OCZ Z-Drive m84 PCI-Express SSD Review

An interesting thing about NAND Flash SSD technologies, beyond the fact that the market is flush with competitive product offerings, is that the technology itself is very flexible and adaptable to a number of different design approaches. Take for example a RAID 4-pack configuration with Intel's X25-M SSD or perhaps the omnipotent Fusion-io ioDrive. Granted, these are rather high-end, pricey setups, but you get the gist that solid state storage arena is just getting warmed up.

In a sort of hybrid version of Fusion-io's product and our RAID 4-pack array, OCZ Technology has introduced an almost fully integrated solution of their SATA-based SSD technology, along with a third party RAID controller, all wrapped up clean and tidy on a PCI Express X8 adapter card.

Dubbed the Z-Drive, we first got a look at this wild-eyed beast back in May. It wasn't quite ready for prime time back then and it re-emerged again in early September with specs that admittedly caused a pavlovian response of our salivary glands. Today, we get to satiate ourselves with a deep dive look at the new OCZ Z-Drive, in a tasty 256GB variant that drops in at an almost reasonable $899 price point that is on near cost parity with a standard mid-range SSD...