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OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid review roundup: a speedy and spacious storage solution
Ever since we spent some time with OCZ's RevoDrive Hybrid back at Computex, we eagerly awaited its arrival so that it could be put through its paces. Well, the time has come for the $500 storage mongrel to face the music and for us to find out if it adds up to more than the sum of its SSD and HDD parts. Hot Hardware found the RevoDrive Hybrid delivered on its promise of mind-blowing peak transfer speeds of almost 1GBps, with performance that could only be matched by dual SATA III SSDs in a RAID 0 setup. Everyone spoke well of the Dataplex software that manages the RevoDrive's caching, as it dutifully maxed out performance once it learned usage patterns. TRIM support was a welcome feature, but all noted the niggle that it must be used as the system boot device, so it can't pull duty as secondary storage. All in all, the consensus is that while the RevoDrive Hybrid may be too pricey for some, it's a darn good deal for the performance it provides. Of course, you don't have to take our word for it, so dig into the full reviews at the sources below.
OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid merges 100GB SSD with 1TB HDD for $499
We heard about OCZ's clever crossbreed a few months ago, but couldn't be sure about pricing for this premium model. Turns out, it's significantly less than we'd guessed: $499 for a 100GB SSD and 1TB HDD happily united on a single PCI Express card. Yup, that's still a heck of a lot more than the $300 or so it'd cost to pick up a SandForce-controlled 120GB solid state beauty along with a separate 1TB SATA 6GB/s hard drive. The comparison isn't entirely fair, though, because OCZ claims its combo boosts overall performance by caching both "hot" and "cold" data, which is automatically organized between the SSD and HDD, on a single card with up to 910MB/s bandwidth and 120,000 IOPS. Nevertheless, it'll take some real-world benchmarking to determine whether the promised speed gain is worth our wages. More details in the PR after the break.
OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 and RevoDrive Hybrid hands-on (video)
We got a chance to spend some time with the lovely folks from OCZ here at Computex for a tour of their latest and greatest SSD products, the RevoDrive 3 X2 and RevoDrive Hybrid. Both are PCIe x4 cards featuring up to 4 SandForce SF-2200 controllers and RAID 0 (striping) for blazing performance. The RevoDrive 3 X2 is available in capacities from 240GB ($699) to 960GB and improves upon the RevoDrive X2 with TRIM support and double the performance. We were treated to a demo that achieved truly ludicrous speeds -- 1.5GBps reads and 1.2GBps writes -- the kind of numbers that'll perk up even the most jaded PC enthusiast. The RevoDrive Hybrid builds upon the same SSD technology as the RevoDrive 3 X2 to cache the contents of a 2.5-inch hard drive, with capacities starting at 500GB with a 60GB cache ($350). OCZ's demo showed a 20 times performance improvement going from a regular hard drive to the RevoDrive Hybrid. Both products are expected to ship in July, but we suggest you ogle them right now in the gallery below and in our hands-on video after the break. %Gallery-125104%
RevoDrive Hybrid pairs HDD with SSD on PCIe
Popping up in everything from tablets to servers, plain old solid-state drives are becoming as mundane as floppy disks were in the '90s, so it's about time someone got a little creative with the soldering iron. OCZ's RevoDrive Hybrid takes a HDD and puts it where it doesn't belong -- on top of an SSD. But unlike that deep fried Oreo you really shouldn't have "tasted" at the state fair, this pairing has potential to keep the juices flowing, caching reads and writes for both drives on a single PCIe card. Shipping in July, the $350 base Hybrid is expected to include a 500GB HDD and 60GB SSD, with a premium model doubling both capacities (and we assume price). With OCZ out of the memory game, we hope to see the now strictly SSD company bring innovative, affordable flash-based goodies to market, and it looks like we're off to a decent start.
