OCZ has added a low profile version of the Vertex 3 to their SSD portfolio. The drive has a height of 7mm, which is 2.5mm slimmer than most 2.5" drives are. Other specifications match the regular Vertex 3, so reading our Vertex 3 review will give you an idea of the performance, but below is a specification table in case you don't remember the main details off hand:
| OCZ Vertex 3 Low Profile Specifications | ||||
| Capacity | 60GB | 120GB | 240GB | 480GB |
| Interface | SATA 6Gb/s | |||
| NAND | 2Xnm MLC | |||
| Number of NAND Packages | 8 | 16 | 16 | 16 |
| Number of Die per Package | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| Sequential Read | 535MB/s | 550MB/s | 550MB/s | 530MB/s |
| Sequential Write | 480MB/s | 500MB/s | 520MB/s | 450MB/s |
| Max 4K Random Write | 80K IOPS | 85K IOPS | 85K IOPS | 35K IOPS |
A Canadian retailer, Canada Computers, is already listing the low profile versions and pricing appears to be slightly higher compared to normal Vertex 3. However, Canada Computers has not received any stock yet so the prices may not be final yet. Availability is unknown as of now but expect to see these SSDs in stores within a week or two.
We are definitely experiencing a shift towards smaller form factors in storage devices and computing in general. Especially Intel's Ultrabook project is fuel for the fire because in order to meet Intel's strict dimension limitations, it's necessary to use either mSATA SSDs or thinner 2.5" SSDs/HDDs. On top of that, the internal components of SSDs don't usually even need the extra 2.5mm and making a drive 7mm instead of 9.5mm is only a matter of shaving off some of the chassis. I'll give you a sneak preview of our Plextor M3 Pro review to demonstrate this:
Plextor M3 – 9.5mm tall
Plextor M3 Pro – 7mm tall
Both SSDs have exactly the same PCBs and the only thing that makes the M3 Pro thinner is the fact that it has thinner thermal pads. What this means is that pretty much any 2.5" SSD could be turned into a 7mm model without even modifying the PCB.
I would like to see more hybrid approaches like what Intel is doing, though. Hybrid in this case means that there's a riser attached by screws that turns a 7mm SSD into a 9.5mm SSD. Some laptops are designed for 9.5mm drives and a 7mm drive might jiggle inside the laptop.
Example of the use of a riser
Having a riser means the user doesn't need to decide between 7mm and 9.5mm as you can easily remove the riser if you need to fit drive inside a computer that only takes 7mm drives. Of course, offering 7mm and 9.5mm drives like OCZ and Plextor are doing is better than offering only 9.5mm drives, but using a riser still looks like the best option.
Apple just pushed out an update for iOS, bringing the version number up to 5.1.1. The update thus far appears to be primarily bugfixes including tweaks to HDR from the lockscreen camera shortcut, stability switching between 2G and 3G on the new iPad, and other issues. The release notes are below from the update information.
We're grabbing the OTA update on our devices (for the 4S the update is around 54 MB, for the 4 the update is around 48 MB) in addition to the full ipsw. As usual the links to the update images directly can be found at the awesome iOS-e-lite page for the impatient. We'll update with any notes about major changes beyond what's in the notes above.
OWC has released their first PCIe SSD, the Mercury Accelsior. OWC has used SandForce controllers throughout its history in the SSD world and the Accelsior is no exception. It is equipped with two SandForce SF-228X controllers, which are the same controllers that can be found inside OWC's other SATA 6Gb/s SSDs.
The actual design is pretty interesting. OWC has opted to build the SSD out of two blades, each with their own controller and NAND running. The blades run in RAID 0 by default but they can also be configured in RAID 1 mode. Oftentimes everything is intergrated on one PCB but OWC's approach is different, and there is actually a big advantage todoing things this way. Using blades allows the capacity to be upgraded without buying a totally new card. OWC does not sell the blades separately yet, but manufacturing new blades should be somwhat cheaper than manufacturing the whole PCB, so down the road this could result in a lower total upgrade price.
| OWC Mercury Accelsior Specifications | ||||
| Capacity | 120GB | 240GB | 480GB | 960GB |
| Controller | Dual SandForce SF-2281 | Dual SandForce SF-2282 | ||
| NAND | 24nm Toshiba Toggle-Mode MLC NAND | |||
| Interface | PCI Express 2.0 x2 | |||
| Form Factor | Low Profile PCI Express | |||
| Sequential Read | 758MB/s | 762MB/s | 780MB/s | 756MB/s |
| Sequential Write | 743MB/s | 763MB/s | 763MB/s | 673MB/s |
| 4K Random Read | Up to 100K IOPS | |||
| 4K Random Write | Up to 100K IOPS | |||
| Price | 0 | 0 | 0 | 96 |
| Warranty | 3 years | |||
OWC's Mercury Accelsior is actually a very competitive drive. A quick look at NewEgg shows that OCZ's RevoDrive 3 is not significantly cheaper–in fact, it's more expensive at 480GB and above. OCZ does claim better performance but it's good to keep in mind these figures meant for advertising.
OWC is primarily an Apple focused company and here is the big deal: Mercury Accelsior supports booting under OS X. There are plenty of PCIe SSDs out there but OWC's is the first one that supports booting into OS X. No drivers are needed in OS X or Windows either–the drive is plug and play. Booting into Windows has not been a problem but it's understandable that a Mac user has little need for a PCIe SSD that only boots into Windows. Unfortunately Mac Pro is the only Mac that has empty PCIe slots and Apple has not shown much love for the Mac Pro lately.
Availability for the Mercury Accelsior line starts now, though only the linked prices above are currently showing up online.
G-Technology, a company owned by Hitachi, has released an updated model of their G-RAID solution, which now adds Thunderbolt support. Essentially the G-RAID Thunderbolt is equivalent to the regular G-RAID but features two Thunderbolt ports instead of the eSATA, FireWire, and USB ports that are found in the regular version. From inside they are the same: both utilize two SATA 3Gb/s Hitachi Deskstar hard drives, which can be configured in either RAID 0 or RAID 1 mode.
| G-Technology G-RAID Thunderbolt Specifications | |||
| Capacity | 4TB | 6TB | 8TB |
| Drive Configuration | 2x2TB | 2x3TB | 2x4TB |
| Rotational Speed | 7200rpm | 7200rpm | 7200rpm |
| Cache | 2x32MB | 2x64MB | 2x64MB |
| Ports | 2x Thunderbolt | ||
| Performance | Up to 280MB/s | ||
| Price | 0 | 0 | 00 |
Typical of most Thunderbolt devices, the G-RAID Thunderbolt has two Thunderbolt ports to enable daisy-chaining. G-Technology quotes a sustained throughput of 280MB/s, but since the performance of hard drives is heavily dependent on the areal density, the maximum performance of the 4TB and 6TB models is likely slower.
StorageReview is also reporting that they saw an unreleased G-DRIVE with Thunderbolt support. G-DRIVE is G-RAID's little brother that has a single 3.5" hard drive. Unfortunately, there is no information on its specifications or availability.
There are quite a few Thunderbolt products out there so let's recap the external Thunderbolt storage offerings quickly. Right now there are five brands with products available for the masses: Promise, LaCie, Western Digital, Seagate and G-Technology. Most of these are external storage solutions with two or more hard drives, but there are simpler products like Seagate's GoFlex adapter that turns any GoFlex drive into a Thunderbolt drive. The table below compares products from the aforementioned companies:
| Comparison of Thunderbolt Storage Solutions | |||||||||
| Brand | Promise | LaCie | |||||||
| Model | Pegasus R4 | Pegasus R6 | Little Big Disk | 2big | |||||
| Capacity | 4x1TB | 4x2TB | 6x1TB | 6x2TB | 2x500GB | 2x1TB | 2x120GB SSD | 2x2TB | 2x3TB |
| Throughput | 500MB/s | 800MB/s | 180MB/s | 190MB/s | 480MB/s | 327MB/s | |||
| Price | 49 | 99 | 99 | 99 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Warranty | Two years | Three years | |||||||
| Brand | Western Digital | G-Technology | Seagate | ||||||
| Model | My Book Thunderbolt Duo | G-RAID | GoFlex Desk (w/ TB adapter) | ||||||
| Capacity | 2x2TB | 2x3TB | 2x2TB | 2x3TB | 2x4TB | 1TB | 2TB | 3TB | 4TB |
| Throughput | 225MB/s | 250MB/s | 280MB/s | N/A | |||||
| Price | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 00 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Warranty | Three years | Three years | Two years | ||||||
If we only look at price per GB, Seagate's GoFlex Desk drives with the Thunderbolt adapter are the cheapest–especially the 3TB and 4TB models are very affordable when compared to other options. However, keep in mind that GoFlex Desk drives feature only a single 3.5" hard drive, whereas all other solutions have at least two 2.5" or 3.5" drives. Running two drives in RAID 0 increases the performance (particularly sequential transfer rates), hence the GoFlex Desk should be the slowest drives in the comparison.
3.5" hard drives top out at 4TB at the moment and thus one has to look into multi-drive solutions if more than 4TB is needed. At 6TB, Western Digital's My Book Thunderbolt Duo series offers the best price/capacity ratio. In terms of performance, however, it's rated as slower than G-Technology's and LaCie's offerings–though we need to emphasize that the performance ratings are from manufacturers' sites and may hence not be completely accurate.
G-Technology's advantage is the fact that they are the only company (along with Seagate) that is using 4TB hard drives. As Seagate does not offer any dual-drive solutions, G-Technology is the only company that offers an 8TB dual-drive product. 00 is definitely expensive but it's 0 less than what Promise asks for their 8TB version of the Pegasus R4. However, Promise uses four 2TB drives and there is support for RAID 5 and 6 as well, so Pegasus and G-RAID aren't strictly comparable.
All in all, there are definitely a lot more products than there were a bit over a year ago when Thunderbolt launched, but personally I expected more. It has been over a year and yet the cheapest Thunderbolt storage solution will still set you back over 0. I give Seagate credit for bringing an adapter to the market instead of dedicated products like other manufacturers, but 0 for an adapter (or 0 for the 2.5" adapter) is an awful lot. For 0 you can get a 3TB USB 3.0 hard drive that will perform the same due to the fact that the hard drive is the bottleneck. Of course, the advantages of Thunderbolt lie elsewhere but given the current products, most of Thunderbolt's potential is being missed.
Crucial has released a firmware update for its popular m4 SSD series. The update carries a version code of 000F. The update is said to improve compatibility with certain SAS expanders and RAID cards but Crucial is also claiming better throughput stability (i.e. performance) under heavy loads and enhanced data protection in the event of power loss.
It appears that the update is aimed more towards enterprise users than consumers because SAS expanders and RAID cards are primarily enterprise products. Consumer workloads are usually lighter and may not benefit from the improved throughput stability at heavy loads. Power-loss protection is welcomed by all users, however, as an unexpected power-loss may happen in any environment.
Crucial offers both a Windows 7 updater and traditional ISO file for upgrading the firmware. While the update is non-destructive in nature, we always recommended that you backup your important data before flashing the drive. The update can be downloaded here.
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