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INITIAL INSTALLATION
The OCZ Revo Hybrid will only work as a boot drive as caching will only work on the system drive. Initial installation requires the download of the Revo Hybrid driver from OCZ, extracting the file into a new folder and a fresh install of Windows. When you first arrive at the screen allowing your choice of locations to install Windows, nothing will appear. You must select ‘Load Driver’ on the lower left of the screen and direct it to where you extracted the driver file on your system.
Once this is done, two drives will appear, one of a 931GB capacity and one of a 93GB capacity. The larger is your hard drive and where you are going to install Windows while the smaller is your SSD. It is simply a RevoDrive 3 SSD with 100GB RAW capacity which has been over provisioned at the enterprise level of 28% and formatted, leaving it with a total of 93GB available user capacity.
You will later require the installation of Dataplex Caching Software for the card to work correctly and this will be described in detail, however, this is where we veer off track a bit for some great shots and tests.
EXTERIOR PACKAGING
I am a firm believer that first impressions are everything and, since receipt of my first RevoDrive, I have been thoroughly impressed with the experience created by OCZ in their Revo packaging. The outer shell is a thin cardboard cover which has a great look, not only showing a picture of the RevoDrive Hybrid itself, but also a graphic which depicts how the Revo Hybrid caches data. This is further eluded to by a detailed paragraph explaining caching on the back of the package.
When you remove the cover, there is a solid case inside where the front drawer slides open revealing the RevoDrive Hybrid. Within can also be found a very detailed User Guide which walks the user through installation step by step.
From here, we get our first glimpse at the OCZ Revodrive Hybrid 1TB PCI2 Gen 2 x4 card.
Great review, as always! You always provide useful insights and detailed analysis.
Thank you very much!
It’s a nice concept, but I’d like to see it implemented in a bit more down-to-earth way: SSD with half the capacity, and a single-platter HDD (all to reduce material costs and energy consumption) would be perfect for me. It doesn’t always have to be the super-duper fastest and largest drive 😉
Can you clarify the TRIM support issue? I thought Windows 7 supports TRIM if it is enabled correctly.
Windows 7 supports TRIM but not in RAID or SCSI environments, the latter of which is used by the new Revo 3 drives.
“OCZ says the Revo 3×2 Card supports TRIM because the architecture is based on SCSI. The MS Windows Storport architecture, however, does not presently support TRIM or SCSI UNMAP. Conversations with OCZ regarding this revealed that OCZ and Microsoft are working together and the functionality should be enabled in the near future.” from:
https://www.thessdreview.com/our-reviews/ocz-revodrive-3-x2-480-gb-pcie-ssd-review-physical-characteristics-and-vca-technology/
Are you sure the memory is IMFT?? According to the IMFT website (link below), 100% of the IMFT NAND output is consumed by Intel and Micron.
https://www.imftech.com/company/faqs.html#customers
That is not correct. We have documented two separate ocasions where IMFT NAND flash memory was utilized in SSDs and the name of the flash made to reflect that of the company, the previous being SuperTalent.
That is not correct. We have documented two separate ocasions where IMFT NAND flash memory was utilized in SSDs and the name of the flash made to reflect that of the company, the previous being SuperTalent.Type your reply…
So, does it work on Linux and how well? That might be a much more important issue than Windows support – these SSDs are the best thing of the last decade for speeding up databases and other server operations!
Team up with Phoronix if you are lacking Linux expertise 😉
Great review, no complaints there. My spelling/grammar side was going crazy with your “their / there / they’re” misspellings, though! Might want to look up when to use each correctly.
Errors discovered amended and saved. Thank you very much!
You have a valid point as we do not utilize Linux at all but will look into it. No promises…
Great article, very in depth. Thanks. You may made me re-consider my 2nd SSD purchase.
FYI, page 5, first paragraph, 100MB/typo/100GB.
Glad to help…and TX!
can you dual boot ie linux/win7
On a new install, how do we download revo hybrid drivers and store to a folder without windows yet loaded?
You first download the drivers to a USB. During the Windows installation, it will come to a point where you need to insert the USB and select the drivers.
I liked your review and would very much like to employ this in my system. I have a z800 I tried to install this card but it would not function. I could see it but could not access the drive. My 135gb sas drives were stripped and very fast but I needed more drive space but didn’t want to take a hair cut on speed. Any suggestions on how I might get this to function? I tried ocz, that was disappointing as they were of no assistance. thanks