OCZ Vector 256GB Indilinx Barefoot 3 SSD Review

Real World & IOPS Tests

File Copy Times Via Teracopy:

One of the most common operations performed on a PC is moving/copying files. Using a free application called Teracopy, we copied large numbers of two file types from one folder to another on the same drive. Teracopy allows us to objectively measure the time of transfer and using the same drive prevents other devices from tainting the outcome. The operation requires the drive to perform both sustained read and writes simultaneously. The first set of files is a 5GB collection of JPG’s of variable size and compression levels with a few movie (.MOV) files thrown in for good measure since most cameras now take video as well as stills. The second is a collection of MP3 files of various sizes which totals 5GB collectively. These file types were chosen due to their wide use and mixture of file sizes and compression levels.

Install Results: Corsair and OCZ already have a rivalry and now they’re both putting out some impressive drives that are very close in performance as you see here in this real world test.

Windows Boot Times Via BootRacer:

Windows start up/shutdown time is always something people are interested in and we haven’t done it in a while because there was little variation with the majority of the SSDs. We recently began using an application called BootRacer to objectively measure the startup times of the drives. All of the instances of Windows were identical and freshly installed with only the video driver installed.

Test Results: Boot times are near the top as well. Pretty soon we’ll switch to the newest version of BootRacer which will provide times in fractions of seconds and help segregate the scores a bit.

IOPS Performance – Iometer 2010

IOPS (Input/Output Operations Per Second – for the layman) performance is something SSD makers tout quite a bit but we generally don’t do a lot of IOPS testing because frankly a lot of users can’t relate to IOPS metrics as well and it tends to be more meaningful to the enterprise/server crowd. Still, it is another indicator of performance and while some drives post good MB/s numbers, their IOPS scores aren’t always commensurate.

Test Results: Again, the LAMD powered Corsair Neutron GTX dukes it out with Indilinx Barefoot 3 of the OCZ Vector with very similar performance characteristics but the Vector ekes out a better overall result.

We’ll wrap this with a look at the total drive capacity and our final thoughts.