14 DAY TRIAL // OWC has just announced the introduction of a new 30GB solid state drive based on a first generation SandForce controller which was designed for being used as a boot drive or in conjunction with Intel's RST SSD caching technology and retails for just $68 (50€).
The new SSD was introduced in the Extreme Pro 3G line and just as its name implies it uses the SATA 3Gbps interface for connecting to the system.
Despite the slightly older controller, the drive is still capable of achieving some quite impressive data transfer speeds, as OWC estimates its sustained sequential read and write performance can reach 263MB/s and 258MB/s, respectively.
As far as random 4K reads are concerned, the 30GB Mercury Extreme Pro 3G is capable of delivering 50,000 IOPS (input/output operations per second).
Like all other SandForce based solid state drives, the new OWC model also supports the DuraWrite and RAISE technologies, while also offering 128-bit AES hardware data encryption.
"While small in capacity, this new 30GB model offers a huge performance boost in application and OS operation," said Larry O'Connor, Founder and CEO, Other World Computing.
"At its price point, you can't beat its use as a boot and app load drive while offloading storage and backup duties to platter based drives," concluded the company's rep.
For those of you that want to install the OWC drive in a case without 2.5-inch slots, OWC is also retailing a 3.5-inch adapter for $3 (about 2.2 Euros).
Outside of the 30GB version of the drive which was introduced today, the Extreme series is also available in flavors of 40, 60, 115, 240 and 480 GB with prices ranging from $88 (65€)to $860 (634€). All these solid state drives are backed by a 3 year manufacturer warranty.