Optiarc is a brand of optical disc drives owned by a US company Vinpower, Inc. Recently, the disk-maker released three SSD products. According to the company, they ensure “storage for life and a user will be able to maintain their content indefinitely.” However, the company is yet to publish any detailed endurance data.
SSD – VP Series Interface
Optiarc is introducing a 6Gbit/s SATA interface, the VP Series, for its SSD. These SSDs comes in with 120GB, 240GB and 480GB capacities using 3D NAND. They are “guaranteed no data loss SSD due to faulty memory.”
The products aren’t as great in terms of their Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF); it is about two million hours, which is mediocre. Moreover, the performance is up to 550/490 MB/sec sequentially reading or writing. The company fails to impress here either.
However, the no data loss claim is atypical, though. As per Optiarc, their products provide protection against cell corruption and permanent fatal errors. These major primitive measures ensure that users can maintain content indefinitely.
Optiarc points out that “3D NAND cells are built vertically in strings, meaning a defect in a single cell will most likely negatively affect the performance of the entire cell string. This minor contamination could lead to massive failure potentially causing total data loss.”
Optiarc’s claims
Optiarc said it prevents this from happening by:
- Sourcing the best parts and components available, using higher material purity and prequalified 3D NAND chips.
- Fine tuning SSD firmware to better control the data flow and prevent errors or overloading at the cellular level. This regulates the flow of content and directs it to the appropriate cell(s), to prevent cells from over-working and also creates faster retention.
- The firmware can detect if a cell has the potential to fail and balances the loading in that cell to prevent the possibility of failure and potential data loss.
- Implement intensive testing procedures that go far beyond the standardized mainstream testing process. Using state of the art hardware to test each element of every single SSD we produce to check the drive’s potential to fail, the robustness of its memory and cellular structure, read/write speed optimization, and much more to protect against contamination and ensure long term reliability and stability.
Optiarc CEO Calvin Chang said in a statement: “Because of these 3 key factors; high caliber components, enhanced firmware, and intense testing, Optiarc is able to virtually eliminate the risk of data loss and corrupted data integrity across its entire line of SSD models.”
