OCZ launches ultra fast SSD, promising lower price, higher performance

OCZ Technology today unveiled the next generation of its consumer-class solid state drive (SSD), the 2.5-in Onyx 2 series , which it said is faster, more durable and more affordable that its predecessor.

OCZ's Onyx 2 SSD

The new Onyx 2 series uses multi-level cell NAND flash and a SandForce chip, indicating that OCZ is moving away from the Indilinx Amigos controller it used earlier Onyx SSDs. The SandForce chip helps the new drive deliver top read/write speeds of 270MB/sec and 265MB/sec, respectively.

The original Onyx SSD series had a maximum read/write speed of 150MB/sec and 120MB/sec, respectively. "The new Onyx 2 Series SSDs give customers the very best of both worlds when it comes to performance and value, and they are an ideal solution for mobile and desktop users that want to take advantage of all the benefits that SSDs offer over traditional rotational based drives," Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group, said in a statement.

The SandForce-driven Onyx 2 delivers up to 10,000 random write I/O per second (IOPS) using 4k chunks of data. The new SSD series is being marketed as a hard drive replacement for netbooks, laptops and home desktops. The Onyx 2 offers TRIM support for Windows 7 upgrade.

OCZ Onyx 2 SSDs are available in 120GB and 240GB capacities. The 120GB SSD will sell for around $185 retail and the 240GB model for about $410. The drives come with a 2-year warranty and technical support.