OMGZZz [Hard Drive]

The Z-Drive is based on the cutting-edge PCI Express 2.0 architecture that breaks through the performance barriers previously found with the SATA interface. Offering a truly enthusiast-grade storage upgrade from traditional hard disc drives, OCZ’s Z-Drive utilizes a combined 256MB of local cache and an onboard RAID controller, to provide a complete solution in a compact form factor.

- Capacity: 1TB
- Cache: 256MB
- Read: Up to 500MB/sec
- Write: Up to 470MB/sec
- NAND Flash: Multi-Level Cell (MLC)
- Interface: PCI-Express 2.0 x4
- Low Power Consumption
- Dimensions: 245mm x 124mm x 22mm
- Weight: 450g
- Warranty: 2 Years

Now for the OMGZZz bit...

RRP: £2639.99 inc VAT

WHO ACTUALLY WOULD BUY THAT!?!?!? Besides that, how does it work?



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2009 05:58PM by madotter.

Flux Capacitors, somewhere... and a hamster in a wheel spinning them.


Jenson drives it like he owns it; Lewis drives it like he stole it

You truly are a mad otter,

but i agree thats too expensive

if i reverse the polarity of the neutron flow...

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"Arguing on the internet is like taking part in the Special Olympics...Even if you win you're still retarded"



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/27/2009 06:05PM by Naboo.

madotter Wrote:
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> WHO ACTUALLY WOULD BUY THAT!?!?!? Besides that,
> how does it work?

Loads of people, but as an example, video editors would make their money back in no time through hours saved.

And no, I won't be buying one myself. :P

BTW, the quoted speeds are peak speeds, and many SSDs won't keep the same speed on the 2nd write to the same part of the drive.

SSDs are about to take off and will be the single biggest upgrade since... well the hard drive replaced floppy drives, but I'm quite happy biding my time for now. :P

SSDs are already ludicrously fast (Vista booting in 15 seconds compared to around a 40 seconds on a relatively mature install... just RAID a couple of OCZ Vertexes (the drive this device uses) and it can). The ones in the netbooks are hopeless, cheap crap, unfortunately.

Loads of people, but as an example, video editors would make their money back in no time through hours saved.

Just thinking the same thing myself, I've been messing around with short videos on my laptop lately and of course everything's as slow as a Mastercard Lola. Depending on how serious I get with videos (dream is getting a really decent camera over the next few months) I could possibly be looking into something like this eventually.

Keep in mind that it depends on how you use the videos you're working with. HDV files from a half-decent camera have to be conformed by programs such as Premier, and on long clips it can take hours, even on relatively quick Raptor drives. Then when you're working with the clips, if you've multiple clips on top of each other on a time line, it can very quickly render the hard drive a limiting factor, which causes huge delays as you simply can't edit accurately until you render clips again or make temporary substitute clips (there's a technical term that's escaping me currently).

Fairly basic AVIs or WMVs won't require that, as the PC will able to work with them on the fly.

The most common limitation of editing is still the CPU.

Perhaps a better example would have been a server-based database of some description (I've no idea of examples which are hard drive heavy... I'm not a database person - perhaps Jon or Glyn can give the best example).

There are plenty of uses for devices like these. Unfortunately, some of them will be filled by users making their own array of SSDs, which can be upgraded as and when, and if one goes faulty, can simply be hot-swapped out for another.

It's something I'll have to look into a lot. I've been messing round mostly with mpegs and avis and DV from a fairly basic home camcorder and even at that it's pretty slow, albeit on what is a free laptop. I was looking at cameras and editors seriously about a year ago, but I've forgotten pretty much everything I learned.

Very simply:

Hard drive light continually on while editing = hard drive speed or RAM capacity limited
Hard drive light only flickering while editing = CPU limited

Really? Now that could come in handy...Thanks gav!

and of course everything's as slow as a Mastercard Lola.

Haha! Rofl!

Also, that is one serious peice of kit! Just thinking are there other components to match it or would it be gold amungst silver?

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"Trulli was slowing down like he wanted to have a picnic" LOL

You could stick 4 GTX285s or HD4890s in there, a couple of Xeon W5580s in a server-based motherboard and 24GB of RAM or something. I'm not aware of any boards which will allow such a setup yet on the new Nehalem (Core i7) CPUs (like the last generation Skulltrail board did for Penryn (Core2) CPUs)... but you might run out of available PCIe slots first - Skulltrail 'only' had 4 PCIe 16x slots.

Hmm 8 cores at 3.2GHz (16 if you count hyperthreading). To use the hilariously frustrating Ebay-style of advertising PCs, that would make for a 51.2GHz processor before overclocking....

That might speed up your MovieMaker encoding a touch.

Then go and stick it all in some elcheapo case and use a £2 keyboard and mouse, viewing it all from a 19" monitor. :P

Lol Gav, I think we could atleast stretch to £2.50 for the keyboard !

And once overclocked that thing would be insane! The intel cpus are so awesome for OC'ing lately (I built a £360 pc over the weekend, using a Pentium Dual Core E5200 and got that to 3.75ghz on almost stock voltage, with a Freezer 7 Pro, and its been stable with Orthos for 25 hours, not breaking 58 degress per core! - I was amazed at how hight these things can be pushed with relative ease, so 51.2 ghz overclocked, based on my gain (again ebay style referencing here - we could overclock to 65.2 Ghz - OMGZ! lol!

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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/28/2009 02:23PM by Willb.

You could easily fit my first PC HD more then 10 times into that cache.

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REHAB IS FOR QUITTERS

Lol!

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