OCZ Vertex 4 128 GB: Testing Write Performance With Firmware 1.4

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Back in April, we published one of the first reviews of OCZ's Vertex 4. In those three months, the company has issued three firmware updates, with a fourth reportedly in the pipeline. We take another look at the drive using its latest software.

Benchmark Results: HD Tune Pro

The first benchmark we run on the drive in its fresh-out-of-the-box state reveals odd behavior.

We're using HD Tune Pro to write across the full span of the drive with both 64 KB and 1 MB blocks. Both sizes reveal that, once the drive writes to 50% of its capacity, performance plummets. This is particularly unusual behavior for a fresh-out-of-the-box drive, and it gives us our first clue that there is something very different about the way OCZ's Vertex 4 operates. 

Below, you see the result of HD Tune Pro 5.00's 1 MB block write test.

Then, the same metric's 64 GB block write test.

In order to better evaluate how this translates to performance on a partitioned drive, we turn to Anvil’s Storage Utility.