Toshiba announces OCZ-branded VX500 series solid state drives

[XAMI]

Toshiba has unveiled a new family of solid state drives under the OCZ banner. The OCZ VX500 series, which Toshiba says targets mainstream desktop and notebook users looking to upgrade from traditional spinning hard drives, will arrive in a variety of storage configurations – all at a very affordable price.

Built with MLC NAND flash, the new VX500 series is offered in capacities of 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1,024GB with sequential read speeds of 550MB/sec across the board. Sequential write speeds vary from 485MB/sec on the 128GB model to 515MB/sec on the largest drive.

IOPS also vary depending on capacity, ranging from 62,000 / 49,000 (read / write) on the low end to 92,000 / 65,000 (read / write) for the top-tier model. All variants consume just 0.125 watts at idle and 3.4 watts at full load.

The new drives carry endurance ratings of 74TB (128GB), 148TB (256GB), 296TB (512GB) and 592TB (1,024GB) and are backed by a five-year warranty. Each drive also comes with a copy of Acronis True Image cloning software to ease the migration process although personally, I like to start fresh when moving to a new OS drive.

The OCZ VX500 series solid state drives will be available to purchase in the coming weeks. MSRP is set at $64 for the 128GB drive, $93 for 256GB of storage, $153 for a 512GB unit and $337 if you seek 1TB of space.