OCZ  Vertex 3 120GB SATA 6Gb/s  VTX3-25SAT3-120G 2.5" Solid State Drive (SSD) with up to  550MB/s read and  60K IOPS write

by OCZ

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 4 x 0.4 x 2.8 inches ; 3.2 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B004Q81CKY
• Item model number: VTX3-25SAT3-120G
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (145 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #4 in Electronics > Computers & Add-Ons > Computer Components > Internal Solid State Drives
• Date first available at Amazon.com: March 2, 2011

Product Description

Size: 120 GB

From the Manufacturer

OCZ Vertex 3 Solid State Drives unleash the performance potential of the SATA 6Gbps interface, leading the speed revolution in this next-generation solution. As the first SSD to feature the latest Sandforce controller design, OCZ designed the Vertex 3 to push the limits in both sequential and random read/write rates to blaze past the competition when every MB/s matters. With incredible 4k file writes up to 85,000 IOPS, these latest drives take productivity, gaming, and multimedia applications to the next level to work in perfect symmetry with the latest enthusiast platforms.

Take productivity, gaming, and multimedia applications to the next level

Built with the quality, reliability, and durability that lives up to the OCZ name, the Vertex 3 Series easily integrates into today's mobile and desktop platforms and features TRIM support to optimize performance over the drive's lifespan as the ultimate Windows 7 companion. Vertex 3 SSDs are available in 120GB, 240GB, and 480GB capacities and come backed by a 3-Year Warranty.

Reliable, Fast Storage

The Vertex 3 makes an SSD the ideal storage alternative to hard drives and delivers the quality, reliability, and durability demanded by consumers that will not settle for anything but the best. Built with SATA 6Gb/s and backwards-compatible with SATA 3Gb/s, the Vertex 3 Series easily integrates into today's mobile and desktop platforms and features TRIM support to optimize performance over the drive's lifespan as an ideal Windows 7 notebook or desktop upgrade.

Lightweight and Tough

Shock resistance of up to 1500G ensures your data stays protected, in a drive that weighs only 77 grams. Get fast, durable performance in a drive that won't weigh down your laptop or notebook.

Low Power Consumption

For all their power, the Vertex 3 series of drives consume very little. Vertex 3 drives only consume 3 watts during operation, and only a watt and a half in standby.

3.5" Desktop Adapter Included

A 3.5" adapter for desktop drive cages is included, so you can use the Vertex 3 in laptops or desktops. The drives are RAID compatible, so you can slot them into a desktop RAID configuration as easily as into a laptop.

Available in a Wide Range of Sizes

OCZ Vertex 3 SSDs are available in 120GB to 480GB and come backed by a 3-year warranty and 2 million hour MTBF for ultimate peace of mind.

What the Critics are Saying about the OCZ Vertex 3

"No single drive in our roundup matches the Vertex 3 on all fronts...OCZ continues its tradition of blazing-fast random-write performance, both at low- and high-queue depths, serving up more than 85,000 IOPS in our Iometer QD32 4KB random-write test."
--Nathan Edwards, MaximumPC

"OCZ don't make bad SSDs and the Vertex 3 is the latest in a long line of exceptional products from the San Jose based manufacturer. Priced at a competitive level the Vertex 3 is the fastest SATA based SSD that we have tested to date."
--Stuart Davidson, Hardware Heaven

"If you were expecting this drive to be one of the fastest 2.5-inch solid state drives available then you would be right...Overall ThinkComputers gives the OCZ Vertex 3 240GB Solid State Drive a 10 out of 10 score and our Editor's Choice Award!"
--Think Computers

Which OCZ Vertex 3 Solid State Drive is Right for You?
Capacities	120GB	240GB
Max Read	up to 550 MB/s (SATA 6Gbps) up to 280 MB/s (SATA 3Gbps)	up to 550 MB/s (SATA 6Gbps) up to 280 MB/s (SATA 3Gbps)
Max Write	up to 500 MB/s (SATA 6Gbps) up to 260 MB/s (SATA 3Gbps)	upto 520 MB/s (SATA 6Gbps) up to 260 MB/s (SATA 3Gbps)
Random Read 4KB	20,000 IOPS (75 MB/s)	40,000 IOPS (155 MB/s)
Random Write 4KB	60,000 IOPS (235 MB/s)	60,000 IOPS (235 MB/s)
Maximum 4KB Random Write	85,000 IOPS (330 MB/s)	85,000 IOPS (330 MB/s)

Product Description

As the third generation of the legendary VertexSeries,OCZ Vertex3 Solid-state Drives are designed and built to unleash the full potential of the 6Gbps SATA3 interface. The OCZVertex3 pushes the limits in both sequential and random data transfer rates, significantly improving your gaming, multimedia, and overall computing experience over traditional mechanical hard drives. In addition to maximized productivity, a Vertex3 upgrade makes a hard drive- equipped notebook more portable than ever with superior durability and reduced power consumption. Using the latest breakthrough controller and flash technology, Vertex3 SSDs work in perfect harmony with next generation platforms and operating systems to deliver the industry's best storage solution.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Superb primary or secondary storage, April 21, 2011

By 

Chris Angelo (South San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: OCZ Technology 240 GB Vertex 3 SATA III 6.0 Gb/s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive VTX3-25SAT3-240G (Personal Computers)

I purchased the Vertex 3 specifically for gaming so this will the focus of my review. I've owned all three generations of Vertex drives and I'm most pleased with this drive. That pleasure comes from the capacity and speed of the Vertex 3.

The Vertex 3 drive itself is a 2.5" form factor and comes with a 3.5" adapter this time around. Great for those desktop installs, however you will still need to purchase a SATA cable to connect it. To get the most out of this drive, you'll need a SATA III (6GB) port since the blazzing speed of this drive will max out a SATA II connection.

The drive currently resides in my sandy bridge desktop system as a secondary storage location for all my steam games and Starcraft 2. Along side a Vertex 2 60 gig that is the primary OS disk, the formated capacity of 223 Gigs provides plenty of space for most of the titles that I actively play. It was a bit of a struggle to fit my steam folder on the Vertex 3 as it is quite easy to accumulate numerous titles via steam. With a much higher capacity traditional hard disk, you can keep most all of your titles available locally, but sadly this isn't the case with a drive of this capacity. It's the price you pay for having such blistering fast speed.

You can read a number of reviews stating the theoretical and real world tests illustrating the Vertex 3's speed, but I was mainly concerned with the user experience improvement gained from having one in my system. Copying my 160 gig steam folder was quite fast, maxing out the read transfer rate of my magnetic hard disk at about 75-80 MB per second. After the copy, I proceeded to launch Portal 2 which I had been playing the night before. If you haven't played the game, there are many level transitions that happen between chambers (or in my case deaths). The load times on my traditional magnetic hard drive were around 15-20 seconds. On the Vertex 3, the loads were shortened by 10 to 15 seconds. It was quite a difference that definitely improved my user experience as I was spending more time playing instead of staring at a progress bar.

Playing starcraft 2, I found the improvement to be much more subtle as the game files were previously on my Vertex 1. The menus seemed a bit more responsive, but it wasn't as stark a contrast moving from the magnetic drive. World of Warcraft ran slightly faster as well, shaving a couple of seconds loading into major cities or instances. Heroes of Newerth didn't seem to be affected that much, but then again the install for the game is only ~500MB.

I plan on installing this drive in my new gaming desktop replacement notebook later on in the year as a primary OS/Program drive. I'm sure I will appreciate the larger capacity when trying to jam the OS, productivity apps, and games all on a single drive.

My only current gripe with the Vertex 3 is the high cost. While I would love to have a second one to replace my Vertex 1 and 2, the $500+ price tag doesn't justify the speed increase I would gain over the older drives. At nearly $2 per GB, it is quite the barrier to owning multiple Vertex 3 drives at this capacity.

I would like to note that this is an enthusiast item since the manufacturer (OCZ) is consistently improving the firmware for their products. From past experience with the Vertex 1 and 2, most of the updates are minor bug fixes, but there are some revisions that add performance gains as well. Updating the firmware has come a long way as a short time. Previously, it wasn't easy to flash a drive that had an OS on it while running the OS. Boot disks were needed and constantly needed to be rebuilt as new firmware came out. OCZ's new toolbox is much better now, but updating firmware still isn't for the novice user or someone that expects to plug the drive in and never worry about it again.

Overall, I love my new SSD. It allows me to accomplish most tasks on my system with less frustration induced by wait times and unresponsiveness. Just be sure to plan your program installations accordingly and have the appropriate hardware to get the most out of your purchase.

Update: July 18th
Having used the drive for a while, I'd like to update my experiences with it.

First off, prior to the current firmware (2.09 as of this writing), my system would freeze for a good 30 to 60 seconds shortly after starting windows. I could still move the mouse cursor, but interaction with anything that was stored on the SSD was unresponsive. Especially since this was a primary drive running windows, this was extremely frustrating. OCZ recently released a firmware update to the Vertex 3 that fixed this along with a data corruption issue.

Updating the drive required me to search the OCZ forums and follow the posted guide to get the new firmware on the drive. This involved downloading a linux distro and installing it on a USB flash drive. While the instructions were easy to follow, this definitely relates to what I said above about not purchasing a SSD if you are uncomfortable with using such utilities.

Currently, it is working great. I haven't had an unresponsive issue with it since the update, but I am cautiously optimistic. Shipping drives should now have the updated firmware, but you may have to manually update if you happen to get an older batch.

72 of 85 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This drive model has a hardware defect, August 23, 2011

By 

Ian Montgomerie - See all my reviews

This review is from: OCZ Technology 240 GB Vertex 3 SATA III 6.0 Gb/s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive VTX3-25SAT3-240G (Personal Computers)

This drive is built with a SandForce 2281 chip which has a hardware bug. For many users, myself included, this will randomly cause your computer to crash with the blue screen of death. For me, it used to happen every few weeks now it happens every few days. When this problem happens the hard drive will seem to disappear from your computer until you power it off and on again (reset does nothing, because you have to actually cut power to the SandForce 2281 in the drive).

Not everyone sees the bug - it looks like the exact configuration of some computers triggers it much more easily. For the technically minded, each system generates different access patterns to the hard drive and only some patterns will trigger the bug.

Corsair also used this chip in their products and encountered the exact same problem. They issued a recall back in June. The popular AnandTech hardware review site has reproduced this problem and a description of it appears on the first page of their latest review of drives using the SandForce 2281 chip. SandForce has offered to fly in engineers if AnandTech can figure out how to reproduce it more quickly.

Unlike Corsair, OCZ simply lied to all their customers, claiming their issue had nothing to do with the SandForce issue that prompted Corsair to issue a recall, and can be fixed in firmware. Note that "their" firmware is just a renamed version of the SandForce firmware, because the chip manufacturer is the one who writes the firmware controlling the chip. However, after months of firmware updates the problem still occurs.

I haven't even applied the updates personally, I'm just going by the word of all the other people who say they've made no difference. This is because the firmware update process is obscene. They do NOT provide an update program that works from a CD or flash drive. This means that you have to remove the drive from your computer, install it in another Windows PC, and update it from that PC. Given the large number of firmware updates, that's a lot of times to ask a friend to borrow the inside of their computer.

It gets worse. At least some of the firmware updates are "destructive", meaning they erase all data on the drive. So you have to reinstall everything, or be savvy enough to make a disk image backup of your hard disk and then restore it after updating.

The SandForce 2281 problems aren't the fault of the companies selling the drives, although SandForce is a fairly modestly sized startup and they obviously can't afford to test their chips thoroughly enough. It's probably possible to fix the chip and manufacture updated versions within a couple of months, but there is zero public indication that SandForce has fixed the error.

In the future I will avoid all products using SandForce chips unless they've been in the market for many months without reported problems, because they have demonstrated they don't have the resources to properly verify and validate their products and address post-silicon bugs. It's not like this is the only bug found with their chip or drivers, but the others are small in comparison.

OCZ, on the other hand... I will never buy another OCZ product. Their "support" actively lies to customers to avoid doing a recall like their competition. They string everyone along with the promise that the next firmware update will fix it, really, despite that promise always turning out wrong. (Note: I have a little technical knowledge in this area, and suspect that if they could work around this bug in firmware it would probably involve slowing down the drive quite a bit, which would be incredibly unpopular with users who haven't encountered the bug).

I was *amazed* that a hard disk manufacturer doesn't offer a bootable update CD to update firmware without putting the drive in another machine. That is just nuts. In many years using many computers, I have never had to do that before.

I'm not going through firmware update hell. I am buying another SSD. This expensive choice will allow me to install it in my system and seamlessly transfer my files to the new drive. After that I will wait for a fix for the OCZ drive, and if one comes I will apply it or RMA it and give it to a friend or sell it for a modest amount.

SandForce 2281 based drives are unfortunately the fastest out there, but I am now buying the latest Intel drive (the 510) based on a Marvell chip. It is maybe 10-20% slower in benchmarks (via AnandTech), but Intel has a reputation for rock solid drives and they work to maintain it. They have a three year warranty on drives and have recently upgraded a smaller drive (the 320) to five years. A French reseller recently revealed that SSDs are returned to them at a 2-3% rate, except for Intel SSDs which are returned at about a 0.6% rate. The Crucial m4 is also based on the same Marvell chip used by the latest Intel drives. It benchmarks faster than the Intel drive, but Crucial doesn't have the 0.6% return rate. It's still competitive with the OCZ with much lower risk.

Oh, another annoyance: the drive's 3.5" mounting bracket lacked some of the standard screw holes that my case happens to require, and wouldn't fit into a 3.5 to 5.25 inch adapter I bought either. I had to buy a special 3.5" adapter and put that in the 5.25" adapter.

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WOOOOW, this drive is STUPID fast, April 18, 2011

By 

David H. Kegley "kegs" (denver) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: OCZ Technology 240 GB Vertex 3 SATA III 6.0 Gb/s 2.5-Inch Solid State Drive VTX3-25SAT3-240G (Personal Computers)

I have a 2011 macbook pro 15". This laptop has the 6GB SATA III interface that works great with this drive. I just got the drive today immediately installed it. I have an OWC adapter on the way so I can put my old 750GB drive where the superdrive goes.

I installed OSX, updated, and then installed office 2011 and let it sync up my 400GB exchange mailbox. Then then testing began.

#%^^&$%& this drive is fast! For grins, I configured ALL office apps, safari, firefox all to open on startup. the machine boots in under 30 seconds and all of those apps are loaded before the desktop even appears!

What a great buy this drive was, and very easy to install!

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