Introduction to the OCZ Agility

There several reasons why many of us would decide to get a solid state drive over a standard magnetic one. SSD's have no moving parts. This means the chances are the SSD would survive the test of time. With a SSD, you do not have to worry about disk developing bad sectors nor laser arms going bad. So the reliability factor favors the SSD. Matter of fact, price is the major reason the entire industry hasn't already switched over to them.

If you are looking for a more technical reason for electing to get a SSD, I would say it begins with the lightning fast data access. Because data is stored on NAND memory and not a disk, the retrieval of data is almost instantaneous. This is due to the NAND modules being linked in parallel to add up to ultra fast access and really respectable write times.

There are also reasons why many of us will have to wait to go the route of the SSD. The main reason would be the price in which you would have to fork out. Visiting Newegg to do a quick look up of solid state drives reveals for $73 you can have a 16GB SATA SSD. This is far more expensive that most SATA hard drives on the site. For $75 you can have yourself a 640 HDD. For an enthusiast who wants to go fast them you have to pay for it.

OCZ is one of those companies who looks out for everyone. No matter if you are a hard core gamer with lots of money to buy extreme gear or a budget minded individual that has to make every dollar count, they have you in mind. With this way of thinking, OCZ have released several classes of solid state drives ranging from the Solid series to the Vertex EX. Our first review of a SSD will consist of a model from their mainstream line up: Agility. The Agility is based around a Indilinx controller backed by Elpida 64MB cache chip. These two components gives the Agility its performance numbers. What keeps the Agility a low cost alternative to other solid state drives with similar number is the inexpensive NAND modules used. But just how inexpensive is the Agility? Just how fast is the Agility? Read on and find out.

A word from OCZ about the Agility

Offering your system the incredible performance of flash-based storage, the OCZ Agility Series delivers the performance and reliability of SSDs at less price per gigabyte than other high speed offerings currently on the market. The OCZ Agility Series is the result of all the latest breakthroughs in SSD technology, including new architecture and controller design, blazing read/write speeds, and 64MB of onboard cache.

Perfect for notebooks and desktops alike, the Agility Series is ideal for energy-efficient mobile computing to extend battery life, increase the speed of access time, and provide a durable alternative to conventional hard disc drives with superior shock resistance. High capacities and low power consuming NAND flash technology provide the necessary performance and battery life boosts generated by the proliferation of mobile gaming and new ultra-thin laptops.

The OCZ Agility drives feature a durable yet lightweight alloy housing, and because OCZ SSDs have no moving parts, the drives are more rugged than traditional hard drives. Designed for ultimate reliability, Agility Series SSDs have an excellent 1.5 million hour mean time before failure (MTBF) ensuring peace of mind over the long term. All Agility Series SSD drives come backed a two year warranty and OCZ’s legendary service and support.