The SSD Review The Worlds Dedicated SSD Education and Review Resource | 
HYBRID DISASSEMBLY
When we are exploring the Hybrid, its physically removable components include the hard drive, daughter board, four screws securing the HDD to that board, motherboard, posts keeping the motherboard separate from the daughter board, four screws securing the two boards, heat sink and two rubber fasteners securing the heatsink to the OCZ Superscale Storage controller.
Our first step is to separate the motherboard from the daughter board. We can instantly see that the motherboard is a RevoDrive 3 PCIe Card complete to the last detail which is running for approximately $399.99 at most retailers.
MOTHERBOARD AND DAUGHTER BOARD
In looking at the top of the motherboard and bottom of the daughter board, we get a good look at the machine itself. There are 16 pieces of OCZ branded NAND flash memory, two SandForce SF-2281 processors as well as the OCZ Superscale Storage Controller which is conveniently hidden under the heatsink.
The memory is IMFT (Intel Micron Flash Technologies) which is a joint effort between Intel and Micron to produce NAND flash memory of the highest quality. A little known fact is that the physical architecture of the NAND of both Intel and Micron is exactly the same and its only their fine tuning that makes each different.
In this case, OCZ has purchased the wafers directly from IMFT and the NAND is 25nm asynchronous NAND flash memory exactly as you might see in the OCZ Agility 3, except for the branding of course. Each piece is 8GB for a RAW total of 128GB and, as we stated earlier, it has been over provisioned at the enterprise level.
HARD DRIVE AND DAUGHTER BOARD
The hard drive is removed from the daughter board by removal of four screws on the back of the board and sliding it from the SATA interface on the board itself.
A quick peak under the RevoDrive picture shows us that the hard drive itself is a Toshiba HDD2K 1TB hard drive. We did a quick check of retailers to find it described as a SATA II 5400RPM hard drive with a 8MB buffer and retailing for $99.99.
REMOVING THE HEATSINK
Our last task was to remove the heatsink and get a look at OCZ’ Superscale Storage Controller. The heatsink allows airflow between its fins which dissipates heat and also keeps those careless enough to touch the controller from being burnt.
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