Toshiba Finalizes Acquisition of OCZ, Launches New Vertex 460 SSD to Celebrate

Following OCZ’s announcement last month to file for bankruptcy, we learned that Toshiba had expressed interest in acquiring the company. Well, fast-forward to today, and that is a done deal; OCZ officially becomes “OCZ Storage Solutions”, part of the Toshiba Group. Per the agreement, OCZ will remain as an independent company.

While Toshiba has already been well-established in the SSD market (it’s one of the leading providers of NAND flash), this acquisition makes a lot of sense. No one knows of Toshiba on the enthusiast side, an area OCZ has had a huge focus on. Further, OCZ has also catered to the enterprise market for a number of years, so with this acquisition, Toshiba gains access to OCZ’s established presence in both of these channels.

Toshiba’s Corporate VP Mr. Seiichi Mori has said this about the deal:

The acquisition of OCZ further expands our solid-state storage capabilities and represents Toshiba’s commitment to this high-growth area. Our goal is to offer a leading edge portfolio of solid state solutions to address the storage challenges faced by both client and enterprise customers, and the acquisition of OCZ is an ideal addition to our team in realizing this strategy.

To help usher in this new chapter in the OCZ saga, the company has released a brand-new SSD called Vertex 460. It comes in 120GB, 240GB, or 480GB flavors, and boasts impressive performance numbers; per the 240GB in particular, 85K read IOPs, 90K write IOPs, 21K “steady-state” write IOPs, and throughput of 540MB/s read and 525MB/s write.

Most interesting about this SSD is that it takes advantage of Toshiba’s 19nm MLC flash and Barefoot 3 M10 controller. The 240GB model is set to retail for $189, while the 120GB is $99 and 480GB, $359. Each drive includes Acronis True Image, a 3-year warranty (at 20GB writes per day).

With all this financial nonsense now in the past, we look forward to seeing where OCZ takes SSD technology going forward.