OCZ Vector 180 960GB SSDs in RAID Review

Introduction

I often read the comment ‘that would be awesome with two 1TB SSDs’ or ‘I would love two of these new SSDs for a RAID setup’ in our comment sections, both here on the page and on Facebook. So what would be more obvious than testing the brand new OCZ Vector 180 960GB Solid State Drive in the available RAID setups.

With two disks at my disposal, my options are limited to just RAID 1, RAID 0, Recovery and the normal single disk modes. Each mode has its ups and downs and there really isn’t one that is better than the others, it comes down to your personal needs. Whether you need capacity, redundancy, speed or a just the baseline, that is your choice.

The new enthusiast drives from OCZ are built on a solid principle of proven components. At the heart is the Indilinx Barefoot 3 M00 SSD controller and it is paired with Toshiba’s A19nm MLC NAND. This is a great combination that will give you top speeds on a reliable drive full of features. The basics are covered with SMART, TRIM, and Garbage collection, but the Vector 180 also features Power Failure management plus (PFM+) to prevent data loss in the event of a sudden power loss.

OCZ’s Vector 180 comes with an official endurance rating of 50GB/day, quite impressive. It also carries the amazing 5-year ShieldPlus warranty if the worst case situation should happen and comes bundled with both Acronis True Image disk cloning software and a 3.5-inch adapter bracket. Other available capacities are 120GB, 240GB, and 480GB

We saw sequential speeds up to 550MB/s while reading and 510MB/s while writing in our one disk review, but how well will the Vector 180 perform in the different RAID setups?