Introduction

Pairing enterprise technology with consumer parts is nothing new. In modern times Western Digital comes to mind with their Raptor Series of products that mate 10,000 RPM platter rotational speeds, previously an enterprise only feature with the consumer SATA interface. With each version release the Raptor shoots to the top of the performance charts and generally stays there for several months.

Even before the Raptor was introduced, enterprise products found a comfortable warm spot in enthusiasts PCs. When Seagate released their follow up to the first generation X15 line, the 36LP, the market was flooded with first generation 15,000 RPM drives. The X15s offered twice the platter speed of the day's fastest desktop drives and this equaled access times of 3.9 milliseconds (ms) and 2ms of rotational latency. After factoring in the additional costs like a SCSI Ultra2 Wide controller and the cable needed to run such a storage sub system, enthusiasts were spending around 350 USD, but for many the benefits of low latency storage system for the operating system far outweighed a little number like cost per GB.

As time goes on we are seeing what was once enterprise-only technology being weaved into consumer products. Dual core processors have eliminated the need for dual processor systems used for A/V production. In the storage field we have the adaption of 10K platter speeds and technological advances like Native Command Queuing.

Today we are looking at the OCZ Technology Vertex 2 Pro. What makes the Vertex 2 Pro so special is that it uses one of the first true enterprise grade solid state controllers and pairs it with low cost consumer grade Multi-Level Cell (MLC) NAND flash memory.

Let's move on and take a shallow dive into the Vertex 2 Pro and see what the drive has to offer.