INTRODUCTION

   We may still be far away from a time when solid state drives regardless of type (PCIe/M.2/SATA) will replace mechanical disk drives altogether (largely due to capacity limitations) but as things stand today they have managed to replace them at least partially as the "weapon" of choice for use as a primary OS drive. Because of that most SSD manufacturers have shifted much of their focus from the production of high-performance models aimed towards enthusiasts, gamers and professionals to the production of entry-level "budget" models aimed towards casual users and gamers who are just now taking their first steps with this technology. OCZ made a great comeback after being acquired by Toshiba and after releasing two great SSD models (ARC 100 and Vector 180) it was just a matter of time before they too released a more "entry" level one and its name is the Trion 100.

   OCZ Storage Solutions – a Toshiba Group Company is a leading provider of high performance client and enterprise solid-state storage products and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Toshiba Corporation. Offering a complete spectrum of solid-state drives (SSDs), OCZ Storage Solutions leverages proprietary technology to provide SSDs in a variety of form factors and interfaces to address a wide range of applications. Having internally developed firmware and controllers, virtualization, cache and acceleration software, and endurance extending and data reliability technologies, the Company delivers vertically integrated solutions enabling transformational approaches to how digital data is captured, stored, accessed, analyzed and leveraged by customers.

   Just like most of its competition the Trion 100 SSD is currently available in 120,240,480 and 960GB capacities (with us we have the 480GB one) and it's also the very first drive built pretty much entirely by Toshiba (both hardware and software) to get released under OCZ. The why this happened is quite clear since although Toshiba may have a retail brunch they don't focus their efforts in the consumer retail market (they mostly do OEM sales). With that out of the way the entire Trion 100 line features the latest TC58 NAND flash controller and A19nm 128Gbit 2D planar TLC (Triple-Level Cell) NAND flash modules by Toshiba along with a 256MB DDR3L SDRAM module by Nanya. Word on the street is that Toshiba used their own firmware with a Phison S10 NAND flash controller and although i do tend to agree (specs and design match) unless Toshiba acknowledges that it's just a hypothesis and in the end it really matters very little since what matters is performance and features. In terms of features the Trion 100 supports QSBC (Quadruple Swing-By Codes) error correction technology, DevSleep, Trim & Garbage Collection, SMART monitoring and offers a TBW (Total Bytes Written) of 120TB or 110GB per day (for the 480GB model) with an MTBF of 1.5 million hours. Finally the Trion 100 is covered by OCZ's 3-year ShieldPlus Warranty and a total of 7.2GB (for the 480GB model) SLC NAND flash is placed under the hood of the Trion 100 in order to improve its write performance.