OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid: Solid-State Speed With Hard Drive Capacity

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LuckyDucky7

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Except for those who don't have SATA 6GB/s controllers on their motherboards, this product is a little redundant.

I mean, it's really cool and all, but since Vertex 3 drives on their own run about 200 bucks for 120GB, you could get 2 x OCZ Vertex 3's in RAID, and a high-performance 1TB 7200 RPM drive like the Western Digital Caviar Black (the one mounted there is 5400RPM) for the same price as this drive.

So instead of the rather limited 120GB, you'd get 240GB of SSD storage instead, along with a faster hard drive. Because with 240GB, who needs cache?
 

zybch

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[citation][nom]LuckyDucky7[/nom]Except for those who don't have SATA 6GB/s controllers on their motherboards, this product is a little redundant.I mean, it's really cool and all, but since Vertex 3 drives on their own run about 200 bucks for 120GB, you could get 2 x OCZ Vertex 3's in RAID, and a high-performance 1TB 7200 RPM drive like the Western Digital Caviar Black (the one mounted there is 5400RPM) for the same price as this drive.So instead of the rather limited 120GB, you'd get 240GB of SSD storage instead, along with a faster hard drive. Because with 240GB, who needs cache?[/citation]
Yeah, like i want to use 'scary'RAID in my system. Screw that.
 

alidan

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[citation][nom]zybch[/nom]Yeah, like i want to use 'scary'RAID in my system. Screw that.[/citation]

than i believe use a raid 5, i think thats it, raid the 2 ssds and get another hdd in there as a backup for the two ssds
 

rantoc

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[citation][nom]alidan[/nom]than i believe use a raid 5, i think thats it, raid the 2 ssds and get another hdd in there as a backup for the two ssds[/citation]

For a raid 5 at least 3 drives is needed. And the chipset integrated raid5 solutions don't have powerful checksum offloading either meaning its either slow or hogs the cpu. Sure raid 5 is awesome in its ways but it also has its drawbacks.
 

billybobser

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Just raid 0 and actively backup important files yourself if you can't take the drawbacks of it.

If something just created is really worth saving, save it twice. Else just a back up image per week.
 

shqtth

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This should be compared with the Seagate Momentus XT, where's that?
..

It should be !


Also why use 5400rpm? why not 7200rpm? Or use the XT.


To me, this product looks like its hurting. Overpriced.


I tested a few of the XT's are they are quick. Pretty much constant 100+ data and super low latency on common tasks.
 
Could you please look at a direct comparison with the Momentus XT please?

I have one as well.

From what I can see this is a bit better than the XT but it would be good to know Andrew.

Cheers !
 

nebun

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[citation][nom]zybch[/nom]Yeah, like i want to use 'scary'RAID in my system. Screw that.[/citation]
download the correct drivers and set it up correctly and you will have no issues....i have been using raid 0 for over 5 years with no issues at all
 

jacobdrj

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[citation][nom]shqtth[/nom]This should be compared with the Seagate Momentus XT, where's that? ..It should be !Also why use 5400rpm? why not 7200rpm? Or use the XT.To me, this product looks like its hurting. Overpriced.I tested a few of the XT's are they are quick. Pretty much constant 100+ data and super low latency on common tasks.[/citation]

Heat, for one, reliability for another, vibration (on a PCIe slot, no less) yet another...
 

SIR-Blade

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For those that dismiss the "cache" scenario out of hand, i.e. could buy a 2TB HDD and a stand alone SSD, they miss the whole point. Caching takes the "work" out of deciding the data that you want in the SSD. The more you use the app/data, the more likely most of it will be in cache, and you only have to work with a single drive letter.

The other scenario that You could use from OCZ, is do what I've done. Use their synapse drive as the cache, with a 5 *1TB RAID 1+0 on an Gigabyte X58 Mboard, i.e. no Z68 option available.
So I get the security/speed of a RAID array, and quick load times for OS and my favourite games, when cached. (The synapse is via the SATA III channel.)
For the ultimate, scenario, just add another 60GB SSD for those choice games/apps for those that absolutely positively had to be loaded ASAP.
Simples.
 

SIR-Blade

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The momentus is for a totally different target. It only has 4Gb NAND, so it would be like comparing apples with pears.
 

jacobdrj

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[citation][nom]SIR-Blade[/nom]The momentus is for a totally different target. It only has 4Gb NAND, so it would be like comparing apples with pears.[/citation]
Yes, and no...

It is still a hybrid solution. At least we could see what the differences are, and therefore, we can decide which market we fall in: Either Momentus or Revo Hybrid...

Personally, I think the Momentus would be on par, for most applications, with the RevoH if they would include closer to 24 GB of NAND, and therefore, this comparison would be much much closer...
 

SIR-Blade

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But the SSD is PCIe based, whereas the Seagate is SATA II if memory serves me correctly. The point of the Revo drive is to beat the SATTA II and III bottle neck, and provide large HDD capacity as well.

And then the big difference ... the size of the cache ... 4GB for the Seagate ... 100Gb for the Revo .. actually (114Gb .. 14% over provisioned)
 
This is going to be one of those fun "remember when" articles. Remember when people were so desperate for performance and space that they had to attempt this Frankenstein of a device?
Truly I do not see the market for the device. It limits the capability of a truly fine SSD, with a slow laptop drive attached to it. You would get much better performance raiding a few SSDs in 0, 1, or 10, and putting your active project on that drive. If your drive was too large to fit on the SSD portion in the first place then you would see little to no benefit at all. Then, put a real HDD in as your cold storage device. Much less messy, little bit cheaper, and better/consistent performance. Not to mention all those extra writes that are supposedly going to destroy the SSD portion of this drive anyways.
Like I said, a few years from now when we are completely on SSD we will really laugh at these devices.
 

agnickolov

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Honestly, the price should be almost halved - ~$200 for the SSD part and ~$60 for the HDD part comes to $260 for the package, which is slightly more than half of $500. Certainly shouldn't exceed $300.

Relating to the Seagate Momentus XT comments: I wish Seagate had released a sensible flash composition - 32GB flash for a 500GB or 1TB drive would have been perfect IMO. Such a drive would have had much better commercial success. With only 4GB, all I'm thinking is - why bother...
 

wendellowen

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It would have been nice to have seen a couple of 1TB drives in Raid 0 in this shootout. I, along with a fairly large portion of my friends have been doing this for years. I should add that all of us have NAS boxes (they are super cheap now, even running in RAID 1) for valuable file/photos. Hell, I think youu can buy 4 1TB drives and a NAS box for less than a 240GB SSD.
 

x Heavy

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I don't want that Frankendrive in my computers. A drive should either be Flash Nand, SSD or Spinner. Nothing in between like a zombie or something.

They really need to build motherboards dedicated towards these new Revo (Non hybrid) drives. I see real estate between the bottom of the ATX motherboard and above the power supply that can accomodate 4-8 of these things in a awesome Raid. But hybrids? No way.
 
[citation][nom]aznshinobi[/nom]This should be compared with the Seagate Momentus XT, where's that?[/citation]
Good question, I've always wondered what happened to those drives. My guess is with all the issues they had, Seagate changed its mind about "the future" of hybrid drives.
I still think its an idea worth exploring, if companies can find a good way to implement it. This one looks like a very niche product to me, I don't see the mass appeal. which = too pricey.
 

Marcus52

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"Enthusiasts shopping for storage face a gut-wrenching decision."

I wish we could lighten up on the extreme rhetoric these days.

"Gut-wrenching" is when your daughter has to go in for emergency surgery and you don't know if she's going to come out alive. THAT's gut-wrenching. Deciding between storage devices is not "gut-wrenching".

Sorry, not picking on you in particular Andrew, I just get tired of this. I hardly ever watch TV news shows because it's full of that kind of hype. I remember one of our baseball games being called because we had rain with hail, and the weather guy called it a "tragedy". Seriously. The hail wasn't big, no one got killed, or even hurt, they just couldn't play ball because of the rain. That was a tragedy? Uhmmm, no.

;)
 
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