OCZ Vector 180 Solid State Drive Review: Barefoot 3 Optimized
Introduction and Specifications
OCZ Technology is at the ready with yet another new Solid State Drive, built around the company’s tried-and-true Barefoot 3 controller. The Vector 180 series drive we’ll be showing you here today is packing some of Toshiba’s latest A19nm MLC NAND flash memory and has some welcomed features and additions normally reserved for more expensive, enterprise-class drives.
And the Vector 180 isn’t the only thing OCZ has in store today. Launching alongside this new SSD is a brand new utility, dubbed OCZ Guru, geared for easy management and tuning of OCZ’s enthusiast-class drives. The OCZ Guru utility will ultimately replace the OCZ Toolbox utility, OCZ has been cultivating for the last few years, with a fresh application that modernizes the interface and adds a handful of new capabilities targeted squarely at savvy enthusiasts...
Before we take a look at closer look at the new Vector 180 itself, let's quickly draw some attention to its accessory bundle.
The Vector 180 series is part of a small and shrinking group of products that include not only 2.5” to 3.5” adapters, but a license for Acronis True Image HD as well. The adapters are growing less important, as newer cases that include 2.5” mounting locations are released, but the inclusion of Acronis is an excellent value-add in our opinion that also makes it easy to migrate data from an existing drive.
Over and above what’s in the box, the Vector 180 also works with the aforementioned OCZ Guru utility. OCZ Guru is a one-stop-shop for all things related to the SSD—health data, stats, firmware updates, maintenance, you name it.
The OCZ Guru utility is organized into a handful of intuitive menus: Overview, Tuner, Maintenance, Settings and Help. On the Overview page, users have access to a wealth of data about the drive, including health and usage statistics. On the Tuner page, users can tweak things like over-provisioning or send a TRIM command to the drive. There are options on the tuner page for tweaking OS settings as well. On the Maintenance page, users can update the drive’s firmware or secure erase the drive, and on the Settings page users will find monitoring and logging options. Help is obviously where users can find information about the tool, but there is contextual help available throughout the utility as well.
SSD Guru is compatible with all OCZ Barefoot 3-based consumer drives, as well as the RevoDrive 350 PCIe SSD. It should be available for download from the OCZ website today.
And the Vector 180 isn’t the only thing OCZ has in store today. Launching alongside this new SSD is a brand new utility, dubbed OCZ Guru, geared for easy management and tuning of OCZ’s enthusiast-class drives. The OCZ Guru utility will ultimately replace the OCZ Toolbox utility, OCZ has been cultivating for the last few years, with a fresh application that modernizes the interface and adds a handful of new capabilities targeted squarely at savvy enthusiasts...
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Before we take a look at closer look at the new Vector 180 itself, let's quickly draw some attention to its accessory bundle.
The Vector 180 series is part of a small and shrinking group of products that include not only 2.5” to 3.5” adapters, but a license for Acronis True Image HD as well. The adapters are growing less important, as newer cases that include 2.5” mounting locations are released, but the inclusion of Acronis is an excellent value-add in our opinion that also makes it easy to migrate data from an existing drive.
