OCZ’s 32Gbyte Onyx SSD breaks $100 barrier, cuts power

It was only a matter of time. Nobody doubts that solid-state disks (SSDs) will decline in price over time. The only questions are “How fast will prices fall?” and “How much storage will I get for my money”? PC component vendor OCZ contributed some answers to those questions yesterday by introducing a new low-cost line of “sub 100 dollar,” 32Gbyte, 2.5-inch, SATA II SSDs dubbed Onyx. The first in a planned series of low-cost SSDs, the 32Gbyte Onyx sports a read transfer rate of 125Mbytes/sec and a write transfer rate of 75Mbytes/sec. The Onyx drive is based on MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash devices, which might raise concerns about long-term reliability, but the drive sports an MTBF rating of 1.5 million hours and a 3-year warranty. As for power—the 32Gbyte Onyx drive consumes 1W while active and about a third of a Watt on standby. That’s roughly half the power required by a mechanical 2.5-inch HDD.