The OCZ Vertex 2 (E) 120 GB SSD

The OCZ Vertex 2 (E) 120 GB solid state drive has the official part number of OCZSSD2-2VTXE120G. The letter E in the part number designates that it is an "Extended Capacity" drive. OCZ Vertex 2 Extended Capacity drives have 20% more capacity than regular Vertex 2 drives.

The extra capacity comes at the expense of reserve flash memory cells. Instead of the standard 28% reserve used by the SandForce 1222 controller for write-leveling and garbage collection duties, OCZ uses a slightly different firmware that cuts down that reserve to just 7-8%, allowing them to boost the Agility 2's capacity by 20% with the same amount of flash memory.

Although both the E and non-E versions of the Vertex 2 SSD costs the same, this technique effectively gives the "Extended Capacity" drive a much lower cost per GB. Both versions are still covered under the same 3 year warranty, which is great news. However, "Extended Capacity" drives will develop "bad sectors" sooner, as they have much fewer spare cells to replace the bad ones that develop over time.

This drive is designed to replace regular 2.5" hard disk drive, so it has the same form factor and looks pretty much like a hard disk drive. The only difference is it's lighter than a hard disk drive, and the case is flat on both sides. The underside has a simple label that lists the model number, capacity, and place of manufacture, amongst other things.

Usable Capacity

This OCZ Vertex 2 (E) drive officially has a formatted capacity of 120 GB. We checked that out by formatting both in NTFS using Windows Vista.

The actual formatted capacity was 120,031,988,864 bytes. This is slightly (~31.5 MB) above than the official storage capacity. With about 97.5 MB allocated to the NTFS file system, the actual usable capacity was about 66 MB below 120 GB.

Let's take a look at its specifications.

Specifications

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