OCZ Technology RevoDrive Hybrid - PCIe 100GB SSD / 1TB HDD Review

Since first becoming an option for enthusiasts and later mainstream consumers SSD's have gone through quite an evolution. The controllers used in today's drives as well as the overall architecture have far exceeded those early models which offered average performance and more than a few technical issues.

One of the manufacturers at the cutting edge of this market has been OCZ. They have consistently excelled in producing quality drives as well as offering great support to their consumers, either on the forum or through applications such as their SSD Toolbox which assist us in managing and maintaining their drives.

Regardless of the quality of the products available, some consumers still see an issue moving to SSD's due to the limited capacity and high cost per gigabyte when compared to traditional drives. Today's review product see's OCZ attempt to find a middle ground between the capacity of a mechanical drive and the speed of an SSD. That product is the RevoDrive Hybrid a PCIe based model which is part flash memory and part 1TB 2.5" hard drive.

How does it work? Well the basic answer is that the drive monitors data use, keeping frequently used data on the SSD (cache) area for quick access and then writing/storing the less frequently used information on the hard drive. This is an on-going process where the drive software learns usage patterns and tailors the performance to suit each user.

Today we find out how it compares to a standard mechanical drive and Intel's SRT caching technology...