14 DAY TRIAL // Not long ago, OCZ decided to stop making PCs, peripherals and other things, in order to more closely focus on development of solid state storage devices and memory products. The company has already made an impression with its powerful SSDs, especially its Vertex and Agility series, and it seems as though it is ready to expand its plans to external devices. In fact, according to reports, the hardware maker is just a step away from unveiling a unit capable of taking advantage of the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 standard.
According to Fudzilla, OCZ should soon start shipping the Enyo SSD. Based on MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash memory chips, the device will have an on-board cache memory of 64MB and a USB 3.0 micro B connector interface. The specifications aren't perfectly known for now, but, considering the maximum data rates of 5Gbps achievable on the connection, one can speculate on the maximum read and write speeds.
For storage capacities of 64GB or lower, sustained speeds should be of about 40MB/s, whereas read/write speeds should reach maximums of roughly 225MB/s and 135MB/s, respectively. Of course, as it is common on Flash storage devices, these rates should be higher on larger drives. For the 128GB and 256GB versions, maximum reading should be done at about 260MB/s, whereas the writing speed should revolve around 200MB/s. This corresponds to sustained data transfers of up to 150MB/s.
Unfortunately, the report has no clear information on what prices end-users can expect to see, with the best hint being the high likelihood of price tags being in the same league as (or higher than) those carried by Vertex 2SSDs. This final detail will become known once the drives themselves start selling this month. In the meantime, consumers can spend their nights dreaming about external SSDs that run faster than many internal storage devices.