OCZ TRION 100 240GB Solid State Drive Review

Introduction I recently took a closer look at the TRION 100 480GB solid-state drive from OCZ and today the time has come for the 240GB TRION 100. The TRION 100 series is the new value series from OCZ where you don't get the fastest drive on the market, but instead an unbeatable value for very little money. A lot of good things have come from OCZ since they became a part of Toshiba, and the TRION 100 is surely one of them. This TRION 100 SSD is a cost-effective performance upgrade that creates an optimal mix of value and performance for both notebooks and desktop systems. The drive is based around a Toshiba SSD controller and also uses Toshiba's A19 TLC NAND. It is the first OCZ drive series to feature TLC NAND and the first consumer SSD on the market with Toshiba's TLC NAND. Ultrabooks, laptops, and netbooks can all benefit greatly from this drive over a mechanical solution. The TRION 100 is OCZ's first drive to feature DevSleep, making it a perfect companion in a mobile system with its lower power consumption. It only consumes 6mW in DEVSLP mode, 830mW while idle, and 4.8W when active. But the drive is equally great for desktop upgrades on a budget. Home theater PCs, family PCs, and even entry-level gaming rigs can get a great performance boost from this drive for a low cost. OCZ is now basing their endurance rating on the JEDEC industry standard instead of the previously used worst-case scenario. This 240GB model is rated for 60TB Total Bytes Written (TBW) or 55GB per day and a Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF) of 1.5M hours. The series is also backed by OCZ's amazing ShieldPlus warranty where you got a no-hassle, no trouble customer service if the worst case should happen. All you need is the serial number and you'll get a replacement and a return label for the old one. That is a warranty that everyone should provide and the TRION has 3-years of it. This might be a value series, but the TRION 100 still performs pretty good with a sequential performance up to 550MB/s while reading and 520MB/s while writing. The random IOPS come in at 90K for reading and 43K for writing. The drive is assembled without any screws or other parts. The cleverly designed chassis allows the PCB to slide right on in and into position after which the two part case can snap together. No need for any screws at all. The PCB fills about two-thirds of the drive and it is only one side of it that is used. The controller is a Toshiba TC58NC and each of the four TLC NAND packages is 64GB big. We also see a Nanya 128MB RAM chip. The TRION 100 supports SMART, NCQ, TRIM, Idle Garbage collection, and the aforementioned DevSleep. It is backward compatible to earlier SATA revisions. Being a budget drive, we only find the drive in itself and the installation manual inside the box. Notebook users won't need any mounting kits as the 7mm high drive just slides into the appropriate slot. Neither will most desktop users as there aren't many PC cases out there that don't support 2.5-inch drives natively by now. Features Next Gen TLC Technology: Built with premium Toshiba TLC NAND flash Toshiba Controller & Firmware: Leverages Toshiba SSD controller technology Performance Made Affordable: Superior Balance of price and performance Better Battery Life: Optimized for lower energy consumption for longer battery life World-class Quality and Reliability: 100% Toshiba technology built into every drive, keeping data secure ShieldPlus Warranty: Provides an elite, worry-free customer service experience Test Procedure Test system: Supermicro C7Z97-OCE Intel Xeon E3-1230Lv3 Corsair Vengeance 16GB 1866MHz Kingston HyperX 240GB SSD Sapphire R7 240 2GB be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 850W Thermaltake Water 3.0 Performer Software used: AIDA64 Storage Benchmark Anvil's Storage Utilities AS SSD Benchmark ATTO Benchmark CrystalDiskMark PCMark 8 Storage Benchmark IOMeter In a bid to make our testing as thorough and as accurate as possible, we have devised a testing methodology to give us the maximum amount of data. Whilst this means that testing each drive will take considerably longer to test – nearly 36 hours in fact, the picture that we are able to build upon the overall performance of each drive is far clearer, providing a more accurate analysis at how a drive performs under different conditions. I will be testing the drives performance when it is clean and fresh out of the box and then start to fill it up with data, namely 25%, 50% and 75% of the drives capacity and rerun the tests under each of these scenarios. I'll be using the same sample files under each test to keep the results as consistent as possible. The files in question are a collection of files from my personal NAS, composed of a mixture of small and big files, media, programs, and archives. On top of this, I will also take the wear on the NAND into consideration and this process obviously takes a long time to perform – so long under real world conditions that it is simply not practical. In order to accelerate this conditioning process I will use the SSD endurance test that lies within Anvils Storage Utilities and read / write 10TB of data to the drive through a process of filling the drive with thousands of small files of various sizes and compressibility (with randomised duration between each of the writes), then reading each of them back with a randomised time between each file. After this has completed, the data is then erased and the process starts again. This process of conditioning the drive can take anywhere upwards of 12-15 hours on a typical 256GB SATA III SSD, however, the performance and capacity of the drive will influence the time it takes to condition the drive. Following the conditioning process, the benchmarking process described above is repeated again with the volume filled with the same sample data to each percentage between test runs. Furthermore between each benchmark, the drive will get a TRIM command sent and further left alone for a while to make sure the TRIM command has done its job. TRIM can heavily impact a drives performance as it takes place, so allowing a period of time between tests will eliminate this factor and any subsequent false performance figures. On each page that follows with the benchmark results, I have inserted the screenshots from the benchmark results, created a drive analysis chart for fill-level as well as a drive comparison chart for each software used, where possible. AIDA64 AIDA64 is a streamlined Windows diagnostic and benchmarking software for home users. It provides a wide range of features to assist in overclocking, hardware error diagnosis, stress testing, and sensor monitoring. It has unique capabilities to assess the performance of the processor, system memory, and disk drives and is compatible with most Microsoft Windows operating systems. It also has a disk benchmark tool, and that is the one I'll be using. Fresh Drive The Linear Read and Write tests measure the sequential performance by reading or writing all sectors without skipping any. It gives, as the name says, a linear view on the drives overall performance from start to end. The Random Read and Write tests measure the random performance by reading or writing variable sized data blocks at random locations on the surface of the drive. The Random tests are actually a combination of both speed and access times as it moves the position before each new operation. The Access time tests are designed to measure the data access performance by reading or writing small 0.5KB data blocks at random locations on the drive surface. Conditioned Drive The Linear Read and Write tests measure the sequential performance by reading or writing all sectors without skipping any. It gives, as the name says, a linear view on the drives overall performance from start to end. The Random Read and Write tests measure the random performance by reading or writing variable-sized data blocks at random locations on the surface of the drive. The Random tests are actually a combination of both speed and access times as it moves the position before each new operation. The Access time tests are designed to measure the data access performance by reading or writing small 0.5KB data blocks at random locations on the drive surface. Anvil's Storage Utilities Anvil's Storage Utilities is a new benchmarking utility that we have started using here at eTeknix, it's completely free to download and has the ability to test mainly hard drives and solid state drives, but also any other form of storage medium that you can throw at it. As well as testing the drive in a variety of benchmarking tests, it also has a drive endurance test that consistently reads and writes data to the selected medium to give days, months and potentially even years of use in a shorter period of time to see how the drive copes in the longer term. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Drive Performance Drive Comparison For the purpose of drive comparison, I will be using the performance figures from both unconditioned and conditioned tests with 0% data-fill. AS SSD The AS SSD software determines the performance of Solid State Drives (SSD). The tool contains five synthetic and three practice tests. The synthetic tests determine the sequential and random read and write performance of the SSD. These tests are performed without using the operating system caches. In Sequential tests, the program measures the time it takes to read and write a 1 GB file respectively. To give a clearer picture of the drives tested, I've chosen to include all tests. Special the copy test is one that I think is relevant on the consumer level as it gives the user a view into one of the operations he's going to do many times. New Drive Conditioned Drive Performance Drive Comparison For the purpose of drive comparison, I will be using the performance figures from both unconditioned and conditioned tests with 0% data-fill. ATTO The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Performance Drive Comparison For the purpose of drive comparison, I will be using the performance figures from both unconditioned and conditioned tests with 0% data-fill. CrystalDiskMark CrystalDiskMark is a small HDD benchmark utility for your hard drive that enables you to rapidly measure sequential and random 4KB/512KB read/write speeds. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Performance Drive Comparison For the purpose of drive comparison, I will be using the performance figures from both unconditioned and conditioned tests with 0% data-fill. IOmeter OMeter is an I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool for single and clustered systems. It is used as a benchmark and troubleshooting tool and is easily configured to replicate the behaviour of many popular applications. One commonly quoted measurement provided by the tool is IOPS. IOMeter allows the configuration of disk parameters such as the ‘Maximum Disk Size’, ‘Starting Disk Sector’ and ‘# of Outstanding I/Os’. This allows a user to configure a test file upon which the ‘Access Specifications’ configure the I/O types to the file. Configurable items within the Access Specifications are Transfer Request Size, Percent Random/Sequential distribution, Percent Read/Write Distribution, Aligned I/O’s, Reply Size, and TCP/IP status among others. Sequential Performance Random 4K Performance PCMark 8 PCMark 8 Storage benchmark is used test the performance of SSDs, HDDs and hybrid drives with traces recorded from Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office and a selection of popular games. You can test any recognized storage device, including local external drives. Unlike synthetic storage tests, the PCMark 8 Storage benchmark highlights real-world performance differences between storage devices. Fresh Drive Conditioned Drive Software: SSD Guru OCZ has a great piece of software to go along with their drives and it is called the OCZ SSD Guru. It will provide you with all the relevant information on your drive as well as the tools you need for maintenance. It is available for Windows and Linux, and also as a bootable version. The first pane is the overview pane and that is where you find all the information, both on your drive as seen above and on the system itself as seen below. Both are important in case you need tech support or just need to trouble shoot some problems as it has all the vital information in one place. SMART details can also be read out and are quick and easy to read thanks to the added icons and view mode. The Tuner tab allows you to optimize your SSDs performance. You can send a manual TRIM command to the drive as well as set the over provisioning - that is once you initialized the drive. Maintenance includes Firmware update with an automatic online check as well as the secure erase feature. Whether you can use the secure erase depends on your setup. You might need to use the bootable version instead. The fourth pane contains a few settings such as logging, monitoring, and possible proxy server details needed to connect to the update feature. The help page provides easy links to both the support section and the support forums. It also contains an easy to copy system report with all the relevant information to help you with what trouble your drive or system might have. Final Thoughts Pricing We can currently only provide an MSRP on the drives as we're launching this review at the same time as the drives are being released. The MSRP for the OCZ TRION 240GB is set to £69.99 in the UK and $87.99 in the US. The other capacity drives available are 120GB, 480GB, and 960GB that will set you back £38.49, £124.99, and £219.99 in the UK and $56.99, $184,99, and $369.99 in the US, respectively. Conclusion OCZ's TRION 100 drive is just the latest of drives that shows what can be done when good people are put together to create a new products. It is another drive packed full of Toshiba's technology and OCZ's knowhow for a complete in-house creation. The drive is designed very simplistic and is made of two pieces that snap right together. There aren't any screws at all as the PCB slides into the drive chassis. The top has a silver OCZ sticker and all the relevant information is on the bottom side sticker as we're used to from OCZ. TRION 100 doesn't break any speed records, but it does very well and incredible when you consider the price tag, this is easily double of what you got just a year ago. You really get a lot of performance for your pennies. There really isn't much to think about with the TRION 100 and you should just get one for your next workstation or notebook to replace that old mechanical HDD, you won't regret it. The speed was good and we barely saw any degradation from the conditioning of the drive. The drive also packs the features you'll want such as TRIM, SMART, NCQ, Garbage collection, and DevSleep. It is also backed by OCZ's ShieldPlus warranty that is the way warranty should be, without hassle and trouble. You get a tree-year ShieldPlus warranty with the TRION 100, making it a very safe bet. Pros Good Performance Cheap ShieldPlus Warranty: 3-years DevSleep, SMART, and TRIM Cons No accessories "OCZ TRION 100 240GB would be a great upgrade on a budget for anyone, may you need the system for work, entertainment, or gaming. Good performance, cheap, and a great warranty." Thank You OCZ for providing us with this sample.