OCZ Shows Off Modular PCI-E Solid-State Disk, Z-Drive p88

Mentioning the name “OCZ” a couple of years ago would have spawned thoughts of the many different kits of memory that the company offered. Today, the company’s major focus has shifted towards SSDs, and this was evident by the fact that not a single memory module was on display at its Aria suite at CES. It’s no surprise, either, given the sheer popularity of SSDs in the marketplace.

We’re all familiar with OCZ’s PCI-E solid-state disks, the Z-Drive, but on display was a soon-to-be-released model that’s completely unlike the others. Designed for those with huge storage performance needs, the Z-Drive P88 is a customizable PCI-E solution that will allow the user to physically change the card from RAID 0 to non-RAID, both offering their own set of benefits.

As you can see in the image above, the card consists of many modules that look like SO-DIMMs, but are rather modules with the same flash chips we’ve come to see in all other SSDs, except here, the modules are user-replaceable, in case one happens to go bad, or for storage upgrade purposes. You can purchase the card with a single rack of modules, and also add on a daughter card which turns it into RAID 0 configuration.

When you take the RAID 0 route, the speed improves dramatically, to top out at 1,300 MB/s read and 1,200 MB/s write. It gets even better, because the “e” versions of these drives can get even faster, with up to 1,400MB/s read and 1,500MB/s write. Yes, the write is indeed faster than the read in this case. When launched later this month, the p88 will see densities of 512MB, 1TB and 2TB. The price tag? It’s not finalized, but expect it to soar up towards ~$8,000 for the 2TB model.