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OCZ Revo, Any Firsthand Experience?
- Thread starter theseeker
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I've got a Revodrive 120GB. It's obscenely fast, but lacks flexibility in that if you ever wanted to put it in a laptop or something, you couldn't like you could with a 2.5" drive. I think, in retrospect, I'd rather have had 2 64GB C300s in RAID 0 or something. Would be faster.
That said, it's got the "wow" factor and tops 500MB/sec. Using machines with spinning disks or even a single, slower SSD is painful now.
That said, it's got the "wow" factor and tops 500MB/sec. Using machines with spinning disks or even a single, slower SSD is painful now.
Thanks for the reply.
I plan to use it in my desktop and I will proably opt for the 240.
The 240gb OCZ one is $680, so that gives us quite a lot of room to work with. It's also rated for 740mb/s for reads and 720mb/s for writes, so we have to match that of course.
This 60gb SSD is rated for 285mb/s reads and 275mb/s writes and costs $120 per. Four of them are then going to run you $480. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227550
Add in a decent RAID card that is capable of doing 1gb/s+ for $180: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118114
Last thing you'll need is a cable to hook it all up and it costs $20: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116097
Total winds up being $680, so not less, but if you do the rebates on the SSDs it is. So, since speeds are going to be pretty linear, you are now looking at ~1140mb/s reads and 1100mb/s writes. 50% faster for the same price. IOPS should be considerably better too.
This 60gb SSD is rated for 285mb/s reads and 275mb/s writes and costs $120 per. Four of them are then going to run you $480. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820227550
Add in a decent RAID card that is capable of doing 1gb/s+ for $180: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118114
Last thing you'll need is a cable to hook it all up and it costs $20: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116097
Total winds up being $680, so not less, but if you do the rebates on the SSDs it is. So, since speeds are going to be pretty linear, you are now looking at ~1140mb/s reads and 1100mb/s writes. 50% faster for the same price. IOPS should be considerably better too.
^ what he said. Revodrive = waste of money. Come resale time, GFL. Unless you're doing something very specific that requires high sequential I/O performance, don't assume that big sequential numbers are going to make your O/S more responsive. the magic metric for that is 4k random I/O, specifically 4k writes. most people will be hard pressed to see a difference in O/S responsiveness in every day usage (web browsing, gaming, etc) between a single fast SSD with trim enabled versus a bunch of aggregated SSD's in raid0.
on top of it a revodrive is theoretically 4x more likely to fail than a single vertex2 ssd, since that's all a revodrive really is, is several vertex2's in raid0 with a cheap sata raid controller. and as we know a single drive failure in a raid0 means obvoiusly the whole array is lost.
on top of it a revodrive is theoretically 4x more likely to fail than a single vertex2 ssd, since that's all a revodrive really is, is several vertex2's in raid0 with a cheap sata raid controller. and as we know a single drive failure in a raid0 means obvoiusly the whole array is lost.
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Thanks BF,
I can get the OCZ for $630.00 but your option appears to be a better solution.
Many thanks!
Also know that Sandforce controllers use compression, and thus 285MB/s write speed per SSD would actually be 100MB/s, and the Vertex 3 does 200MB/s real speeds, where with strong compression it could be amplified to 550MB/s. Since Sandforce is the only one making use of compression internally, you cannot easily compare speeds between sandforce and other SSDs. If you store not that much compressible data on the SSD, which is common on a system disk, then you might consider 100MB/s write speed per SSD.
Same is true for the Revodrive, it achieves its speeds with ATTO which writes zeroes but it won't achieve the same speeds with CrystalDiskMark, which uses uncompressible data.
The compression feature is a good one, but what is wrong is that the specifications always assume the best compression factor, which can only be achieved when writing junk data. In other words, the specs are not really 'honest'.
Same is true for the Revodrive, it achieves its speeds with ATTO which writes zeroes but it won't achieve the same speeds with CrystalDiskMark, which uses uncompressible data.
The compression feature is a good one, but what is wrong is that the specifications always assume the best compression factor, which can only be achieved when writing junk data. In other words, the specs are not really 'honest'.
Old Hippie
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'Tis true but 4 drives in a RAID0 array is just an invitation to disaster.
Get your back-up drive prepared.
No different than the card. It has multiple controllers on there in RAID 0 as well.'Tis true but 4 drives in a RAID0 array is just an invitation to disaster.
Get your back-up drive prepared.
RAID0 might seem like a bad idea, but on SSDs i don't see many objections:
It is very common that normal desktop edition harddrives develop bad sectors some time, and then the RAID engine kicks that disk (or more) out due to a timeout. This would be a failure of the RAID layer instead of a true hardware failure. The RAID engine simply cannot cope with bad sectors and has a 'black or white' mentality towards failure: either the drive works perfectly, and if it doesn't we punish it by kicking it out of the array.
With SSDs you should not be affected by this common cause for disks being dropped from a RAID0 array. SSDs do tend to die suddenly, most likely due to power issues since they have no protection at all against voltage fluctuations.
You would want a third generation SSD with SuperCapacitor if you require a reliable storage device without having to rely heavily on backups for your data to survive. Too bad the (real) Intel G3 is postponed. That will give Sandforce SF2000 family and Marvell C400 more chance to catch up and introduce their newest chips once they have properly tested their firmware.
- The current second generation SSDs are susceptible to corruption anyway so even a RAID6 will not be safe. You cannot store anything that needs protection against corruption.
- Besides if you store only non-personal data like installed apps, OS and games on the SSD, you won't really need to backup alot, if any at all.
- Due to the large difference in capacity between SSD and HDD, you could easily backup a raw RAID0 of SSDs to a single 2TB HDD with ease.
It is very common that normal desktop edition harddrives develop bad sectors some time, and then the RAID engine kicks that disk (or more) out due to a timeout. This would be a failure of the RAID layer instead of a true hardware failure. The RAID engine simply cannot cope with bad sectors and has a 'black or white' mentality towards failure: either the drive works perfectly, and if it doesn't we punish it by kicking it out of the array.
With SSDs you should not be affected by this common cause for disks being dropped from a RAID0 array. SSDs do tend to die suddenly, most likely due to power issues since they have no protection at all against voltage fluctuations.
You would want a third generation SSD with SuperCapacitor if you require a reliable storage device without having to rely heavily on backups for your data to survive. Too bad the (real) Intel G3 is postponed. That will give Sandforce SF2000 family and Marvell C400 more chance to catch up and introduce their newest chips once they have properly tested their firmware.
Old Hippie
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You're correct but now it's four different drives with four different interfaces.
Two drives is my RAID0 comfort limit.
Cable vs PCB traces. Not too different really. The card has more than two controllers on it too, so still not too dissimilar. At least if one of your SSDs dies in the example I gave, you can just replace it and the rest of your hardware is still functional. If the OCZ thing dies, well, you have nothing left.You're correct but now it's four different drives with four different interfaces.
Two drives is my RAID0 comfort limit.
As usual, this is getting more and more confusing. Reading many reviews regarding the Revo2 vs. SSD's with a RAID card doesn't really show a clear winner. I typically rebuild my system every two years and since my last build much has changed regarding storage. I currently use Kingston 124 for my OS and the rest are WD VR's and WD Blacks for storage.
My new system;
ASUS R III E H20 cooled
980x H20 cooled
12GB Corsair Dominator
2 eVGA GTX 580 H20 cooled
30" monitor
I will keep my storage the same and I have a 2TB external for backup. I also have an external 120 SSD USB 3.0 that I am using for gaming. The cost is not an issue and I am mainly looking for performance. I use this system for just about everything, gaming, CAD, Photoshop and a few others.
My new system;
ASUS R III E H20 cooled
980x H20 cooled
12GB Corsair Dominator
2 eVGA GTX 580 H20 cooled
30" monitor
I will keep my storage the same and I have a 2TB external for backup. I also have an external 120 SSD USB 3.0 that I am using for gaming. The cost is not an issue and I am mainly looking for performance. I use this system for just about everything, gaming, CAD, Photoshop and a few others.
So the thing people are missing (and continue to look over) is the fact that the RevoDrive is limited by the PCI-X to PCIe bridge, not the drives.
That is the reason you can put 4x drives on a cheap LSI controller and get 1GB/s and more or less the same drives on the PCIe card top out under 800MB/s.
As a FYI, I did 8x ADATA S599's (Sandforce drives) on a LSI 9211-8i and saw ATTO speeds (how the RevoDrive X2 claims those numbers) of 2GB/s, and it was bootable, and worked under most OSes.
Then again, you should start with a single drive, then move to RAID 0 and feel that difference. My guess is you can't tell 1 from 2 drives unless your primary purpose for your machine is testing Infiniband, FC, 10GbE or benchmarking drives constantly.
If you must have SATA 6 Gbps SSDs, then there is not much choice in consumer SSD space -- you'll be looking at Crucial C300, or waiting for the C400. The best 64GB SSD right now is the Crucial C300, and it can be found for less than $120.
I suppose you could go with the Corsair Performance 3 64GB SSDs, but early reports look terrible for DOA and failures.
If you want the most trouble-free SSD (as determined from user feedback percentages and vendor return rates), then that would be the Intel X25-M, but that is SATA 3 Gbps (but still plenty fast). But the 40GB one is too slow, there is no 60GB Intel, so you'd need to go with the 80GB X25-M, which are around $170 right now.
Thanks for the reply. Taking a halftime cigar-scotch break and I need it!
I have studied my options and as you say, Crucial appears to be the best option at this time. The Corsair P3's are quite suspect as you mentioned and I want performance and reliability first and foremost.
Decisions, decisions..............