OCZ RevoDrive X2 100GB PCI-E Solid State Drive Review

Final Thoughts
There is no doubt that the RevoDrive X2 is one of the fastest solid state drive solutions available today, even with SATA 6GB/s solid state drives coming out they still cannot beat the RevoDrive X2!  When I originally reviewed the first RevoDrive I was impressed at the technology and how OCZ was taking advantage of the speed of the PCI bus rather than using SATA.  This breakaway from the norm is what OCZ is all about and we have seen it in many of their products.  This also allows OCZ to say they have one of the fastest SSD products available.

Besides just being fast the RevoDrive X2 is one of the easiest RAID products to setup.  For those who know nothing about RAID you can just drop this card in, install the drivers and you are good to go.  OCZ has the drive setup in RAID 0, but just like the original RevoDrive you are able to go into the Silicon Image BIOS and fine tune things, which is great for experienced users.  Another great thing about this drive is that it is bootable so you are able to install your OS on it.

This is a SandForce-based drive so you do get the added features that the SandForce SF-1200 controller offers. The drive will do real-time loss-less compression. This is why there is no need for a cache chip, but also means less writes to the data cells. RAISE (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements) is a term we have heard a lot with these new drives. So on top of ECC for data protection RAISE adds another level of security.  One thing that is missing from this drive is TRIM support since TRIM does not function in RAID arrays.  The drive however does support idle garbage collection.  So this is something to consider when purchasing the drive.

The RevoDrive X2 is available in capacities ranging from 100GB all the way up to 960GB.  The 100GB version that we reviewed sells for $399 at my favorite online retailer.  In comparison 4 32GB SandForce-based solid state drives will cost you around $100 each.  Then you will have to buy an additional controller to handle the bandwidth.  So the RevoDrive X2 is really your best bet.  Overall ThinkComputers gives the OCZ RevoDrive X2 100GB PCI-E Solid State Drive a 9 out of 10 score and our Editor’s Choice Award!

rating9 10 small TC award editorschoice small

Pros:
– The fastest Solid State Drive we have tested!
– Bootable
– Available in capacities up to 960GB
– Onboard RAID

Cons:
– No TRIM support

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