OCZ Enyo 128GB USB 3.0 Portable SSD

[Rob Williams]

"Fast". It's a word that can be explained in a billion different ways, but one of my favorites is to talk about the potential of OCZ's Enyo SSD. As a portable drive, it delivers mind-blowing performance, at up to 200MB/s for both the read and write, and as an added perk, it's small, stylish, and priced surprisingly well.

Want in on the hot action that is the Enyo SSD? Good, because you're invited! Head here to read our in-depth look, and then discuss it here!

 

[Unregistered]

Just bought this

Hello, I just read through your guys' review of the OCZ Enyo(which I had just bought the 64gb version) and am having an issue with it. I sent OCZ an email but they haven't gotten back to me yet. Now I read that when the drive is idle garbage collection kicks in. My issue is that when I'm not doing anything on it, it will all of a sudden disconnect itself, like I went to the Safely Remove Hardware icon and removed it. I hear the Windows sound and everything, except I didn't remove it. So I have to go to the back of my computer and unplug it then plug it back in, which is mildly irritating. I'm just wondering if I received a faulty unit or if its a symptom of the garbage collection. Fyi, I have installed the Symwave driver for it. I was also thinking, for an external USB 3.0 SSD do you think I should have the option "Allow files on this drive to have contents indexed in addition to file properties" checked or unchecked and the option "Enable write caching" enabled or disabled? Thanks for any help you can give me. Regards.

 

[Tharic-Nar]

Devices turning themselves off is usually the result of power-save functions, be it at the OS level or device level. Check the windows power options to see if you have a timer on 'Turn off hard disks:'. Also, the driver may have its own power-save functions, so you may need to dig around in its options to find it - if it has one at all.

File Indexing is not required unless you do a lot of searches, which in the case of an SSD, is not recommended, since it can wear out the device faster, so you may want to turn that off. Write caching helps speed up file transfers by writing to cache instead of directly to the device. For external devices, it's best to turn this off, since if you remove the device before the data has been written, you loose it.

 

[Unregistered]

Yeah I figured it could be power saving at some level. I checked my power plan settings and it had my hard drives set to be turned off after 20 minutes. The thing is I have another usb 3.0 drive hooked up that doesn't disconnect itself, but I'm thinking that since my enyo is an ssd and the other usb 3.0 drive I have and all my internal drives are all mechanical they don't actually shut off completely, they just spin down(maybe?) but since the ssd is electrical it shuts it off completely. Thats my guess anyway. I set the time to like 45 minutes but it appears I can't set specific times for specific drives so we'll see how it goes. I just hope the enyo isn't dying or nothing. Anyways thanks for the help and info man. I appreciate it. Regards.

 

[Rob Williams]

You reminded me of an issue I experienced once with the Enyo. For some reason, as I was using it, I got that pop-up that told me I should plug the device into a 3.0 port instead, as I'd see higher performance... when it <em>was</em> plugged into a 3.0 port, and the performance verified that. I only had it happen a couple of times, and it was all in the same session, so I just chalked it off as being a PC issue.

In truth, the disconnected issue sounds more like a faulty cable or something, not the device that's faulty. Have you checked on OCZ's support forums and seen if others are having similar issues? I should note that since this review was published, I've used the drive a handful of times and haven't had any issue, and overall, I had it plugged in for at least a total of 200 hours, and never had an issue like that.

Garbage collection wouldn't affect the drive from being disconnected... it's a subtle feature that should never become apparent quite like that. Out of curiosity, how long does it take before the PC will tell you that it's disconnected? You might want to time it and see if it's the same everytime.

 

[Unregistered]

Reply

Hello, well I haven't had an issue in a while now. It hasn't disconnected itself in about a week or so. I tried looking for the Enyo on the OCZ forums and they didn't really have any topics dedicated to it. I also contacted their support who I was going to get a replacement for it, but wasn't sure if I should get the replacement from Newegg or OCZ itself. But I haven't had any issues since I turned my hard drive power-off time to like 45 minutes it seems like. I don't know why that would shut an External SSD off completely but I guess if it worked I'm not worried about it. Also, I installed the driver that was available on OCZs site, I believe it was the Symwave driver and I noticed in your guys' review you had the drive getting better speeds with the MCCI driver. Is that the same thing as the Symwave driver? I tried googling it but couldn't find it. Thanks for the help in advance.

 

[Rob Williams]

It's good to hear that you haven't been experiencing the issue still

I find it bizarre that the power setting would affect it, though. I had huge lulls with the drive plugged in and never had that happen. Power consumption on this thing isn't even an issue, as it's less than 1W. Given the PC as a whole will draw well over 100W at any given time, having a power feature for something so minor seems a little strange. But, I guess it does all add up.

I should have been a little more clear in the review. I didn't use the MCCI driver but rather the same Symwave you've been using from OCZ's site. Bear in mind that the 64GB version of the Enyo is slower than the 128GB that we benched (260/200 vs. 225/135). In our personal tests of the MCCI vs. Symwave driver, the performance differences were almost not noticeable at all. The usual variations in drive performance over time made the difference negligible.

 

[Unregistered]

Yeah I noticed after I bought the 64 gb version that it was slower than the 128 or 256 versions. When I was having issues with it I asked the OCZ guy if I could trade up and pay the difference. But he didn't even acknowledge that I said it, which I kind of figured they wouldn't let me do. I guess I gotta stick with my 40MB/s Sustained Write instead of the 150 that the other models have. Maybe newegg would let me send it back for store credit, but I doubt it. Regards.

 

[Rob Williams]

To be fair, I could understand the reasoning for OCZ not wanting to swap out the drive for an upgrade, because there's little or nothing wrong with the device. It would cost the company money, and for no real reason. If the drive DOES indeed have an issue, I could understand a swap-out, but that's still not going to help you with achieving the much higher speeds.

Regardless, what you have is a wicked drive and is super-fast compared to normal USB 2.0 drives. As long as you don't run into those power-related issues again, you have a good product on your hands