Great review as always, I might consider moving all my Steam/Origin/Uplay games collection (which is roughly ~2TB) to an SSD like this in the not too distant future, while having a "higher-end" smaller SSD for OS and just a few more "demanding" games. Price is still not quite there, but it's on the right path. 🙂 Also nice to find out about OCZ ShieldPlus warranty system, sounds great!

Great review as always, I might consider moving all my Steam/Origin/Uplay games collection (which is roughly ~2TB) to an SSD like this in the not too distant future, while having a "higher-end" smaller SSD for OS and just a few more "demanding" games. Price is still not quite there, but it's on the right path. 🙂 Also nice to find out about OCZ ShieldPlus warranty system, sounds great!

Don't forget to symlink Steam\SteamApps\Downloading for lightning fast Steam updates: http://forums.guru3d.com/showpost.php?p=5088805&postcount=11

Great review as always. Toshiba and OCZ really do make for some great products.

So I have one thing on my mind here that I've been made aware of this last few days of reading a few SSD reviews... Samsung made it's 840 EVO TLC based drive on a 19nm process - all seemed fine until they later started dropping like flies... For the 850 EVO TLC drive they reverted to a 40nm process for better durability. So why would this OCZ 19nm TLC drive be better than Samsung's dramatic failure ?

Interesting review, thanks Hilbert, as always. I was interested in how OCZ now presents itself on the market, and like you mentioned in the conclusion, how reliable they are. I've had an OCZ Vertex 2 EX as my first SSD, and I was a bit disappointed to have it see dying just after two years, not too long after warranty ended. So a three years guarantee and an additional plan, combined with the presumably low failure rates looks good to me! As I'm not sure I will be buying a Samsung SSD in the near future (twice burned with two 840evos and the crappy magician software and no fix for the hardware issue therein), I'm trying to get a glimpse on how the competition is doing.

What an absolute dog of a drive compared to the competition, you would have to not know about any competition in order to buy this junk.

So I have one thing on my mind here that I've been made aware of this last few days of reading a few SSD reviews... Samsung made it's 840 EVO TLC based drive on a 19nm process - all seemed fine until they later started dropping like flies... For the 850 EVO TLC drive they reverted to a 40nm process for better durability. So why would this OCZ 19nm TLC drive be better than Samsung's dramatic failure ?

The 840 EVO drive looks like it's been fixed with the latest firmware update that came in April. That's my experience with my 840 EVO drive too. Read Speed of Old Data is now no longer an issue with the latest firmware. I would be a bit wary of buying this OCZ drive for fear of a similar problem being exposed.

What an absolute dog of a drive compared to the competition, you would have to not know about any competition in order to buy this junk.

Yes, the performance of this drive is pretty woeful, which didn't really seem to come accross in the Conclusions of this article, but Toms Hardware did a review of this drive and was quite clear that it comes bottom of the pack in terms of performance, and that the only saving grace will be if they lower the price further to make it competetive. The 850 EVO is a far better buy, because performance is dramatically better and the same price. Here's the review: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/ocz-trion-100-series-ssd,review-33254.html

Forget about performance, check out the power usage: http://www.anandtech.com/show/9408/ocz-trion-100-240gb-480gb-960gb-review Absolutely horrid attempt by Toshiba, and another serious blow to the OCZ brand name. There is no excuse for this junk being priced anywhere near the Samsung 850 EVO or the Crucial BX100.

I mean, performance is a thing to discuss, but power...? 5W of power, who cares about that with a gaming rig that easily uses 500W or more? edit: Unless you plan to buy one for a laptop replacement or similar things, of course. Still you're right, Samsung and Cruicial are the ones to get, just like in the past months / years.

I mean, performance is a thing to discuss, but power...? 5W of power, who cares about that with a gaming rig that easily uses 500W or more? Still you're right, Samsung and Cruicial are the ones to get, just like in the past months / years.

Mobile, mobile, mobile.

Mobile, mobile, mobile.

Yeah, true, didn't think about that. Don't have a laptop though, so I usually don't consider mobile devices, my bad.

The 840 EVO drive looks like it's been fixed with the latest firmware update that came in April. That's my experience with my 840 EVO drive too. Read Speed of Old Data is now no longer an issue with the latest firmware. I would be a bit wary of buying this OCZ drive for fear of a similar problem being exposed.

Yup, the firmware update definitely helped from what I heard about the net, I thought it was fixed too. Sadly reading the following excerpt from a current [H]ard|OCP review makes the firmware patch sound like it is only a band aid slapped on a critical wound and will only slow the inevitable down (in some cases?) - I certainly have not heard such a negative slant against the 840 drives before this, but Samsung abandoning 19nm makes it look bad. Perhaps the 40nm process is partly required for the new 3D NAND construction and 19nm is not actually all That weak for NAND transistors?:

Without going into a full-blown physics lesson, tiny features on the NAND chips that SSDs use to store data cause problems. Ultimately, if you want to fit more capacity into a given package size, you’ll need to keep shrinking the transistors that comprise NAND cells. It’s enormously expensive for NAND manufacturers to switch processes, and can have unintended consequences like the ones Samsung ran into with the earlier 840 EVO. To recap, the 840 EVO used 19nm TLC (Triple Level Cell) NAND, making for some very wee transistors. It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Everything was rosy and the 840 EVO racked up awards and universal acclaim for a year or so, until they started dying en masse and seeing widespread performance degradation. It turns out that the transistors were just too tiny for their own good. A few semi-effective firmware fixes, a lot of dead drives, and a considerable number of cranky customers later, and Samsung has gone a different route with the 850 Pro. The 850 Pro was the first commercial application of 3D NAND, or V-NAND, as they’ve called it. The "Triple Level" in "Triple Level Cell" refers to the number of charge states that each transistor can express, and has nothing to do with the physical topography. The transistors in traditional TLC, MLC, and SLC NAND are still arranged in a single planar layer. Samsung’s engineers, like city planners before them, realized that if you’re out of space on the X and Y axes, you can still build upwards. Thus, 3D NAND is born. Before you worry about Lego brick-shaped NAND chips sticking out of 3D NAND-toting SSDs, that’s definitely not the case. There are packaging efficiencies to be realized from having multiple layers of cells in one place, and everything will fit into standard form factors without an issue. As a result, the MLC NAND in Samsung’s 850 Pro is built on a 40nm process, and can comfortably stretch out while enjoying the benefits of being large and in charge. ....Like the 850 Pro, the 850 EVO SSD has gone to stacks on stacks on stacks, and uses Samsung TLC NAND on a 40nm process....

In defence of the reviewed drive, apart from its poor writing of large files or consistent heavy writes (and power consumption) it actually performs Pretty Damn Well really. Its price is competitive at its launch MSRP and will likely drop at retail fairly quick to a level that suits it better. My own possibly unsubstantiated 19nm worries aside, it could be an excellent SSD for some people on a really tight budget. (ebay just refunded me for a fake SSD sale so my own hunt for a new SSD is back on ^^ (again - 3x fake New SSD sales all from people with 100% feedback >_<) )

@Humanoid_1 better buy a new one, ssd's are not as expensive anymore i remember in 2008 my first ssd (corsair)was very very expensive.You can get a 256gb for like less then 100€ crucial bx100.

To be honest, at this point I wouldn't look anywhere but at Crucial, Intel and Samsung for SSD's. Crucial has amazing support, they replaced my dead M4 without really any questions when it died early (and the replacement has never had a problem). Samsung has an excellent toolkit, pricing and performance. And Intel's are just supposed to be (never had one) damn stable and plug and forget it.

Yea, I am currently leaning towards a Samsung 850 Pro 512GB or maybe the 850 EVO 500GB if I am not feeling so flush. Going to check out possible slow down issues on the EVO someone mentioned but not sure how much of a thing they are as no recent reviews mention 850 EVO slowdowns ? I had a look at the Intel 730 480GB SSDs but they seem a little out of date and slow these days. Reliable I am sure though. I like Crucial as a company, have bought lots of RAM from them over the years, but for some reason their SSDs never grabbed my interest. Reliable for sure and I've even recommended them to people now and then. I guess I have the impression they don't shine so much in reviews a lot of the time. - will keep an eye on them too 🙂 You're right, I'd only buy a new SSD, I did try to anyways: Up until this last few weeks I've never had a problem on ebay before - though my friends did tell me I am super lucky! I pick who I buy from pretty carefully, in two of the cases it appears someone's account with good feedback was stolen and *****ulent sales made with it. The other incident was some kid selling a Heavily Used 840 Pro as an 850 Pro brand new unused drive missing packaging Probably did not know you could check to see it did not had well over 7 thousand hours On Time and well over 6TB of writes lol Going to be even more picky about sellers from now on, or just buy Special offers from main stores which are sometimes cheaper than ebay anyway if you catch the right one!

Yup, the firmware update definitely helped from what I heard about the net, I thought it was fixed too. Sadly reading the following excerpt from a current [H]ard|OCP review makes the firmware patch sound like it is only a band aid slapped on a critical wound and will only slow the inevitable down (in some cases?) - I certainly have not heard such a negative slant against the 840 drives before this, but Samsung abandoning 19nm makes it look bad. Perhaps the 40nm process is partly required for the new 3D NAND construction and 19nm is not actually all That weak for NAND transistors?:

That excerpt you quoted is just a general description of the problem (and a not wholly accurate description either I don't think), it's not specifically proving or disproving that the latest firmware for the 840 Evo has been fixed or not. From everything I've read on the internet & from my own experiences with my 840 Evo drive - Samsung have fixed the Read Speed Degradation of Old Data issue, doesn't seem like a band aid to me, I think it's a permanent fix. Also haven't read of any or many outright failing 840 Evo drives. (My understanding of the 840 Evo problem was a Voltage Drift issue which slowed down the ability of the drive to read Old Data in the cell - the new firmware has created better algorithms or better 'calibrations' to read the cell even if it has drifted in voltage. It looks like the new firmware will also rewrite a cell if it detects the voltage has drifted too far (thereby restoring it to optimum voltage), so it should be a permanent fix).

Thanks for your input, would be more in line in my overall feeling of NAND durability & what I read about Voltage Drift ages back in an excellent Anandtech discussion on the technology of TLC drives etc. A few months back or so I was hearing reports of SSDs Far exceeding durability expectations quoted by manufacturers, something I found very encouraging 🙂 Will be keeping my eyes open for more information as things progress.

Well, I went with a Samsung 850 Pro 512GB in the end. My search is over now for this year at least. Got one for a fair price of £164.30, pretty happy with that 🙂 Must admit I'm pretty excited for my SSD upgrade sometime next year! Can't wait to see what drives are around then for my new build!

I don't know why we have to venture to Samsung and discussion of their support woes whenever SSD is mentioned but to clear up the read speed degradation: The first firmware Samsung released to fix the problem did not fix the problem. The second firmware looks to have actually fixed the problem but we can't be 100% sure for a couple more months. The data must age. Samsung is still making the best out of the box SSD, no questions about that. Their support really sucks though.