INTRODUCTION
We may still be far away from a time when solid state drives regardless of type (PCIe/M.2/SATA) will replace mechanical disk drives altogether (largely due to capacity limitations) but as things stand today they have managed to replace them at least partially as the "weapon" of choice for use as a primary OS drive. Because of that most SSD manufacturers have shifted much of their focus from the production of high-performance models aimed towards enthusiasts, gamers and professionals to the production of entry-level "budget" models aimed towards casual users and gamers who are just now taking their first steps with this technology. OCZ made a great comeback after being acquired by Toshiba and after releasing two great SSD models (ARC 100 and Vector 180) it was just a matter of time before they too released a more "entry" level one and its name is the Trion 100.
OCZ Storage Solutions – a Toshiba Group Company is a leading provider of high performance client and enterprise solid-state storage products and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Toshiba Corporation. Offering a complete spectrum of solid-state drives (SSDs), OCZ Storage Solutions leverages proprietary technology to provide SSDs in a variety of form factors and interfaces to address a wide range of applications. Having internally developed firmware and controllers, virtualization, cache and acceleration software, and endurance extending and data reliability technologies, the Company delivers vertically integrated solutions enabling transformational approaches to how digital data is captured, stored, accessed, analyzed and leveraged by customers.
Just like most of its competition the Trion 100 SSD is currently available in 120,240,480 and 960GB capacities (with us we have the 480GB one) and it's also the very first drive built pretty much entirely by Toshiba (both hardware and software) to get released under OCZ. The why this happened is quite clear since although Toshiba may have a retail brunch they don't focus their efforts in the consumer retail market (they mostly do OEM sales). With that out of the way the entire Trion 100 line features the latest TC58 NAND flash controller and A19nm 128Gbit 2D planar TLC (Triple-Level Cell) NAND flash modules by Toshiba along with a 256MB DDR3L SDRAM module by Nanya. Word on the street is that Toshiba used their own firmware with a Phison S10 NAND flash controller and although i do tend to agree (specs and design match) unless Toshiba acknowledges that it's just a hypothesis and in the end it really matters very little since what matters is performance and features. In terms of features the Trion 100 supports QSBC (Quadruple Swing-By Codes) error correction technology, DevSleep, Trim & Garbage Collection, SMART monitoring and offers a TBW (Total Bytes Written) of 120TB or 110GB per day (for the 480GB model) with an MTBF of 1.5 million hours. Finally the Trion 100 is covered by OCZ's 3-year ShieldPlus Warranty and a total of 7.2GB (for the 480GB model) SLC NAND flash is placed under the hood of the Trion 100 in order to improve its write performance.
SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES
PACKAGING AND CONTENTS
We received the Trion 100 inside a white box with a product picture at the front and the drive capacity.
Printed at the rear are the main product features along with a product description in 12 languages.
Inside the box you will find the Trion 100 SSD, installation manual and a piece of paper notifying you not to return the product where you got it from in case of failure (this is where their ShieldPlus warranty comes in).
THE TRION 100 480GB
Once again with us we have yet another SSD model placed inside a 2.5" 7mm thick aluminum enclosure.
At the belly of the drive we find the usual info such as installed firmware, serial numers and barcodes, electrical requirements, capacity and company information.
Moving at the rear we see the typical SATA power and data connectors.
The side of the PCB visible once you open the enclosure is empty and is probably used in the 960GB model.
As you can all see everything is located on the other side of the PCB.
This includes four Toshiba A19nm NAND flash modules, the 256MB SDRAM module by Nanya and the Toshiba TC58 NAND flash controller.
SSD GURU SOFTWARE
The SSD Guru software can be downloaded from the official OCZ support page and it’s pretty much the equivalent of the Magician software by Samsung so through here you can check the current state of the drive, manually enable TRIM and set overprovisioning, update the drive firmware and finally use the secure erase function.
TEST BED
TESTING METHODOLOGY
After over 7 years of testing sold state drives i have concluded that it's almost impossible for any single benchmark suite to accurately measure their performance and that's why in certain benchmark suites we see amazing read/write performance numbers with some drives while in others things are quite different. The reason behind this is that some benchmarking suites are configured to read and write random chunks of data while others read and write constant (sequential) ones. So that's why i always use a very wide selection of benchmarking suites including AIDA64, HD Tach RW, HD Tune Pro, Crystal Disk Mark, Sisoftware Sandra Pro, AS SSD, IOmeter and ATTO. To get the most accurate results each test gets repeated a total of 6 times with the average performance numbers recorded into our charts. Also as of February 25th 2015 our results will also include the Storage Networking Industry Association’s (SNIA) IOMeter tests. These tests include a 12 Hour write test used to “simulate” performance degradation over time and a mixed workload test which basically shows what you can expect when using an SSD continuously for roughly two hours. Unfortunately due to the time required for these tests we repeat them a total of 3 times and not 6 as the above.
Many people have made inquiries about our charts in the past so once again please do keep in mind that the Charts have the average performance numbers of each drive recorded and not the peak (highest) ones. Also although every single one of these programs can help potential buyers choose the right drive for their needs you should also remember that from any kind of benchmark up to real world usage the gap is not small (and usually most differences will go unnoticed by most people). All tests were performed in a fresh Windows 7 Ultimate x64 installation with every update installed up to August 25th 2015.
TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO
TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO
TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK X64
TEST RESULTS – AS SSD / IOMETER
TEST RESULTS – IOMETER SNIA
CONCLUSION
Both the ARC 100 and Vector 180 ended up being very good solid state drives with impressive IOPS performance so although the Trion 100 was never marketed as a model with a higher standing compared to those two (actually it was always marketed as the entry-level guy) I wasn’t expecting such a drop in write speeds. It’s still much faster compared to a regular mechanical disk drive so people going from that to this will see massive difference but when you get the 3rd lowest performance score in IOMeter and lowest average write in HD Tach RW out of 53 drives (some of which are even 2012-2013 models) that means that there’s definitely room for improvement for both OCZ and Toshiba especially when for example Samsung with their 850 Evo series offer a more solid product (better performance, higher TBW and longer warranty). True write performance as many point out from time to time is not the most important aspect of any SSD targeted towards casual consumers (for the majority of users read is the primary concern and besides you still have 7GB of fast SLC on the drive) but it's our job to point out everything, good or bad.
Once again price is what may turn things over but unfortunately with a current price tag of USD149 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and 179Euros inside the EU (Amazon.co.uk) the Trion 100 480GB costs roughly the same as the 850 EVO 500GB. To be honest here OCZ is doing their best to fix this since in the USA the Trion 100 480GB is currently 12% cheaper compared to the 850 EVO 500GB (this wasn’t the case up until a week or so ago) but we don't think that it's enough to cover the differences these two models have. Overall the Trion 100 480GB is still a valid upgrade for people going from a regular mechanical drive to an SSD so if that applies to you we really suggest taking a look.
PROS
- Price
- Build Quality (Toshiba A19nm NAND)
- Read Performance Levels
- OCZ ShieldPlus 3-Year Warranty
- SSD Guru Software
- Durability (1.5 Million Hours MTBF / 120TBW)
CONS
- Write Performance Levels
- Bundle