OCZ Arc 100 (240GB)

[HEXUS]

A budget drive with mainstream performance.

Read more.

[theleader]

I hope this solid state drive does not start to loose data after seven days without power, as I've just managed get hold of one!

[devBunny]

OCZ Storage Solutions is understandably keen to shake off the spectre of the older company whose record in reliability left much to be desired.

I'm sure they are but for me the name OCZ equals DNB (do not buy) after a pair of previous OCZ budget 128's both died within just a few months of purchase. A lot of trust and goodwill went down the swannee with them.

[Bagnaj97]

I'm sure they are but for me the name OCZ equals DNB (do not buy) after a pair of previous OCZ budget 128's both died within just a few months of purchase. A lot of trust and goodwill went down the swannee with them.

Which is why they went bust. They're now owned by Toshiba and safe to buy again! I suspect that's partly why the pricing of these drives is good - Toshiba want people to buy them and rebuild the opinion of OCZ SSDs.

[kingpotnoodle]

That endurance figure is terrible, 22TBW - a Crucial BX is over 3x better at 72TBW. For that reason alone the ARC100 is off my consideration list.

[kalniel]

That endurance figure is terrible, 22TBW - a Crucial BX is over 3x better at 72TBW. For that reason alone the ARC100 is off my consideration list.

What are you using it for? By average Hexus use that'd last 10 years to the rated endurance, let alone the real endurance which is likely to be much much higher.

[CooperXS]

That endurance figure is terrible, 22TBW - a Crucial BX is over 3x better at 72TBW. For that reason alone the ARC100 is off my consideration list.

I beg to differ: http://www.kitguru.net/components/ss...it-100tb-mark/

[cheesemp]

I picked up one of these at christmas. £65 in PC World. Its since gone up but it was £15 cheaper than the equivalent crucial MX100 and as it was only going in a budget laptop price was crucial. Been quite happy with it. Glad to see it reviews well.

[ChinesePate]

I also had one of the older OCZs fail on me, however decided to give the brand another chance and picked up 240GB version of this one a month ago. The ShieldPlus promise was something that convinced me, having remembered all the hoops I had to go through when a drive passed away on me in the past.

[Jowsey]

I had an OCZ SSD in the 'bad years', but mine didn't have the funny controller. It's a 60GB Agility 3, worked fine for 3 years with me, now it's working just fine for my older brothers computer. No-one body writes 20GB a day reliably. I upgraded to an MX100 around Christmas and I recently checked it's writes and it was about 150GB worth of writes. Over about 5 months that's maybe 1GB a day.

Ofcourse I may be the exception but I know a lot of people who use their SSD as a boot drive and keep everything else on a mechanical hard drive. I think that most people here could nurse home an SSD for a very long time.

[[DW]Cougho]

I've got the 128GB version of this drive in my HTPC and it's faultless, granted I've only been running it for around 7 months or so but I cannot tell the difference between my Samsung 830 and this.

I'd have no hesitation in using another or recommending one.

[kingpotnoodle]

I beg to differ: http://www.kitguru.net/components/ss...it-100tb-mark/

Then why rate them and warranty them @ 22TBW & 3 years if that were true of all ARC 100 drives? 100TBW endurance means a lot less if they won't honour the warranty past 22TBW.

Anandtech had an article discussing the current "data loss when off" kerfuffle and suggest endurance varies a lot depending on usage conditions with higher operating temperatures probably improving endurance. These constant write tests are not representative of actual endurance in *real* usage anymore than drive ratings are, they probably keep the drive warm and optimal and give a higher endurance figure then general desktop usage would.

Personally I'd rather take a drive with much higher rated endurance and longer warranty for a few ££ more.

[shaithis]

Purchased one of these from Amazon (£67) on Monday for a friends laptop (HP 655), should be fitting it this weekend for him.

Really hoping that they have lost the old OCZ failure rates........

[scaryjim]

... why rate them and warranty them @ 22TBW & 3 years if that were true of all ARC 100 drives? 100TBW endurance means a lot less if they won't honour the warranty past 22TBW. ...

Because warranties are all about fine margins, and mainstream components are all about headline price. You can guarantee they will have done extensive modelling on failures rates, return rates and consumer write loads. Offering a warranty isn't as simple as saying "99.99% of our drives will stand 100TB of writes so we'll warrant to that amount". There are far greater economic considerations than that, and if they can cut 2% off the shelf price of a drive by having a slightly lower or shorter warranty, that may be worth it. A quick browse of Scan suggests that OCZ have managed to undercut the BX100 by around 8%....

[Biscuit]

I still dont understand why they kept the OCZ name.

[ysluxus]

I don't need a super fast SSD, but just one that has high performance over cost, without sudden death at lesat in 5 years. I'm using an SSD, with which I had about 1TB Host Writes in recent 3 months. That means I by average do about 4TB Host Writes in one year. Thus the 22TBW may give me a 5.5 year endurance? It's just enough? The health is now 46% on my SSD.