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Earlier this year, The SSD Review was offered the opportunity take the newly released OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 40GB SSD for a spin as it was about to hit the streets as the lowest priced SandForce driven SSD on the market at $99.
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In speaking to the OWC Marketing team, we also learned that word had just been received of an exciting new firmware release which we might want to wait for. The wait was just a bit longer than expected so lets start this review off with an apology and an assurance that the reasoning for such is very good news. As tested, this little SSD is still one of the most value conscious SandForce Driven models available and is presently the top performing SSD we have put through our Test Bench to date. Read on!
EXTERIOR CHARACTERISTICS
Given the result of our testing, we might have expected this SSD to have made a grand entrance on its arrival but it was actually quite the opposite. The drive is shipped, at least for us reviewers, in an unmarked and sealed black cardboard box which contains only pink foam and the SSD itself.
We really have to ask ourselves if this is how the consumer receives it as well? Can somebody please throw in a comment?
The drive itself is constructed of a metal alloy with smoothed edges painted the chararacteristic OWC blue that we have seen on all OWC SSDs.
The back of the drive simply shows the SATA interface along with the OWC information label and an additional warning that the warranty will be void should the seal on the top right of the front be removed in an attempt to disassemble the SSD.
SPECIFICATIONS
Controller: SandForce Processor with full SF1200 Series 7% Over Provisioning firmware set
Capacity: 40GB* useable capacity / Total Flash Memory Components – 43GB / 3GB allocated
Bandwidth: Read: up to 285MB/s – Write: up to 275MB/s (Both Sustained Sequential)
I/O Per Second (IOPS): Random 4KB: Up to 50,000 IOPS
NAND Flash Components: Tier 1/Grade A Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND Flash Memory
Read/Write Latency: less than 0.1ms
Reliability: 2,000,000 hours Mean Time To Failure (MTTF)
Interface: SATA I (1.5Gb/s) and SATA II (3.0Gb/s) supported, SATA 2.6 Compliant
TRIM Support: Advanced TRIM Support in Windows 7
Operating Environment Temperature: 0°C to +70°C
Non-Operating Environment Temperature: -55°C to +150°C
Power Consumption: Active: 2200mW (2.2W) Typical, up to 2500mW (2.5W)
Inactive (DIPM): 90mW (.09W) Typical
Protection: ECC Recovery: Up to 24 bytes correctable per 512-byte sector
Unrecoverable Read Errors: Less than 1 sector per 1016 bits read
Security: Chip Based Data Encryption: 128-bit AES-compliant
RoHS Compliant: Yes
Format: Unformatted. For instructions on formatting click here.
Form Factor, Weight and Dimensions: 2.5″ Industry Standard Hard Drive Form FactorWeight: 80 grams +/- 2 gramsDrive Dimensions: 100.12mm x 70.06mm x 9.45mm
Warranty: 3 Year OWC Warranty
Pg1 – Exterior and Specifications
Pg2 – Testing and Protocol
Pg3 – Benchmarks
Pg4 – PCMark Vantage and Conclusions