OCZ SSD 32GB Solid State Hard Disk

 

So, where do all these results leave us. Well at the end of the day there is no denying that the OCZ SSD is one extremely fast storage device. For use in a laptop where hard disks generally have a much smaller capacity and poor performance compared with their desktop counterparts, the OCZ 32GB SSD would be ideal. This combined with the fact that SSD technology in general consumes a lot less power and runs much cooler than traditional mechanical hard disks and OCZ could well be taking quite a few orders from the notebook community.

 

However, speed isn’t enough to help the OCZ SSD when it comes to use on a performance desktop PC. While the drive may have been able to match and even beat the performance of the lightning fast Western Digital Velociraptor in benchmarks such as Windows Startup and Game loading times it really falls behind when it comes down to file copying and general write-intensive tasks. Sure the SSD is able to maintain an equal level of performance across the entire disk, but with the Velociraptor managing to almost match the average transfer speed of the SSD with its minimum transfer speed the OCZ SSD is going to have to get quite a bit faster before it can win any benchmarks hands-down.

  

This combined with the rather limited storage capacity of the device (which left us with about 10GB to play with after installing Vista + apps) positions the 300GB Velociraptor as a much more sensible purchase for the enthusiast seeking extreme performance along with adequate storage capacity. Even when we consider that the prices of SSD have tumbled from around £300 for a 32GB drive down to just over £100, there still really is no competition.

 

 

– Aluminium housing looks classy.

– Extremely good read and latency performance.

– Low heat and power consumption makes it ideal for notebooks.

 

– Price no longer totally ridiculous.

– Write times just can’t compete with a high-end mechanical hard disk.

 

– Still too expensive considering the size.

– Too small to fit anything worthwhile on.

 

 

A big thanks to both OCZ for supplying the SSD and Yoyotech.co.uk for the Velociraptor and RaptorX drives used in today’s review.

 

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