We've been hearing about OCZ's PCI-Express solid state drive that is exceptionally fast for quite some time now--and now they're finally shipping.
The OCZ Z-Drive outpaces all other standard SATA SSDs by using a couple of tricks: it uses the PCI-E architecture instead of SATA and creates an internal four-way RAID 0 configuration.
"The new OCZ Z-Drive is an all-in-one high performance plug-and-play bootable PCI-E solid state drive that addresses these challenges head on, and meets the demands of the complete range of enterprise storage and data access requirements," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. "The Z-Drive is designed not only to be higher performing and more reliable than conventional solutions, but also to significantly reduce both the maintenance and overall TCO for our clients."
The Z-Drive is available in multi-level cell (MLC) and single-level cell (SLC) models in 256 GB, 512 GB capacities. A 1 TB model is also available for the p84 only.
The MLC-based p84 features a max write of 650 MB/s, a max read of 750 MB/s, while the faster SLC e84 has a max write of 750 MB/s and max read of 800 MB/s.
As for pricing, we're looking at the four-digit range. The 256 GB model will run you around $1500, making the $3300 price for the 1 TB model seem like an alright bargain.
