Solid state drives have had a mixed reputation from their inception. Small capacity, unstable drivers, and of course, expense. An ‘emerging technology’ if there ever was one. However recently, things have started to change. Capacities are on the rise, costs are lowering, and the stability and performance are finally where the prosumer can realistically consider one. One of the major advantages of SSD’s are the insanely fast small random transfers (think booting up, and launching apps). This is where SSD’s can move small chunks of data at lightning rates, and really push ‘snappiness’ to the next level.

The top dog for quite some time have been the Intel brand X-25’s. Excellent transfer speeds, great reputation… hideous cost. If only there was a happy compromise.

Enter the Vertex series from OCZ.

One of the few SSD’s that features over 190MBs [i]sustained[/i] writing speeds, it means that this is a true workhorse drive, and not just a cheap party trick upgrade. As barefeats recently found;

“For the MacBook Pro and MacBook, it gives you an internal boot drive that’s 4 times faster than the fastest factory HDD doing small random transfers and 3 times faster doing large sustained transfers”

4 times faster is nothing to sneeze at, and as I found, probably the single best way to improve general computing that you can currently undertake. Don’t bother with the extra .2Ghz when you’re building your new machine, consider putting aside some dollars for one of these instead.

By no stretch of the imagination am I an absolute power user. If you start talking to me about Disk I/O throughput and bench marks, my eyes are going to glaze over and I’ll nod along with you, scared out of my wits that you might start debating the merits of Jmicron controllers. However, I do notice real world changes. How long an App takes to boot, (I’m looking at you after effects, and don’t you try to slink away, Garage Band), how quickly I can open a client’s 190Mb PSD in front of them, and how smooth my overall computing time is.

Installation is an absolute breeze.

It works exactly like any other Hard drive, so on the 2008 Unibody’s, it’s a 3 minute job. Pop open the bottom panel, disconnect the battery, undo a single screw, and swap over the drives. Done! Boot from your restore DVD, and within 14 minutes (on the Macbook Pro), you’ll have a fresh install of Leopard. (Even faster for Snow Leopard).

The OCZ is a quantum leap in terms of snappiness. Jeremy Clarkson would describe it as ‘mental’.

In this video, we launch 18 apps as fast as you can click them, straight after booting up.
The machine is a 2.53Ghz Macbook Pro, with 4Gb of memory, and the OCZ 120Gb Vertex.

Click through to Vimeo to watch in HD

(for the record, there are several intensive apps in there (PS CS4, Aperture)

The OCZ Vertex line up consists of 4 different drives.

30GB [R 230Mb/s W 135Mb/s]
60GB [R 230MB/s W 135MB/s]
120GB [R 250MB/s W 180MB/s]
250GB [R 250MB/s W 100MB/s

As you can see, the 120Gb drive peaks in terms of performance, and it’s the drive I’d recommend.

The model I tested (and have subsequently bought) is the 120Gb- OCZSSD2-1VTX120G. It’s the ‘for Mac’ edition, although this has absolutely no advantage other than the finder logo instead of a plain OCZ icon. When I purchased mine they were the same price.

For those of you who do want more intense bench marks, bare feats’ article on this drive can be found here;

http://www.barefeats.com/hard118.html

and OCZ’s Vertex website is here;

http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/flash_drives/ocz_vertex_series_sata_ii_2_5-ssd

I purchased the drive from Umart.com.au, for $590.

Pros: Ridiculously fast access times, totally silent, more resilient to impact (drop) damage, runs cooler, affordable price points.
Cons: Overall space still limited in comparison to HDD’s, requires windows to flash the firmware.