Product Description

Offering your system the incredible performance of flash-based technology, the OCZ Vertex Series delivers the performance and reliability of SSDs at less price per gigabyte than other high speed offerings currently on the market. The OCZ Vertex Series is the result of all the latest breakthroughs in SSD technology, including architecture and controller design, blazing 200MB/sec read and 160MB/sec write speeds, and featuring up to 64MB onboard cache. OCZ continues to place solid state technology within reach of the average consumer, and delivers on the promise of SSDs as an alternative to traditional hard drives in consumer targeted mobile applications. Perfect for notebooks and desktops alike, the Vertex Series is ideal for energy-efficient mobile computing to extend battery life, increase access time, and provide a durable alternative to conventional hard disc drives with superior shock resistance. High capacities and low power consuming NAND flash technology provide the necessary performance and battery life boosts generated by the proliferation of mobile gaming and ultra-thin laptops. With fast access and seek times combined with excellent reliability, the OCZ Vertex Series SSDs are the answer for consumers demanding this latest storage technology. The OCZ Vertex drives feature a durable yet lightweight alloy housing, and because OCZ SSDs have no moving parts, the drives are more rugged than traditional hard drives. Designed for ultimate reliability, Vertex Series SSDs have an excellent 1.5 million hour mean time before failure (MTBF) ensuring peace of mind over the long term.

Product Details

• Color: Black
• Brand: OCZ
• Model: OCZSSD2-1VTX30G
• Dimensions: .37" h x 2.74" w x 3.93" l, .18 pounds
• Hard Disk: 30GB

Features

• Available in 30GB, 60GB, 120GB, 250GB capacities
• Read: Up to 230 MB/s Write: Up to 135MB/s Sustained Write: Up to 80MB/s
• Shock Resistant 1500G / Low Power Consumption: 2W in operation, .5W in stand by
• 64MB Onboard Cache / RAID Support
• MTBF 1.5 million hours /2 year warranty

Customer Reviews

FAST!
There were some hiccups with early firmware but the new ones seem to ship with the latest and greatest version (1.10).

I've got this as my primary drive with Win7 Beta on it. This is probably the best upgrade I've done in awhile. Hard drives have been the system bottleneck for so long. This finally opens that up.

Boot up time and application launches are much faster. It makes your computer much more responsive overall. During bootup when you normally have to wait for all the stuff to load before you can actually do something.. that's gone.

I recommend the write-up on SSDs at anandtech.com for an overview if you're interested in the technical details.

There are some things you need to configure in windows to get the most life out of the drive.
1. Disable hibernation
2. Disable the pagefile (if you have at least 4GB RAM)
3. Disable indexing

If in a pc I'd recommend keeping media (music, pictures, video) on a bigger regular hard drive since 30GB can fill up quick

The OCZ forum is a great resource for tweaks and such.

Also this drive is the notebook form factor, so to mount it in a pc you'll need an adapter. OCZ makes one and I think amazon automatically recommends it as an accessory.

Fast for Audio Editing
I bought the OCZ Vertex 30GB as part of an experiment. I do a lot of audio editing (concert recordings, typically 1+ hours of 96kHz 24-bit = 2.5GB typical) and because of the size of the files I work with, I am often limited by harddrive speed.

I used the SSHD to master the last concert recording I worked on. Overall, I'd peg the drive at about 3x faster than my 1TB Seagate. Note that this is NOT a benchmark result, but a stop-watch style comparison of some common operations. Nor can I compare other SSHDs--I was also seriously considering the Intel SSHD, but I could get away with a small capacity, due to how I use the SSHD, so OCZ had a much better, lower-risk price point.

For smaller files (e.g. 215MB), the results are even better, but that also becomes a function of how much RAM I have (4GB--3.25GB usable). There are also many audio editing operations that are CPU bound (e.g. noise reduction), so these are not practically faster.

System specs: Intel Core 2 Quad 9350, 4GB RAM, 3 SATA Hard Drives, 1 SSHD, Vista.

BOTTOM LINE: These are fast, and if the performance gain saves you time in a way that pays for the product, go for it. My conclusion was that the cheap 30GB would pay for itself pretty quickly (and was low-risk), but a RAID of 2 or 3 160GB SSHDs would not (i.e. high cost / high risk). I also saved money by using this drive only for the stuff I'm actively working on--when done, I transfer back to my 1TB hard drive and delete the files from the OCZ. I'm also counting on SSHDs getting faster and cheaper a year from now. So if you're not sure, wait.

Revolutionary
This drive is wonderful. I dropped it into an aging P4 system, and now Windows XP boots in about 20 seconds and most applications load in no more than 4 seconds, except for CPU-intensive Photoshop Elements (watching it boot, I see the CPU usage is at 100% until the disk activity light goes out). Overall, everything about the system is faster. It's whisper quiet and cool. While 30 GB isn't a lot of space, it's entirely possible to fit Windows XP, MS Office, Firefox, and a couple of other productivity apps on the drive and still have room for some data. (I did.) I would suggest adding an external 1 TB drive if you're concerned about space for data. Maybe buy the 60 GB model if you're running Vista or Win7, as it's not that much more expensive.

Now that I have one of these in my main home PC, I hate my work PC.

For everyday computing, this drive will make a bigger difference than any other upgrade you can do, with the possible exception of upgrading to 2 GB or more of RAM. If you've already maxxed your RAM, this drive will take your system performance to a level you didn't think was possible--even in old systems like my P4 that can't take full advantage of the drive's capabilities.