Call it coincidence if you will, but on the same day that Super Talent
announced that its 2TB RAIDDrive would begin shipping next month, OCZ has finally confessed that its
Z-Drive is shipping... right now! Originally shown in prototype form
back at CeBIT, this PCIe card is equipped with four SSDs linked in a RAID 0 configuration. We'd originally assumed that just a few capacities of the same device would be available, but we're learning today that two iterations will be produced: the Z-Drive p84 will be MLC-based and tout a 750MBps maximum read rate / 650MBps maximum write rate, while the SLC-based Z-Drive e84 cranks that to 800MBps and 750MBps (respectively). Also of note, both models will be available in 256GB and 512GB sizes, though the 1TB flagship will be p84 only. We've checked Amazon again and it's still showing "
1 to 3 months" before release, but hopefully there's a memo waiting in some admin's inbox to remedy that.
posted September 17th 2009 3:18AM
fiberglass mesh
mmm... ssd
And what about the Colossus? it was supposed to be released in mid August.
I like SSD!I wish all laptops came with preinstalled SSDs like 512gb!;) And very cheap as well... but I guess that will not happen soon
Keep dreaming.
"Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so you shall become. Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil." James Allen
So what do you do after 7 minutes when you've completely filled it at that write speed?
Laugh maniacally?
buy another and fill it with some hd porn
I'd say this card isn't meant as a permanent or even long-term storage area. More like a "cache" if you will.
750 Megabytes per second. Dear God. The entire contents of a 160 GB iPod could be copied in under four minutes. (I know, not from an iPod, USB and all that shit: just using it as an example)
The "E" after "Z-Drive" almost looks like the "E" in the Eee PC logo.
Almost.
It'd be nice to have a smaller (32GB or 64GB) lower price version suitable for desktop use. Could put the OS and applications on that and speed the system up nicely, even if it were only half or third the speed.
That's what OCZ's normal SSDs are for. They run up to around 250 MB/s and come in a variety of sizes and speeds (30 - 250 GB).
They work really well for gaming and other situations that ask for a lot of small files to be read.
I agree, even though I own a normal ssd, I would love to have one of these PCI-E cards to slap into my machine. The difference between 250 and 750 is just too big :-)
God, I hate to sound stupid but, is this a hard drive or what?
Remember, there is no such as a stupid question, just stupid people
A quick Google search will answer your question.
I read up on it and what it was about. I got a huge Geek boner. That's a lot of SSD space. H@wt
Oh, cut the bullshit. Yes, this is a hard drive.
The question is, once the fiber-optic high speed with some of the new uber-fast transfer speeds becomes ubiquitous, will the general public still use local hard drives at all to store their data, or will it all be stored offsite in ultra-secure locations and just be accessed over the net as needed?
Hard for a hacker to get information off your hard drive when you don't even have a hard drive. Your operating system itself could be access online.
This is likely years away due to the need for greater infrastructure, but it seems the natural course of things to me.
But can you set your BIOS to boot off a PCI-E card? Isn't the BIOS limited to SATA/PATA or NIC?
You can boot from 3rd party controllers as well, like PCI-E SAS cards and RAID cards. I'm certain this is bootable.
cypherx, you totally remind me of Eddie from the Vacation movies.
Vacation:
Clark Griswold: "Real tomato ketchup, Eddy?"
Eddie: "Nothing but the best for you, Clark!"
Or Christmas Vacation:
Ellen: "What are you looking at?"
Clark: "Oh, the silent majesty of a winter's morn... the clean, cool chill of the holiday air... an asshole in his bath robe, emptying his checmical toilet into my sewer."
Eddie: "Merry Christmas! Shitter was full!"
Yes, the card has a ROM that is given priority during POST to boot ahead of other onboard devices. Now go Google, and get back to us...
Here, I'll even save you the trouble: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS
I would love to know why anyone with a desktop computer, needs speeds like these. I can justify 120/100 or maybe even 220/200 reads and writes but 750/650? Hard to imagine any real use for this technology aside from a server or a rendering farm.
Why would anyone need these speeds? I would be very excited to edit RED 4k footage in Final Cut. Even trying to edit 1080p uncompressed footage is next to impossible without crazy external raid storage.
I guess you don't understand the cravings of computer gaming fanatics. I am sure we will see someone benchmark this card by how long it takes to open an arbitrary amount of WoW sessions at the same time.
Personally, I would be very interested in using this for virtualization where after RAM limitations, disk I/O bottlenecks continue to be a problem. Running multiple VMs that are heavy on I/O shouldn't be a problem on something like this.
Who're BUYING these things?! I'll admit that as a student I find pretty much everything expensive, and I will concede that it's important that someone DOES buy them to encourage further development and lower prices, but I'm amazed that they're actually selling... If they ARE selling, that is.
and here I thought the hardcard was dead!