Once upon a time, there was a PC vendor that wanted to bring a notebook to the market that featured a hard disk RAID array based upon Solid State Drives (SSD).  One thing led to another and the end result was a downward spiral of vapor-ware and unfilled orders. While the HD market continues to recover from that quagmire, the idea of marketing SSD drives is still alive and well. Just about every memory based hardware manufacturer at the 2008 Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show had an SSD drive on display.

     So it wasn't much a surprise when we caught a glimpse of a Solid State Drive on display at OCZ Technology's press table. OCZ is no stranger to innovative technology and their product offerings just keep getting bigger and better. One of OCZ Technology's latest business ventures was the acquisition of Hypersonic, whose "NO LMITS" trademark really defines their product. Their high-end gaming notebook is called the Aviator and one of its available drive options just happens to be the 64GB OCZ Solid State Drive.

     Just in case you are brand new to the technology, Solid State Drives are basically a data storage device that use flash memory to store data. In essence, it's the same technology used in USB flash drives and the many other forms of flash memory used in mobile electronics such as Compact Flash and Secure Digital.

     Unlike typical system RAM, flash memory is non-volatile. That means that its contents are not erased once the power has been removed. While research and development continues to improve the reliability and speed of these devices, the price per gigabyte still remains quite high. However, solid state drives do offer some very distinct advantages, even over the highest performance electromechanical hard drives. The easiest specification to highlight is the data seek time.

     Standard electromechanical hard drives use a rotating platter that rotates under read/write heads. The heads are on a servo controlled arms which move across the platter to different positions depending on the location of the data to be accessed. Data on the outside of the platter is generally accessed quicker than data on the inside. The time it takes for the arms to position the heads over the data and begin the read/write operation is expressed as the seek time. Because a Solid State Drive has no moving parts, the data seek time is considerably less.

Features and Specifications 

     >> Transfer Rates: Read up to 58MB/s /  Write up to 35MB/ sec
     >> Capacity: 64GB / RAID capable
     >> Shock Resistant to 1500G
     >> Notebook Friendly: Low Power Consumption / 2.5" slim drive design
     >> Manufacturer's with a one year warranty / Rated for 2 million hours Meantime Between Failures

Page 1:  Intro Page 2:  Up Close Page 3:  Testing (Part 1) Page 4:  Testing (Part 2) Page 5:  Testing (Part 3) Page 6:  Conclusion