OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB PCI-E SSD Review
SSDs are expensive and often don't offer enough capacity to meet user needs. The recent SSD caching craze attempts to alleviate both these. Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for OCZ Storage Solutions RevoDrive 3 X2 Series 240 GB PCI Express 4 GB-s Slim Solid State Drive (SSD) with OCZ VCA 2.0, 3 yr warranty - RVD3X2-FHPX4-240G at Amazon.com. Read honest and unbiased product reviews from our users.
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OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid – A Closer Look
At first glance, it appears OCZ took a RevoDrive and slapped a 2.5″ HDD on top. Well, that’s pretty much what they did although more elegantly than just slapping it on there.
From the top view we see the 5400 RPM HDD on top with a heatsink on the far left covering the RAID controller.
Underneath that heatsink lies the SuperScale Storage Accelerator that facilitates scalable performance by employing complex command queuing structure (CCQS) and queue balancing algorithm (QBA) technologies. The aforementioned Virtualized Controller Architecture 2.0 technology aggregates performance across a pool of Virtual Logical
Drives (LUNs) through virtualization. It allows some DMA or data
management functions, including OCZ’s command queuing and QBA, to be handled on the drive which mitigates the load placed on the host CPU. What all this jargon means is that they forgo a traditional RAID controller and rely on NAND Array virtualization, accessing the NAND in parallel. Since there’s no actual RAID controller, they are able to pass the TRIM command although currently Windows does not support it in this fashion so don’t blame OCZ.
Drives (LUNs) through virtualization. It allows some DMA or data
management functions, including OCZ’s command queuing and QBA, to be handled on the drive which mitigates the load placed on the host CPU. What all this jargon means is that they forgo a traditional RAID controller and rely on NAND Array virtualization, accessing the NAND in parallel. Since there’s no actual RAID controller, they are able to pass the TRIM command although currently Windows does not support it in this fashion so don’t blame OCZ.
The daughterboard on which the HDD resides, is held by four screws and does not host any of the NAND. It’s purely for the HDD mount.
In the above view, you can see how the daughterboard rests above the controller and NAND.
Looking beneath, we find the pair of SF-2281 controllers and to the left, indicated by the arrow, is the interface where the daughterboard connects to the mainboard. The SandForce SF-2281 controllers work in tandem to deliver the extreme performance on this drive. As always, they handle the mundane duties of wear-leveling, real-time compression, encryption, and error correction which is even more critical when employing 25nm NAND since errors are much more error prone than that of the NAND with the larger architecture. As always, the DuraClass technology, proprietary to SandForce, is responsible for all of the aforementioned tasks and more like TRIM and garbage collection which are supported to maintain a high level of performance for extended periods of time.
Around back, we see the remainder of the NAND flash.
Interestingly, this is the first time we’ve seen the flash modules branded with the OCZ name. We queried OCZ to see if this was third party manufactured or of their own fabrication and we were told “We now work directly with the fabs and purchase wafers instead of packaged NAND. The flash on the Hybrid is Micron 25nm Async”. So there you have it. On board is 128 GB in total comprised of 16 modules, each 8 GB in density.
Finally, if you peel back the OCZ sticker you can see that the hard drive is of Toshiba manufacture with part number HDD2K51. This is a 1TB, 5400 RPM drive in the 2.5″ form factor. Initially, we wondered why a 7200 RPM wasn’t used but the performance we saw was very good overall and having a faster HDD wouldn’t have much of an impact. The onboard cache for this platter drive is 8 MB and the average seek time is listed as 12 ms. With the hard drive in tow, OCZ reports that the the power draw for this is 8.1W idle and 10W in the active state as compared to the RevoDrive X2 at 4.3W Idle, 8.3W active.
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Editors Liked
- SSD-like Performance
- Easy Installation
- Easy to use software
- 3 Year Warranty
- Reasonable price for performance / capacity
- 3 year warranty
- Performance as good as regular SSD
- Transfer speeds are incredibly high
- High storage capacity
- Enterprise Class Quality
- Blazing Fast Speeds
- 1TB Drive
- PCIE
- 3 Years Warranty
Editors Didn't Like
- Must be used as the install drive
- Can only be used with Windows 7
- Data must first be cached before you see the true performance
- High entry price
- If something goes wrong, both SSD & HDD will be unusable
- Price
- Dataplex Software Still Lacks Support For Secondary Drives
- Limited upgrade paths
- SCSI architecture prohibits TRIM with Windows OS
- Expensive high performance storage product
- Dataplex software requires active Internet connection to install
Expert reviews and ratings
By TechSpot on OCZ's RevoDrive Hybrid is a hard product to summarize because there are so many aspects that we like, while there are many that we dislike. Let's talk performance first. Simply put, the RevoDrive Hybrid was disappointing. Caching technology...
By bjorn3d.com on 95 The RevoDrive Hybrid is a unique product which is difficult to compare. At its present market price it is a very nice deal just looking at the hardware specifications alone. The 1TB enterprise HDD provides the benefit of drive size, and the...
By PC Authority on 50 It's fun to come up with new pairings of technology. We've seen SSD storage before, we've even seen the use of system RAM as a storage device, but what happens when you marry an SSD and platter drive? The Hybrid is born. The OCZ Hybrid...
By VR-Zone on 90 Assessing the technologies and products readily available at the time of this review, the RevoDrive Hybrid appears to be the perfect marriage of a mechanical HDD drive with a large SSD cache. The RevoDrive Hybrid eliminates the limitations currently...
By ThinkComputers on 90 When it comes to pure performance once your data is cached the RevoDrive Hybrid is one of the fastest drives that we have tested to date! The only drive that even came close was OCZ’s own RevoDrive 3. With speeds of just under 1GB/s read and...
By Techgage on 95 There's an adage about complexity; the more complex something is the more that can go wrong. While this is not necessarily true in this case, we would be negligent if we declined to mention that we did run into one such issue ourselves. During...
By Tbreak.com on 90 The performance of the OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid speaks for itself as it closes the gap between hybrid solutions and true solid state drives, traditional hard drives don’t even enter this equation. The overall transfer speeds, as well as the all...
![Ssd Ssd](/uploads/1/2/5/7/125733358/759423744.jpg)
We've said it before, but we'll say it again; we love solid-state drives (SSDs). The combination of near-instant access, blazing performance, practically-silent operation and low power consumption is almost too good to be true, and we're now...
By Benchmark Reviews on 86 IMPORTANT: Although the rating and final score mentioned in this conclusion are made to be as objective as possible, please be advised that every author perceives these factors differently at various points in time. While we each do our best to...
By Kitguru.net on 90 The Solid State Drive industry has been rolling ahead at an incredible pace this year, with many companies releasing a range of performance drives for demanding enthusiast users. OCZ have been at the forefront of this market, with a portfolio of...
By HardwareHeaven on 90 We have praised the quality and design of previous RevoDrive models and the Hybrid is no different. A nice looking PCB has quality branded components such as Sandforce controllers attached to it and the daughter board is firmly secured in place. A...
By eTeknix on Solid State Drives are the way forward, we all know that and for many reasons. They are VERY fast and operate with a silent operation, as well as being smaller and having a longer life expectancy and these are only the main points to having a solid...
By Atomic MPC on Decent speed, pity about the...
By Real World Labs on After the very successful RevoDrive series and the recent Synapse series of cache SSDs it was really a matter of time before OCZ used both technologies in a single drive but is the RevoDrive Hybrid really the next step? Well the answer is...