OCZ Vertex EX SSD Update Guide To Firmware v1.20

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

On Monday, when we published our OCZ Vertex EX 120GB SLC solid state drive (SSD) review we had mixed results with the drive as at the start of testing it was hands down the fastest SSD we have ever seen, but at the end the drive slowed down to a snails pace. This was of course due to the benchmarks we used on the drive as the synthetic applications will quickly degrade the drives performance. Many in the industry say that benchmarking an SSD like we did in our full review could actually damage the drive and they might just be right. Our drive performance even after the firmware update was not as high as we first saw, so we might have really decreased the lifespan and performance of this drive by benchmarking it with all the tests that we did. The last option we have to get drive performance back is Sanitary_erase, but erases all the data and partition tables and is not something you’d want to use that often.

That being said the Vertex EX Series by OCZ Technology got a whole lot better yesterday with the new firmware and the support of the utlity called Wiper.exe that acts like TRIM. This new firmware update has been long coming considering the Vertex EX Series has been out since April 19th, 2009. For those early adpoters of the Vertex EX you are just one full firmware update away from being able to run wiper.exe, which makes a world of difference from what our testing has shown. The next big firmware update we would guess will be when Windows 7 comes out and that update will enable native TRIM support. Once that happens having to run the wiper.exe utility might just be a thing of the past.

At $1299.99 plus shipping the OCZ OCZSSD2-1VTXEX120G Vertex EX SLC Series SATA II 2.5″ SSD is reserved for those wanting the best and with the new firmware it clearly ranks among the top SSDs in the world. SLC NAND Flash costs around $11 per gigabyte in general and this drive works out to costing $10.84 per gigabyte, which adds up. If you want an SLC NAND Flash SSD then this is the price you are expected to pay.

Legit Bottom Line: The OCZ Vertex EX with firmware 1.20 now supports OCZ’s proprietary TRIM utility called Wiper.exe and is again leading the pack in performance and features.