write speed	up to 530 MB / s
Dimensions	100 x 70 x 7 mm
Weight	115 grams
Warranty period	5 years
OS compatibility	Windows 8/7 / Vista / XP, Mac OS X, Linux

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The thickness of the drive is 7 mm, which allows it to be used in thin laptops and ultrabooks without any special problems. Included with the SSD drive: adapter for installation in the 3.5 "bay, screws for mounting, sticker and instruction.
The device case is aluminum with a huge sticker in the entire top cover. Dimensions correspond to standard 2.5 "discs with the exception of thickness.
On the back of the SSD drive there is a sticker with a serial number, information on certificates, and one of the screws is covered with a warranty seal with a warning about the loss of warranty in the event of an autopsy (of course, this did not stop me).


The cooling of the controller is implemented using a thermal pad, which takes the heat to the bottom cover of the drive.
The controller is marked with Indilinx IDX500M00-BC and supports the following technologies: NCQ (native command queuing) - hardware installation of a sequence of commands to optimize performance, SMART (self-monitoring, analysis and reporting technology) - a drive state monitoring system, TRIM - technology for cleaning up memory unused data.

Sixteen memory chips of 16 gigabytes each are located on both sides of the board. They are made on the 25-nm process technology by Micron and are labeled M2502128T048SX22. As a buffer memory on the board, two Micron chips of 256 MB each are soldered, with one slot left free for an additional chip used in the older 512 GB model.
By default, the disk is formatted in the NTFS file system.

To test drive performance, the following test bench was used:

CPU	Intel Core i7-3770K (Socket 1155)
Motherboard	ASUS Maximus V Extreme, Intel Z77 chipset
Cooling system	Corsair H100 Hydro series
Video card	ASUS Radeon HD 7970 Matrix
Hard Drive (Primary)	Kingston HyperX SSD 256 Gb
Power Supply	Seasonic X-660 Gold
operating system	Microsoft Windows 7 64-bit

Linear reading AIDA64 - beautiful, exactly at a high level.

This ladder in a linear recording can be explained as follows. OCZ traditionally well optimizes work with the buffer. There are two options for its use: send it to record the largest data stream as a whole (here is such an option, about 120 gigabytes), but you can leave some, then the speed drop will start earlier or the recording speed will be less. OCZ directed efforts to peak performance, I doubt that someone will have to write more than 120 gigabytes at once.

Writing speed in AS SSD Benchmark is slightly lower than promised.

Anvil`s complex test shows a result similar to previous benchmarks.

ATTO Disk is the closest to the declared speeds. 550/522 with 550/530 promised.

Crystal Disk Mark demonstrates symmetrical read / write performance.

The test of data storage in PC Mark 7. To compare the main SSD of my system, the Kingston HyperX on the SandForce SF-2281 controller shows
5167 points


The speed of work in most tests is close to that stated by the manufacturer and is at a very high level. The disc performs well in any usage scenario.
A few words about proprietary software - on the manufacturer’s website, you can download a utility with which you can check the disk status, update
firmware and conduct operation Secure Erase.



Summing up the research, I would like to praise OCZ for courage in making the decision to switch to its own controller. He turned
competitive, currently Sandforce SF-2281 and Marvell 88SS9174-BLD2 cannot boast the best performance in all tests, besides, the speed does not decrease when working with incompressible data, which include images, video, packed textures. It is logical to assume that the story will continue, with the transition to new technological processes in the production of NAND memory and with the updated generation of controllers, the new OCZ drives may claim leadership in the segment of SSD drives.