San Jose (CA) – I have to be honest that most product release news we typically get in our email inboxes are about as exciting as a special edition Corolla sedan from Toyota. But occasionally, there is that new Ferrari that may not be in our budget, but showcases technology that is truly exciting. OCZ’s Z-Drive is such a product – a superfast SSD drive that has a PCI Express interface and comes in capacities of up to 1TB.
I suggest that you start saving now if that is what you want to put under the Christmas tree. The SSD comes in 250 GB, 500 GB and 1 TB versions and is, thanks to the PCIe interface, about twice as fast as current SATA II SSDs.
OCZ promises read speeds of up to 500 MB/s and peak write speeds of 480 MB/s (performance varies from model to model), while sustained write speeds are about 200 MB/s. The drives integrate a combined 256MB of local cache and an onboard RAID controller.
Described as an “enthusiast grade” mass storage solution, street prices of the drive start at about $1400 for the 250 GB model, $1900 for the 500 GB model and top out at about $3000 for the 1 TB version.
