Optiarc, Inc., best known for its professional line of optical disc drives, has entered the digital flash storage with a new line of high-grade Solid State Drives (SSD).

Since its inception in 2006, Optiarc has focused on the digital storage market. Originally created to develop optical disc drive writers and readers, Optiarc has expanded into the media market for both optical discs and flash.

The Optiarc VP Series SSD focuses on protecting data integrity to safeguard the user’s content by protecting against cell corruption and permanent fatal errors.

As the capacity continues to increase with advanced 3D NAND flash memory technology, currently utilizing 96-layer memory cells, SSD manufacturers are able to increase flash memory storage while decreasing the device's physical footprint. The problem is 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 failure potentially causing total data loss.

Optiarc promises safeguard your data by sourcing "the best parts and components available, using higher material purity and prequalified 3D NAND chips." The company is also fine-tuning the 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 potentially being over worked and also creates faster retention. Additionally, 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.

In addition, each element of every single SSD has been tested to check the drive’s potential to fail, ensure robustness of its memory and cellular structure, read / write speed optimization, and much more to protect against contamination.

"Optiarc is dedicated to offering affordable, high capacity, fast SSDs, with a focus on preserving data and preventing corruption and data loss due to faulty components or memory," the company says.

The Optiarc VP Series SSD currently is offered in 120GB (P/N OPT120S325-R), 240GB (P/N OPT240S325-R) and 480GB (P/N OPT480S325-R), higher capacity coming soon.

The SATA III SSDs are supporting sequential read and write speeds of up to 550 MB/sec and 490 MB/sec, respectively. MTBF is set at 2,000,000 hours.