The Arc 100 Series is OCZs interpretation of what an entry level SSD should be like. Based on their proven Barefoot 3 M10 controller and combined with Toshiba A19nm NAND flash OCZ appears to be capable of offering a higly competitively priced drive, which still features good performance. At this point we're curious to find out whether OCZ succeeded with their plan or not.


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Specifications / Delivery

Model	OCZ Arc 100 120 Gigabyte	OCZ Arc 100 240 Gigabyte	OCZ Arc 100 480 Gigabyte
Capacity	120 Gigabyte	240 Gigabyte	480 Gigabyte
Form Factor	2.5'', 7mm	2.5'', 7mm	2.5'', 7mm
Memory	Toshiba A19nm MLC	Toshiba A19nm MLC	Toshiba A19nm MLC
Technology
Throughput	490 MB/s sequential read 400 MB/s sequential write 70'000 IOPS 4K random read 80'000 IOPS 4K random write	490 MB/s sequential read 430 MB/s sequential write 70'000 IOPS 4K random read 80'000 IOPS 4K random write	490 MB/s sequential read 430 MB/s sequential write 80'000 IOPS 4K random read 80'000 IOPS 4K random write
Accesstime (read)	< 0.1 ms	< 0.1 ms	< 0.1 ms
MTBF	2'000'000 hours	2'000'000 hours	2'000'000 hours
Acoustics	no noise	no noise	no noise
Warranty	3 Years	3 Years	3 Years
MSRP	74.90 USD	119.90 USD	239.90 USD

With the Arc 100, OCZ has a new SSD in its portfolio, which should help the company to become competitive in the market for entry level solid state drives. By combining their Barefoot 3 M10 controller with Toshiba A19nm MLC NAND flash memory, OCZ wants to be able to attack the market via the price, while maintaining decent performance. Especially when it comes to mixed workloads as well as sustained performance the Arc 100 should be capable of making life for the competition a bit tougher.

As you might have spotted in the product description OCZ is using Toshiba NAND flash memory, which is made using 19nm process technology. When it comes to endurance OCZ guarantees, that all Arc 100 drives can cope with 20 Gigabyte host writes per day over a time period of three years. As we've shown in our endurance test on a Vertex 256 GB, SSD makers are very conservative in the case of their endurance ratings. This means that in reality the drives are most certainly capable to dealing with significantly more hostwrites per day.

With the Arc 100 OCZ is also bringing a new support level to the table. The reason why we're mentioning this point is the fact, that no proof of purchase is needed in order to qualify for support. Should a customer experience issues with a drive it's enough to mention the serial number when opening a support ticket. A customer service representative will then take over the case and find the most suitable solution. Should the drive be defective the customer will receive a pre-paid return label as well as a new drive.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 7 - Random read KByte/s
Page 2 - Impressions	Page 8 - Random write IOPS
Page 3 - How do we test?	Page 9 - Random read IOPS
Page 4 - Sequential write KByte/s	Page 10 - QD1/4/8/16/32 Performance
Page 5 - Sequential read KByte/s	Page 11 - Conclusion
Page 6 - Random write KByte/s