[Brian]

OCZ has announced their latest family of SSDs, the Octane. Leveraging the Indilinx Everest platform and SATA 6Gb/s interface, the OCZ Octane delivers read speeds up to 570 MB/s and writes of 400 MB/s. It's not all about performance though, the Octane is the first 2.5" SSD to hit the 1TB capacity mark and that's within a 7.5mm height.

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[geshel]

Are these prices as aggressive as I think they are? I haven't done a google check yet, but seems like $500 for a 480GB 2.5" SSD is pretty darn good, and a 1TB for $1,000 is awesome.

This is getting *really* close to the point in the curve where I would switch from HDD to SSD for the bulk of my uses. . .

[Brian]

The pricing does look very good, part of the benefit of owning the controller and not having to pay a license fee to SandForce or someone else. OCZ is starting to look pretty brilliant for buying Indilinx. They took a processor that was generally a little stale, but apparently had a good foundation, and are using it throughout their line of SSDs. If OCZ can bring more parts in-house, their SSDs may become even more compelling. For anyone who missed it, OCZ is also contracting branded NAND now...not the same as making it, but you'll see more NAND in their products with OCZ branding on it and not IMFT (Intel/Micron).

[EvilNewbie]

I am thinking about going for this drive instead of the OWC SSD... it seems this drive should "last" longer? Any comments about that?

[Beenthere]

EvilNewbie, on 21 October 2011 - 11:02 AM, said:

I am thinking about going for this drive instead of the OWC SSD... it seems this drive should "last" longer? Any comments about that?

How did you conclude it would "last" longer and what is your definition of "last longer" ?

[Brian]

Unless you're an extreme case, not many are writing to the drives enough to wear out the NAND. While the OCZ drives may be more NAND efficient, I wouldn't put that criteria very high on the buying decision list.

[EvilNewbie]

Beenthere, on 21 October 2011 - 11:19 AM, said:

How did you conclude it would "last" longer and what is your definition of "last longer" ?

Well for instance the 240GB OWC drive is smaller than the 480GB OCZ for around the same price. The 480GB is using 2X nm NAND whereas the 240GB uses 3X nm NAND but the 2X nm NAND supposedly has as much write cycles as the 3X nm NAND from Indilinx controller... so it seems the OCZ Octane has "more" to write and so "lasts longer" as in last more years than OWC's drive? It also has "fast boot" which is nice but I am not sure if it is really as "fast" as it claims... I would be using the SSD for boot and playing online Diablo anyhow... occasionally doing work on it with MS Office and stuff... so it seems that OCZ Octane can do all that and "lasts" longer?

[Brian]

I guess my point before is that the life expectancy for SSDs is 5 years. If you get more you get more...but more write cycles availability is probably not going to be an issue for you for a very long time, if ever.

[mike2h]

Brian, on 21 October 2011 - 02:27 PM, said:

I guess my point before is that the life expectancy for SSDs is 5 years. If you get more you get more...but more write cycles availability is probably not going to be an issue for you for a very long time, if ever.

the way i read that is- outside of write cycles avg life for ssd(i assume consumer) is 5 yrs. pls explain. i am still trying to figure out how to get an overall picture of expected durability:) ik now there are a LOT of factors involved but if u could pls give me a concise vers it would be great. or maybe the explanation is simple & i am making it to complicated...

[Brian]

The five year window is the expected minimum lifespan for an SSD...in general terms, it depends on who you ask. Consumers might cycle a drive 1000 times in those five years, so having 5000 write cycles available vs 3000 is kind of moot for most people. You're more likely to see the drive fail from some sort of corruption, electric failure or flat out irrelevance. SSDs are all made out of quality components these days, they really don't fail all that often.