OCZ
120GB Vertex 2

2.5" Solid State Drive

  With sheer performance that outpaces the competition, the Vertex 2 doesn’t lose sight of what makes an SSD the ideal storage alternative to hard drives and delivers the quality, reliability, and durability demanded by consumers that will not settle for anything but the best. Built with SATA-2 3Gb/s, the Vertex 2 Series easily integrates into today’s mobile and desktop platforms.

A Solid State Drive or SSD is a type of storage device (like a hard drive), but with no moving parts. They are manufactured using a type of flash memory (NAND), similar to that found in devices such as USB memory sticks. But let me start by making something very clear, Solid State Drives (SSD) are not cheap, especially when you consider the capacity you are purchasing. £180 is only going to buy you a drive with a storage capacity of around 120GB, whereas £100 could buy you a 2,000GB (2TB) Conventional hard drive; so if you're after capacity stop reading now, because this device is all about performance.

Why SSDs; well there are many advantages to using an SSD, they are very fast because they don't use a set of spinning platters and read/write heads that move to access information like conventional hard drives, they are based on NAND memory chips that have no moving parts, which is another advantage as no moving parts improves reliability. They also produce absolutly no sound and little heat, they even weigh less than conventional hard drives; and if this was not enough they also use a lot less power, typically 2 watts, which is great for any device that relies on battery power.

The Vertex 2 is a 2.5" device, which conforms to a standard laptop hard drive size and so can be used as a direct replacement for a conventional hard drive in most laptops, as long as they use a Serial ATA II interface. But don't let it's small size put you off installing it inside a desktop machine, as the Vertex 2 comes with a handy 2.5" to 3.5" drive adaptor plate, that allows you to mount the 2.5" drive in a standard 3.5" desktop hard drive bay.

From the moment you begin to install your Operating System on this device you begin to realize the difference a very fast hard drive can have on your computer. Almost every aspect of Windows is improved, startup is incredibly fast, (in fact my system takes longer in it's post BIOS boot screens that it does loading Windows 7), shut down often seems instant and most applications lunch within a couple of seconds. Not to mention the time taken for more mundane tasks such as anti-virus scanning, which is much improved.

As with most of my reviews I'm not going to bog myself down with masses of benchmarks, I will let other sites do that, so above are just a few of the results I obtained.

SSD sizes are now hitting the 500 Gigabyte realm, but unfortunately they are, at the time of writing, still prohibit ally expensive which makes them difficult to recommend if you have a large amount of data to store. For me, SSDs make more sense when used as a dedicated system drive, where overall system performance is improved significantly, but as prices drop and drive sizes increase I can see a time when data hoarders like myself will not only want an SSD as a Windows drive, but will add a second larger capacity SSD as a dedicated data store.

Advantages:

No moving parts increase reliability.
No drive noise.
Little heat generated.
Less power required (2 Watts typical)
Weigh less than a conventional hard drive.
Fantastic Read/Write Performance.
Good Warranty and Support from OCZ.
 

Disadvantages:

High price compared to capacity

 

Conclusion: Many people upgrade their memory or processor to improve performance, but few people seem to consider the benefits of fitting a much faster hard drive to their system. The OCZ Vertex 2 SSD is one of the most impressive upgrades I have done to date, every aspect of my Windows 7 system has improved and is now incredibly responsive, what is more impressive is this upgrade was from an already speedy 10,000prm Western Digital Raptor conventional hard drive!

If you have a £180 burning a hole in your pocket for a computer upgrade, do not hesitate in purchasing an OCZ Vertex 2...it has just been given the highest hardware review score ever by The Glitch...and it's limited capacity vs high price is the only thing that ultimately prevents this from being a 100% score.

The Glitch Five Star Award

Overall Score

98%

For more information and latest pricing visit my Hard Drive page.
For my frequently asked questions on SSD's visit my FAQ page.

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