Specifications and Features

So OCZ is introducing its Enyo USB 3.0 solid state disk, to be found in the stores starting June. This device will ship in capacities of 64GB, 128GB and 256GB, and the faster models promises read speeds of up to 260MB/s and write speeds of up to 200MB/s.

All three drives use MLC NAND flash memory, have 64MB of on board cache and USB 3.0 Micro B connector interface (USB 3.0 SuperSpeed 5Gbps).

Since we are talking about a USB 3.0 SSD-based external drive, you can expect speeds of up to 260MB/s for read and up to 200MB/s for write, with sustained speeds of up to 150MB/s for 128GB and 256GB versions. The 64GB one will have a bit lower speeds of up to 225MB/s for read and up to 135MB/s for write with sustained write of up to 40MB/s.

I have the SKU codes and prices available, let me be the first to say .. not cheap !

• OCZSSDU3-1ENY64G - 64GB @ $229.99
• OCZSSDU3-1ENY128G - 128GB @ $409.99
• OCZSSDU3-1ENY256G - 256GB @ $819.99

We received the 128 GB unit for a performance evaluation.

• Available in 64GB, 128GB, 256GB capacities
• USB 3.0 Interface
• Backwards compatible with legacy USB ports (2.0)
• MLC Flash
• 64MB Onboard Cache
• Background Garbage Collection
• Blue LED indicators
• Anodized Aluminum Housing
• Seek Time: < .1ms
• Slim, lightweight Design 87.7g
• 56mm x 120mm x 10mm H
• Operating Temp: 0°C ~ 70°C
• Storage Temp: -45°C ~ +85°C
• Low Power Consumption: 2.4W in operation,
  1.1W idle
• Shock Resistant up to 1500G
• MTBF: 1.5 million hours
• 3-Year Warranty

So when we open up the device and dis a little deeper, we stumble into the same Indilinx 'Barefoot' controller and 64MB of DRAM buffer that Agility and Vertex SSDs have. Why is that so important you ask ? The 'cache memory'. Well,  we have seen that most budget MLC based SSDs have a JMicron controller with very little cache (8KB / 16KB), and the issue there is that if they need to write a lot of really small files simultaneously these drives started to choke up every now and then, your a-typical data bottleneck. That issue was solved with big file-caches. And they surely work out really well.

SSDs need to fight off a bad habit, slow write times for a lot of small and petit files, that is where the sore bottleneck of SSD drives is to be found, and large data-caches can solve that issue very well.

So a very clever trick is that the Neyo series SSD has a nice SDRAM buffer, 64MB to be precise, and that my friends helps big-time in tackling the small write access issue

Above the Enyo PCB. 32nm NAND memory ICs and in the middle the Indilinx Barefoot controller. Below it we see 64MB cache memory from Elpida.