OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB PCI-E SSD Review

Real World Results

5GB File Copy Tests

One of the most common operations performed on a PC is moving/copying files. Using a free application called Teracopy, we copied large numbers of two file types from one folder to another on the same drive. Teracopy allows us to objectively measure the time of transfer and using the same drive prevents other devices from tainting the outcome. The operation requires the drive to perform both sustained read and writes simultaneously. The first set of files is a 5GB collection of JPG’s of variable size and compression levels with a few movie (.MOV) files thrown in for good measure since most cameras now take video as well as stills. The second is a collection of MP3 files of various sizes which totals 5GB collectively. These file types were chosen due to their wide use and mixture of file sizes and compression levels.

Install Results: While the synthetic benchmarks didn’t benefit from hot caching, the real world tests certainly do – to the tune of nearly 20%. Similar increases were seen with the SRT technology. Scores settle in between the Agility 3 drive and the HDD with the SRT technology. Subsequent passes yielded little change in result.

Windows Boot Times

Windows start up/shutdown time is always something people are interested in and we haven’t done it in a while because there was little variation with the majority of the SSDs. However, on the hybrid drives, things are a little different. This test was also performed with a manual timing via stopwatch and should also carry the same half second +/- margin of error. The methodology employed was to force the BIOS to allow user selection of startup drive after load and begin timing from the time the enter button is pressed until the Windows desktop appears on the screen. All of the instances of Windows were identical and freshly installed with only the NVIDIA video driver installed.

Install Results: Boot times decreased by huge margins on the RevoDrive Hybrid after four boots and after that, the boot times remained relatively steady. The SRT configuration started at a faster boot time and reached its best time after the second boot. Still, going from 43.7 seconds to 16.7 is an eternity of difference when waiting for Windows to boot.