OCZ Agility 120GB SSD review

OCZ Technology was kind enough to send us their latest "mainstream" solid state drive for review, the MLC based 120GB Agility series. The Agility series of drives have a 2.5 inch form factor, SATA2 connection and SATA power connector. The Agility series can be fitted to a laptop with SATA hard drive support, or as we have done for this review, the Agility series can also be fitted to a desktop PC which supports SATA hard disk drives.

In this review we will test the performance and usability of the OCZ Technology Agility series (MLC) SSD. Just a few months ago, we reviewed the OCZ Technology Vertex series drive, and were very impressed by the performance. The Agility series is based on the same Indilinx SSD controller found in the Vertex series of drives, but uses different NAND manufactured by Intel, so let’s find out how the Agility series drive performs.

OCZ Technology Company Information

I’m sure most CD Freaks members will be familiar with the OCZ Technology brand name. OCZ Technology has been manufacturing high performance, high quality PC memory and flash memory for many years.

More recently, OCZ Technology ventured into the SSD market and has done more than most manufacturers to bring affordable and high performance SSD drives to the mainstream PC user.

If you would like to find out more about OCZ Technology, you can visit the OCZ Technology website.

Packaging

Box front

Box rear

Box inner packing

The OCZ Technology Agility series drives are packaged in an eye catching mainly green coloured box. Inside the main box is a further box and more robust packaging. The inner box is made from tough cardboard with foam protection. The drive itself is housed in an anti static bag. There should be no problem with the way the drive is packaged.

What’s inside the box

Now it’s time to take a look at the drive itself and what the drive came shipped with.

The package contained the drive itself and instruction booklet.

Now let’s take a look at the drive itself.

Drive top

Drive bottom

On the bottom of the drive we can see two labels: The main label states the drive model number and capacity and that the drive was manufactured in Taiwan. The second label has the drive part number and serial number. We can also see the drive’s SATA power and data connectors.

Drive rear

On the rear of the drive we can see the SATA power and data connectors. We can also see a two pin jumper terminal, which is used for flashing a full version of the drive’s firmware.

Please note that, the flash jumpers are only required when the kernel part of the firmware is updated. The drive can normally be flashed with a normal firmware update, without the jumper or losing the data already on the drive.

The casing of the drive itself is made of metal and has a tough and high quality feel to it.

Now let’s head to the next page, where we look at the drive’s features.