CES 2012: OCZ Shows Lightfoot, Thunderbolt External SATA Drive

Subject: Storage, Shows and Expos | January 8, 2012 - 03:01 PM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: thunderbolt, ssd, ocz, lightfoot, CES

Today at the Storage Visions conference before the start of CES 2012, OCZ was on hand to show off a few new items they have planned for the year.  First up is the Lightfoot, a successor to the OCZ Enyo external USB 3.0 SSD that we reviewed and really enjoyed our time with. 

As you can see it looks quite a bit bigger than the original Enyo and that is on account of the increased storage capacity.  You can expect to see sizes as high as 1TB and it will also be available in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB.  

Here is the Thunderbolt connector that many a Mac user and, hopefully soon, PC users will be able to take advantage of for improved throughput with transfer rates as high as 750 MB/s quoted by OCZ. 

OCZ claims that the one of the benefits of moving to the Thunderbolt interconnect is improved latency and highly accurate time synchronization that will allow for professional audio and video work to be done directly on the drive.  We are pretty eager to see if this is the case...

The time frame for this device is still unknown but we'll see if we can get more information this week by asking the right people. 

UPDATE: OCZ is telling us that Lightfoot will cost about $2/GB, so that 1TB model will run around $2000.  For those a bit more frugal, you can get the 128GB option for something like $250.  

PC Perspective's CES 2012 coverage is sponsored by MSI Computer.

Follow all of our coverage of the show at http://pcper.com/ces!

Three new drives from Corsair, a pair of SandForce and a single Marvell

Subject: Storage | January 2, 2012 - 03:12 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: corsair, Force GT, Performance Pro, sata 6Gbs, ssd, SF-2281 controller, synchronous NAND

When dealing with data that can be compressed there is nothing like the SandForce controller to get the job done.  Corsair went with the SF-2281 controller for both their 180GB and 240GB Force  GT SSDs, but they chose a Marvell controller for the 256GB Performance Pro model.  The difference in controllers shows up in Legit Reviews benchmarking, with tests involving compressible data putting the Sandforce drives well in the lead but with the Performance Pro drive providing much more consistent results and leading in real world applications.  Read on to see if your budget and storage desires can be met by one of Corsair's new SSDs.

"So, what have we learned from this little round up? First off, you can't go wrong with any of the drives here. All feature very fast SATA III performance and come with a standard three year warranty. The Force GT drives promise read and write specifications of up to 555MB/s reads and 525MB/s writes. This is something we observed on the ATTO benchmark where highly compressible data was used. On other benchmarks, the scores were a fair bit lower as the SandForce controllers rely on real time compression of data to optimize performance and the referenced benchmarks used already compressed data. The 240GB fared a little better than the 180GB drive as higher density NAND tends to be a little faster along with slightly different architecture..."

Here are some more Storage reviews from around the web:

Storage

• OCZ Octane 128GB @ AnandTech
• RunCore Pro V 120GB SATA III Solid State Drive @ TweakTown
• Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD @ Funky Kit
• Crucial M4 256GB SSD @ Funky Kit
• Mach Xtreme MX-DS Turbo 120GB SSD @ kitguru
• Corsair Performance Pro Series 256 GB Review @ OCC
• Patriot Pyro SE SSD Review @ Bjorn3D
• GoldKey USB Data Security Token Review @ Legit Reviews
• Super Talent USB 3.0 Express ST4 32GB Flash Drive Review @ Madshrimps
• Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 64GB Flash Drive Review @ Techgage
• Kingston HyperX 3.0 64GB Flash Drive Review @ Legit Reviews
• Hitachi LifeStudio Desk Plus 2TB External Hard Drive @ eTeknix
• Hitachi Touro Mobile Pro 750GB Portable Hard Drive Review @ Legit Reviews
• Hitachi TOURO DESK PRO 3TB USB 3.0 External HDD Review @ Real World Labs
• Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 64GB @ Bjorn3D
• QNAP TS-419P II NAS @ X-bit Labs
• IOCELL NETDISK Hard Drive Enclosure Review @ ThinkComputers
• Zalman ZM-VE200 2.5” HDD Enclosure/Virtual Drive Review @ Tweaknews
• Synology DS212 2-bay NAS Server for Workgroups and Offices Review @ Madshrimps

Podcast #183 - AMD Radeon HD 7970, HDD Price Analysis, a 4K Display, GTX780 Rumors, and more!

Subject: Editorial | December 29, 2011 - 02:11 PM | Ken Addison
Tagged: ssd, podcast, nvidia, Intel, hdd, amd, 7970, 780

PC Perspective Podcast #183 - 12/29/2011

Join us this week as we talk about the AMD Radeon HD 7970, HDD Price Analysis, a 4K Display, GTX780 Rumors, and more!

You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.

The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!

• iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
• RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader
• MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file

Hosts: Ryan Shrout, Josh Walrath, Jeremy Hellstrom, and Allyn Malvantano

This Podcast is brought to you by MSI Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!

Program length: 1:13:37

Program Schedule:

1. 0:00:30 Introduction
2. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
3. http://pcper.com/podcast
4. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
5. 0:02:08 Galaxy GeForce GTX 570 MDT X4 Overclocked Graphics Card Review
6. 0:12:33 AMD Radeon HD 7970 3GB Graphics Card Review - Tahiti at 28nm
7. 0:29:25 SSD and HDD Price Analysis: End of Shortage In Sight?
8. 0:37:15 The EIZO DuraVision FDH3601 is a 4k x 2k Display, and We Want It
9. 0:41:53 GeForce GTX 780 Leak
10. 0:45:47 Battlefield 3 Frame Rate Drop Issue with GeForce GPUs
11. 0:49:42 AMD Refreshes the A-Series APUs for the New Year
12. 0:53:40 Richard Huddy is now Intel Inside. Well I'll be d'AMD.
13. 0:55:40 Intel Releases New Cedar Trail Atom Processors
14. 0:57:35 http://www.pcper.com/news/Processors/Intel-Medfield-x86-SoC-Targets-Android-Phones-and-Tablets
15. 1:04:00 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
    1. Ryan: AIDA64
    2. Jeremy: Ice Machine
    1. Josh: If you haven't bought one before...
    2. Allyn: Google Voice to PSTN (OBi100)
16. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
17. http://pcper.com/podcast   
18. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
19. Closing

SSD and HDD Price Analysis: End of Shortage In Sight?

Subject: Storage | December 18, 2011 - 11:20 AM | Ryan Shrout
Tagged: WD, thailand, ssd, Seagate, hdd, Hard Drive, flooding

The hard drive industry might be recovering more quickly than expected and the entire tech field should be hoping that is the case.  We have been covering the unfortunate disaster in Thailand and the accompanying disruption in the world of storage since things first started hitting the fan in October.  The initial result was a very dramatic price increase on traditional spinning disks - prices going up as much as 200% in some cases.  This week we got our hands on some very interesting data from Dynamite Data, a company focused on channel monitoring, that they were willing to let us share with you.

First, the bad news that we already know about - the price increases we have seen percolate throughout the entire industry in the last two months.

Click to Enlarge

This graph shows the average price of the top 50 spinning disk drives over the last year in red and the very specific Western Digital Velociraptor 150GB pricing on Amazon.com in blue.  You can see that around October 16th the big price increase began and over the entire ecommerce span that Dynamite Data monitors, prices on the top 50 HDDs went up by 42%.  And while not shown in the graph, other provided data shows that at its peak the low-cost leaders in the HDD market increased their prices by 150% as of early December.

Why did this happen?  Looking at inventory levels clearly shows the drop in availability.

Click to Enlarge

Based on those same top 50 SKUs, we saw ecommerce inventory drop by 90% in late October (in less than one week!) after the first impact on the supply chain that occurred on October 8th. What is interesting is that it took a week or more for the price changes to take place based on the analysis of the disaster in Thailand.  Much to the dismay of many of the conspiracy theorists out there though this data definitely backs up the price increases from WD, Seagate and others. 

There is an uplifting bit of news in both of the above the graphs though - look towards the end of the time lines of gathered data.  Both show movement in the direction of consumer's interests: a jump in inventory and a drop in average pricing.  WD announced on November 30th that the first of its production facilities was back online and we are already seeing results.  Of course the CEO of Seagate is still claiming that it will take more than a year for the industry to recover but it looks like supply may increase at a quicker rate than initially expected. 

Finally, just for a bit of added bonus coverage, many have wondered if the price increase on traditional spinning drives would affect the pricing of SSDs.  Well, it looks like did at least for a 10 day span.

Click to Enlarge

Over the last year prices for solid state drives have dropped by 23% on the top 50 devices available with one minor hiccup.  In a 10 day period between the end of October and early November, there was an SSD price increase that isn't explainable by any kind of inventory changes or supply line changes.  This was likely due to the HDD shortage and vendors looking to maximize profits when consumers didn't have access to the low cost hard drives they were used to.  But because the price increase lasted such a short time I think we can clearly see that customers didn't fall for the ploy and the hiccup was quickly self-corrected.

Even though we have been monitoring prices on our own since the Thailand disaster first occurred, it is great to get some hard data to put alongside our presumptions.  While there is tons of bad news still to digest for at least the first two quarters of 2012, the information provided by Dynamite Data provides some hope that the worst is behind us.  If you are interested in more analysis of this data and you will be at CES in January, you should stop by the Storage Visions conference where there will be a short talk on the topic. 

Podcast #182 - Intel Core i7-3930K, AMD 7000 Series rumors, a new low price SSD from OCZ and more!

Subject: Editorial | December 15, 2011 - 01:57 PM | Ken Addison
Tagged: ssd, podcast, ocz, nvidia, macbook pro, Intel, hdd, gigabyte, dell, apple, amd

PC Perspective Podcast #182 - 12/15/2011

Join us this week as we talk about the Intel Core i7-3930K, AMD 7000 Series rumors, a new low price SSD from OCZ and more!

You can subscribe to us through iTunes and you can still access it directly through the RSS page HERE.

The URL for the podcast is: http://pcper.com/podcast - Share with your friends!

• iTunes - Subscribe to the podcast directly through the iTunes Store
• RSS - Subscribe through your regular RSS reader
• MP3 - Direct download link to the MP3 file

Hosts: Josh Walrath, Jeremy Hellstrom, and Allyn Malvantano

This Podcast is brought to you by MSI Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!

Program length: 1:15:55

Program Schedule:

1. 0:00:32 Introduction
2. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
3. http://pcper.com/podcast
4. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
5. 0:02:54 Dell Inspiron 14z Notebook Review: A Portable Workhorse
6. 0:03:57 Gigabyte E350N-USB3 Fusion Mini ITX Motherboard Review
7. 0:08:12 Video Perspective: Antec Eleven Hundred Case Review
8. 0:12:20 Intel Core i7-3930K Sandy Bridge-E Processor
9. 0:23:27 This Podcast is brought to you by MSI Computer, and their all new Sandy Bridge Motherboards!
   
10. 0:24:15 Some Details About AMD’s 7000 Series Graphics Cards Leak To Internet
11. 0:27:00 Bad for reviewers, great for gamers ... AMD will allow non-reference Tahiti graphics cards
12. 0:32:10 How much of PCI-E 3.0 is just marketing speak right now
13. 0:36:05 OCZ Technology Petrol SATA 6Gbps SSDs Reduce SSD Deployment Costs by Thirty Percent (Hynix flash)
14. 0:42:30 Two Catalysts from AMD; 11.12 and a highly recommended preview version of 12.1
15. 0:45:05 Intel Scales Back Sales Outlook Due To Hard Drive Shortage
16. 0:50:10 Apple May Bring High Pixel Density Displays To MacBook Pro Notebooks
17. 0:57:56 Voicemail - 3d gaming, special graphics card, what games, etc?
18. 1:03:54 Voicemail - SSDs - SF drive and Gaming
19. 1:07:12 Hardware / Software Pick of the Week
    1. Ryan: 4GB to 8GB of memory - do it!!
    2. Jeremy: How have I never thought of this? Also, the 3930K since it proved to be about 95%+ of the performance for about 60% of the cost ... if you can find it
    1. Josh: You Monster!
    2. Allyn: Cheap SSD's for the holidays, do it!
20. 1-888-38-PCPER or podcast@pcper.com
21. http://pcper.com/podcast   
22. http://twitter.com/ryanshrout and http://twitter.com/pcper
23. Closing

OCZ Technology Petrol SATA 6Gbps SSDs Reduce SSD Deployment Costs by Thirty Percent

Subject: Storage | December 13, 2011 - 01:02 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: ssd, sata 6Gbs, petrol, ocz

SAN JOSE, CA - Dec. 13, 2011 - OCZ Technology Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:OCZ), a leading provider of high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs), today launched the Indilinx Everest-based Petrol SSD Series. The Petrol Series enables further adoption of SSDs in cost-sensitive applications, while taking advantage of real world performance and complete feature set of the Indilinx Everest platform.

"Until today, SSD adoption has been limited to high performance applications due to the high cost of SSDs in relation to slower rotating discs, and we are proud to once again close the gap in pricing without sacrificing durability," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology. "The new Petrol Series showcases the flexibility of the Indilinx Everest platform and NDurance™ Technology, allowing OCZ to deliver the benefits of SSDs to a wide new set of applications while retaining the superior real world performance and reduced latency that separate Everest-based SSDs from our competitors."

The OCZ Petrol Series delivers bandwidth up to 400MB/s and 35,000 IOPS, and is optimized for the complete spectrum of file types and sizes. Additionally, advanced features unique to Indilinx, such as proprietary page mapping algorithms, allow for steady mixed-workload performance, and innovative latency reduction technology enables superior access times as low as 0.06ms. Petrol ensures the most consistent and reliable performance as well as minimized performance degradation even after the drive's storage capacity is highly utilized.

The OCZ Petrol SSD Series will be available in models ranging from 64GB-512GB capacities throughout OCZ's global channel in the coming weeks.

High Octane drives from OCZ

Subject: Storage | December 12, 2011 - 02:14 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: ocz, Octane, Octane 512GB, Indilinx Everest, Indilinx Barefoot, ssd, sata 6Gbs

As has been covered on the front page before, OCZ is making their new Octane lineup of SSDs a little confusing for the enthusiast.  If you are not careful you can end up with the non-SATA 6Gbs S2 model.  The new Octane series does offer an advantage to those using non-compressible data, the Indilinx controller does not do the same compression technique which SandForce uses which will make the performance of this drive consistent regardless of the data being manipulated.  As you might expect Legit Reviews testing does see the top speeds of the new Octane lagging behind SandForce based drives in some cases but the overall performance is neck and neck with Intel as they also do not compress data.  Check out the full review to see a return to Indilinx and a renewal of competition for SandForce controllers.

"It's interesting to see how OCZ is marketing these Octane new Solid State Drives. They are 'Indilinx infused' vesrus 'SandForce driven'. Indilinx drives have nDurance technology while SandForce has DuraClass technology. I can't help but be reminded of the movie Coming To America where Cleo McDowell comments on his feud with McDonald's: "Look... me and the McDonald's people got this little misunderstanding. See, they're McDonald's... I'm McDowell's. They got the Golden Arches, mine is the Golden Arcs. They got the Big Mac, I got the Big Mick. We both got two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles and onions, but their buns have sesame seeds. My buns have no seeds..."

Here are some more Storage reviews from around the web:

Storage

• Corsair Force GT Series 240 GB and Corsair Force 3 Series 240 GB Solid State Drives @ X-bit Labs
• Samsung 830 SATA III 6Gbps 128GB SSD @ XSReviews
• Silicon Power Velox V30 60 GB SSD @ techPowerUp
• Samsung 830 SATA3 SSD 256GB @ OC3D
• Patriot Pyro SE 120GB & 240GB Review @ OCC
• ADATA S510 120GB Solid State Drive @ kitguru
• Patriot Pyro SE Solid State Drive @ Benchmark Reviews
• SSD Components and Make Up - An SSD Primer @ The SSD Review
• Kingston Earth Angel USB Drive @ HardwareBistro
• SilverStone RVS02 SATA Enclosure @ Phoronix
• G-Technology G-DRIVE Mobile HDD @ Tweaktown
• QNAP TurboNAS TS-419P II NAS Server Review @ Real World Labs
• Synology DS212 NAS Review @ Tech-Reviews
• Cyberlink Power2Go Review @ Hi Tech Legion

Careful which model of OCZ Octane you pick up

Subject: Storage | December 6, 2011 - 02:47 PM | Jeremy Hellstrom
Tagged: Octane, ssd, sata 6Gps, ocz, Octane 512GB, Indilinx Everest

If you are looking at OCZ SSDs and are considering the Octane line, please bear in mind that the S2 model which is selling for less than the non-S2 model is a SATA 3Gbp/s drive not a new 6Gb/s capable drive.  The testing done at The Tech Report was on the 6Gbp/s model and they compared this Indilinx Everest powered SSD against a variety of competing SSDs.  The drive comes with a 3 year warranty and comes in 128GB, 256GB, the 512GB model The Tech Report reviewed as well as a 1TB model which will cost a pretty penny.  If you do choose a smaller drive, remember that the reduced channel count will make the drive perform more slowly than the larger models.

"OCZ bought SSD controller maker Indilinx earlier this year, and the first product of that acquisition is now out. Join us for a look at the Octane SSD and its new Everest controller."

Here are some more Storage reviews from around the web:

Storage

• OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 240 GB Review @ OCC
• Patriot Pyro SE 120GB @ Tweaktown
• Intel SSD 520 Series 'Sandforce Driven' SSD Close To Release @ The SSD Review
• Crucial m4 256GB SATA 6Gbit/s SSD Review @ Techgage
• OCZ RevoDrive 3 PCI-Express SSD Review @ OCIA
• Kingston HyperX 240GB Solid State Drive Review @ ThinkComputers
• Samsung 830 Series 512GB SSD @ kitguru
• NVELO Dataplex SSD Cache Tested With 7 mSATA SSDS @ The SSD Review
• Seagate 750GB Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid Drive Review @ PCSTATS
• Seagate Momentus XT 750GB Gen 2 (ST750LX003) @ Bjorn3D
• Silverstone Treasure TS04 2.5" USB 3.0 Drive @ circuitREMIX
• SilverStone Raven RVS02 External USB 3.0 HDD / SSD Enclosure Review @ Legit Reviews
• Synology DiskStation DS212j and DS212+ @ Legion Hardware
• QNAP TS-419P II NAS Network Storage Server @ Benchmark Reviews
• Synology DiskStation DS212j NAS Server Review @ Real World Labs
• Increase RAID Rebuild / rsync Performance for QNAP NAS @ Computing on Demand
• IOCELL NetDISK 351UNE Network Storage Device @ Benchmark Reviews
• Silicon Power Diamond D05 750GB USB 3.0 @ techPowerUp