OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid PCIe Hybrid SSD Review

[PAGETITLE=Introduction][Top Ad] Solid-state drives are the hottest thing in desktop and laptop computers, but affordability is generally considered to be the single largest reason preventing mass adoption. Reliability is always a concern, but actual return rates across the industry tend to be very low, typically ranging from 0.1% to 5% at the high-end of the scale. Instead, price is the main issue with adoption because the NAND flash cost alone usually comprises over three quarters of an SSD's cost. Given this limitation there are only so many tricks that can be done to mitigate the SSD's cost. Buying smaller capacity SSDs is one option, but that only goes so far before it becomes self-defeating. Small SSD caching drives are another, but they are either dependent on chipset technologies (Intel's SRT) or still require a moderate investment in a discrete SSD with an advanced caching software suite. OCZ Technology has chosen a relatively unique approach to this problem by combining the longstanding RevoDrive platform with a traditional, 1TB hard disk drive in order to create the RevoDrive Hybrid. The Hybrid comprises a standard pair of SandForce SF-2281 controllers that work in tandem (not RAID); while they can work like an ordinary SSD, they will instead serve as a cache for the hard disk drive. There are a few advantages here. For one, the entire setup is self-contained in a 2-slot wide PCIe card. Second, OCZ doesn't have to concern itself with possible combinations of SATA controllers, SSD controllers, or the type or speed of hard drive that might be combined. The company can instead specifically tune not only the Dataplex caching software, but also the RevoDrive's firmware for the Toshiba drive not just to give the best performance, but to more importantly ensure that everything is guaranteed to work together. Finally, the entire "drive" appears and functions like a 1TB in Windows and will offer SSD levels of performance, but would only have the price of a 120GB SSD and the 1TB disk drive. Needless to say, the RevoDrive Hybrid's final price is less than even a fourth of a 1TB or two 512GB SSDs! As mentioned above, the RevoDrive Hybrid is a 2-slot wide PCIe 4x card. PCI Express 2.0 is recommended, but not required. While this necessitates the use of pre-install drivers, it does completely bypass any SATA controller issues. The lack of any full speed SATA III or non-Marvell SATA III ports simply wouldn't be an issue. The SSD portion is a full 128GB divided between two SandForce SF-2281 controllers, while the 2.5" laptop drive is a 1TB Toshiba 5,400RPM offering. Unfortunately, for those tinkerers out there already contemplating it, the hard disk drive is not swappable, likely due to firmware optimizations specific to the drive. The Hybrid is ready to go and simply needs to be installed, although we strongly suggest users copy down or photograph the Dataplex serial key sticker on the drive first, as it will be needed later! Next, the latest pre-install driver for Windows should be downloaded from the OCZ website to a USB key in order to begin the Windows install process. Yes, due to the Dataplex software itself only, Windows is all that's supported at the present time. During the install users must be sure to select the largest capacity drive for the caching to properly work. If this is starting to sound rather complicated, OCZ Technology rather conveniently created a step-by-step video guide on YouTube that I would suggest watching in full! After the install is complete, you need to be sure that the Toshiba drive is selected within the BIOS as the boot drive. Once within Windows itself, users need to register the key on the Hybrid's product page in order to download the Dataplex software, and will need to input the key a second time during the Dataplex installation. It should be noted that once installed, nobody else can use this key. Should you need to reinstall the OS on the Hybrid or switch it to another computer, you must first uninstall the Dataplex software with an active Internet connection present - otherwise you will find the key locked out and will need to query OCZ support to reset it before it may be used again. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Test System & Methodology] At Techgage, we strive to make sure our results are as accurate and real-world applicable as possible. We list most of the steps and processes involved in setting up and conducting our benchmarking process below, but in the interests of brevity we can't mention every last detail. If there is any pertinent information that we've inadvertently omitted or you have any thoughts, suggestions, or critiques, then please feel free to email us or post directly in our forums. This site exists for readers like you and we value your input. The table below lists the hardware used in our current storage-testing machine, which remains unchanged throughout all of our testing, with the obvious exception of the storage device. Each drive used for the sake of comparison is also listed here. Component Techgage Solid-State Drive Test System Processor Intel Core i7-2600 - 3.50GHz (Locked) Quad-Core Motherboard ASUS P8P67 Deluxe Memory 4GB Kingston DDR3-1866 Graphics AMD Radeon HD 5770 Audio On-Board Audio Storage Hitachi 7200RPM 2TB Hard Drive Corsair Force F90 90GB Crucial m4 256GB Intel 520 240GB Kingston V+ Series 128GB Kingston HyperX 240GB OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB OCZ Vertex Turbo 120GB OCZ Vertex 2 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 240GB OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 240GB Power Supply Antec NeoHE 550W Cooling Noctua DH-14 Et cetera Lite-on DVD-RW Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 64-bit Our Windows 7 Desktop for SSD Testing When preparing our SSD testbed for benchmarking we follow these guidelines: General Guidelines The Core i7-2600 processor is turbo-locked at 3.5GHz for result consistency. No power-saving options are enabled in the motherboard's EFI. AHCI is enabled in the motherboard's EFI for best performance. Only the Intel 6Gb/s port controller is used for test drives. Only cold boots are utilized; for the purposes of our testing a boot is defined as the moment the power button is depressed to the moment the last systray icon and program has fully loaded after reaching the Windows 7 desktop. Auto-login is enabled. Windows 7 Optimizations User Account Control (UAC) is disabled. The OS is kept clean; no scrap files are left in between runs. Windows Update and OS power-saving settings are disabled. For our new Sandy Bridge storage testbed we have migrated to using test images for our drives. All drives are imaged with the cloned test image to ensure all drivers, programs, and settings remain identical for testing purposes. We feel disk cloning software and SSD controller technology has matured to the point where potential issues such as non-aligned sectors are no longer a potential issue. For testing, we run all tests five times dropping the highest and lowest results, then take the average of the middle three. And who said that college statistics class wouldn't prove useful? If any anomalous results are seen the test will be run again. Given the complexities of modern computers, and especially today's operating systems and the software that runs on them, we feel this provides the most accurate results possible. Finally, we are seeking to constantly improve and expand upon our SSD testing methodology. We are always actively seeking real-world workload scenarios that are bottlenecked by hard drives, so if you have any suggestions whatsoever or there is a program you would like to see included in our SSD content, then please drop by our forums and let us know! We are always looking to expand our SSD benchmarks and provide more useful and real-world results, and not just synthetic numbers. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Synthetic: PCMark 7] Futuremark's PCMark benchmarking suite should need no introduction as it has been a staple of PC benchmarks for the better half of a decade. PCMark offers a range of tests to gauge every aspect of a computer's performance and presents it in a neat simple final result. Thankfully it also breaks down the overall score with individual subsystem scores (such as Memory, Storage, etc) in addition to given individual test results. With the latest 2011 release of PCMark 7 we should hopefully see quite a few changes to how SSDs are handled, and the resulting scores computed, as previously, results were biased towards sequential read and write performance. With its Windows 7 focus PCMark 7 offers a variety of storage system tests, such as simulating a Windows Defender scan and using Windows Media Center to using other built-in programs for video and music file manipulation. But for those that just want a nice overarching score, it has those too. Right off the bat we have some interesting results. Despite packing two SF-2281 controllers, performance is just a few points of the 256GB Crucial m4 SSD. This has to do with how the RevoDrive Hybrid is built; basically it utilizes two 60GB SF-2281 powered SSDs in tandem. For various reasons solid-state drives tend to reach peak performance between 128GB and 256GB capacities, and the smaller the capacity the lower the performance. At the same time, pairing two controllers in tandem provides significant benefits in burst operations and high I/O workloads, which can easily offset the hit in sequential write performance. With that said, although it did not take a clean sweep, the Hybrid puts up some very respectable performance here, made all the more impressive considering this is actually a large capacity, low-speed laptop drive with a pair of 60GB caching SSDs in front of it. This is a promising start so far. [PAGEBREAK][PAGETITLE=Synthetic: Iometer & AS SSD] Originally developed by Intel, and since given to the open-source community, Iometer (pronounced "eyeawmeter", like thermometer) is one of the best storage-testing applications available, for a couple of reasons. The first, and primary, is that it's completely...

OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid PCIe Hybrid SSD Review

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