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

The Hardware: RevoDrive 3 And A 1 TB Hard Drive

The inner workings of this drive's SSD component shouldn't be too big of a surprise, given its RevoDrive name. We've already seen OCZ deliver impressive storage throughput with its RevoDrive 3 X2. However, the RevoDrive Hybrid is more akin to a RevoDrive 3 with a hard drive.

What's the difference? Through the use of a daughter-card, the X2 facilitates two times the capacity and higher performance via a quartet of second-gen SandForce SF-2200 controllers. The non-X2 version instead features two controllers. On the Hybrid, the daughter-card serves as a bypass for the 1 TB Toshiba MK1059GS.

SuperScale controller

Like the RevoDrive 3 and 3 X2, the Hybrid employs a PCIe-to-SAS SuperScale controller and OCZ's Virtual Controller Architecture (VCA) 2.0. You can read more about SuperScale and VCA 2.0 on page two of The OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 Preview: Second-Gen SandForce Goes PCIe. However, due to the write-intensive nature of caching, OCZ uses a different firmware on its Hybrid and sets aside 28% of the on-board NAND for over-provisioning, whereas the RevoDrive 3 only has 7% of its memory set aside.

As a result, it's not advisable to use the SSD portion of the RevoDrive Hybrid like you would a 120 GB RevoDrive 3. When we open OCZ's Toolbox software, you can see the NAND flash array clearly labeled as a cache.

ONFI 2.2 NAND

There are 16 memory packages on the drive itself, each of which contains two 8 GB dies. But, due to over-provisioning, only 93 GiB (100 GB) of space is available for caching.

That's the hardware story. It's the software level that defines the RevoDrive Hybrid's role as a caching device, though.

  • aznshinobi
    This should be compared with the Seagate Momentus XT, where's that?
    Reply
  • LuckyDucky7
    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?
    Reply
  • chumly
    What a dumb idea.
    Reply
  • zybch
    LuckyDucky7Except 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?Yeah, like i want to use 'scary'RAID in my system. Screw that.
    Reply
  • alidan
    zybchYeah, like i want to use 'scary'RAID in my system. Screw that.
    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
    Reply
  • rantoc
    alidanthan 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
    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.
    Reply
  • billybobser
    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.
    Reply
  • shqtth
    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.
    Reply
  • Reynod
    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 !
    Reply
  • nebun
    zybchYeah, like i want to use 'scary'RAID in my system. Screw that.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
    Reply