PCI-E SSD Drive OCZ Z-Drive R4
IT technologies are developing by leaps and bounds, and fairly young SSD technology is a direct confirmation of this. Not so long ago, the first models of SSD drives were just appearing, not so long ago the prices for them became acceptable for use in workstations and servers, and now, SSD drives are slowly approaching the limitation of the SATA interface, resting on the available 6 gigabits per second. With a story about OCZ Z-Drive R4, I would like to continue our short cycle of reviews of PCI-E SSD drives (at the end of which, we will summarize, compare different models of different storage systems and try to determine what is better for what purpose now total use). We started with the already quite old model Fusion-io ioDrive Duoand continue last year’s model for the corporate segment from www.advanserv.ru/products/pci-e-ssd/ocz-technology/z-drive-r4-solid-state-drives--c-series .
Just the other day, she arrived at our test lab and we began to study it with interest.
In our hands was the CM88 model, with a capacity of 1.6Tb and that's what the manufacturer promises us.
MLC memory, SandForce 2282 controller (4 on each board), with a stated read / write speed of up to 2.8Gb / s.
Specifications:
1.6 TB - ZD4CM88-FH-1.6t (Useful 1490GB)
Max read speed up to 2800 MB / s
Max write speed up to 2800 MB / s
Random write operations (4K) 410000 IOPS
Random write operations (8 kB) 275000 IOPS
PCI Express x8
NAND controller: 8 x SandForce SF-2200 SSD
Dimensions (L x W x H): 242 x 98.4 x 17.14 mm
Weight: 283g
Power consumption: 23 W Idle, 26W activity
Double-layer board, but Nevertheless, it still only takes up one slot, which is convenient and economical.
Compared to the Fusion-io ioDrive Duo .
SandForce 2282 controller.
Unfortunately, OCZ provides absolutely no means for device configuration. This is not a Fusion-io ioDrive Duo, in which we can independently choose the operating mode of the device. As they say - we use what the manufacturer gives. The only thing we can “manage” is the firmware and BIOS version of the device. To do this, the manufacturer’s website has the OCZ Toolbox (unfortunately, the version is only for Windows), with which we can update the firmware and BIOS of the card in seconds.
Well, let’s check whether this is so. First of all, as usual, we started testing with HD Tune, but were extremely surprised by the results shown.
The speed turned out to be lower than after the first run of the test, which suggests that TRIM does not work in the best way for him, i.e. the garbage collector is simply “freebie”. Of course, we did not try to leave him alone for several days, perhaps the picture would be somewhat different. As for the dips in the speed of up to 200Mb / s, this can only be explained by the transitions between the sets of memory modules (we observed exactly the same picture when testing ioDrive, apparently this is normal for such bulky drives).
Well, let us leave the test results as they are, because from the previous review we were already able to conclude that not all tests can unambiguously show the performance of the disk, so we will proceed to our tests.
Linear reading speed, extremely pleasing to the eye.
But the speed of random reading leaves much to be desired. Here, the Z-Drive even loses to the RAID array of the OCZ Vertex 4 younger brothers.
Buffered reading is also up to par, leaving competitors far behind. Good result, not great, but extremely good.
But the access time also does not please at all, in comparison with io-Fusion - everything is extremely sad, apparently the slow enough MLC memory still affects (although it is thanks to it that the device has the lowest price on the market).
CrystalDiskMark
ATTO Disk Benchmark
AS SSD
More than pleasant overall results. The speed is of course far from the declared 2.8Gb / s, but we have long been accustomed to divide the marketing figures by 2. The result is very good, and as tests in real conditions already show, these are not just numbers.
Iometer
Copying Files / Reordering
The performance of the device is at a very high level, not yet available for other types of disk subsystems.
Fairly low cost of 1Gb of disk space compared to competitors.
This drive can be bootable, i.e. you can install the system on it and use it as the only disk in the PC / server. Not all PCI-E SSD drives can boast of this.
MLC NAND
SandForce 2282
Well, we can conclude that the drive fully lives up to its expectations. He did not disappoint us with either synthetic or real tests. If we return to our article on the Fusion-io ioDrive Duo, we can conclude that technology does not stand still and for 2 years of work, manufacturers have worked hard on their products, especially since the competition in the market is becoming more aggressive every day and more and more manufacturers try to market their products. For the end consumer, there are 2 pluses to this: improvement of technologies, and as a result - increased performance of drives, and as a second plus - lower prices, after all, whatever you say - while the prices for PCI-E SSD are enough bites and they can only be afford corporate clients or hardcore 3D modelers, although OCZ products, perhaps the most budgetary on the market and look extremely profitable in terms of price / quality ratio. In any case, this is an extremely promising area in the field of data storage systems and we will actively monitor it.
Posted by KorP
Just the other day, she arrived at our test lab and we began to study it with interest.
In our hands was the CM88 model, with a capacity of 1.6Tb and that's what the manufacturer promises us.
MLC memory, SandForce 2282 controller (4 on each board), with a stated read / write speed of up to 2.8Gb / s.
Specifications:
1.6 TB - ZD4CM88-FH-1.6t (Useful 1490GB)
Max read speed up to 2800 MB / s
Max write speed up to 2800 MB / s
Random write operations (4K) 410000 IOPS
Random write operations (8 kB) 275000 IOPS
PCI Express x8
NAND controller: 8 x SandForce SF-2200 SSD
Dimensions (L x W x H): 242 x 98.4 x 17.14 mm
Weight: 283g
Power consumption: 23 W Idle, 26W activity
Double-layer board, but Nevertheless, it still only takes up one slot, which is convenient and economical.
Compared to the Fusion-io ioDrive Duo .
SandForce 2282 controller.
Unfortunately, OCZ provides absolutely no means for device configuration. This is not a Fusion-io ioDrive Duo, in which we can independently choose the operating mode of the device. As they say - we use what the manufacturer gives. The only thing we can “manage” is the firmware and BIOS version of the device. To do this, the manufacturer’s website has the OCZ Toolbox (unfortunately, the version is only for Windows), with which we can update the firmware and BIOS of the card in seconds.
Well, let’s check whether this is so. First of all, as usual, we started testing with HD Tune, but were extremely surprised by the results shown.
The speed turned out to be lower than after the first run of the test, which suggests that TRIM does not work in the best way for him, i.e. the garbage collector is simply “freebie”. Of course, we did not try to leave him alone for several days, perhaps the picture would be somewhat different. As for the dips in the speed of up to 200Mb / s, this can only be explained by the transitions between the sets of memory modules (we observed exactly the same picture when testing ioDrive, apparently this is normal for such bulky drives).
Well, let us leave the test results as they are, because from the previous review we were already able to conclude that not all tests can unambiguously show the performance of the disk, so we will proceed to our tests.
Linear reading speed, extremely pleasing to the eye.
But the speed of random reading leaves much to be desired. Here, the Z-Drive even loses to the RAID array of the OCZ Vertex 4 younger brothers.
Buffered reading is also up to par, leaving competitors far behind. Good result, not great, but extremely good.
But the access time also does not please at all, in comparison with io-Fusion - everything is extremely sad, apparently the slow enough MLC memory still affects (although it is thanks to it that the device has the lowest price on the market).
CrystalDiskMark
ATTO Disk Benchmark
AS SSD
More than pleasant overall results. The speed is of course far from the declared 2.8Gb / s, but we have long been accustomed to divide the marketing figures by 2. The result is very good, and as tests in real conditions already show, these are not just numbers.
Iometer
Copying Files / Reordering
conclusions
Pros:
The performance of the device is at a very high level, not yet available for other types of disk subsystems.
Fairly low cost of 1Gb of disk space compared to competitors.
This drive can be bootable, i.e. you can install the system on it and use it as the only disk in the PC / server. Not all PCI-E SSD drives can boast of this.
Minuses:
MLC NAND
SandForce 2282
Well, we can conclude that the drive fully lives up to its expectations. He did not disappoint us with either synthetic or real tests. If we return to our article on the Fusion-io ioDrive Duo, we can conclude that technology does not stand still and for 2 years of work, manufacturers have worked hard on their products, especially since the competition in the market is becoming more aggressive every day and more and more manufacturers try to market their products. For the end consumer, there are 2 pluses to this: improvement of technologies, and as a result - increased performance of drives, and as a second plus - lower prices, after all, whatever you say - while the prices for PCI-E SSD are enough bites and they can only be afford corporate clients or hardcore 3D modelers, although OCZ products, perhaps the most budgetary on the market and look extremely profitable in terms of price / quality ratio. In any case, this is an extremely promising area in the field of data storage systems and we will actively monitor it.
Posted by KorP