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OCZ Z-Drive

E

ekwipt

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 14, 2008
1,087
375
OCZ Z-Drive

The future motherboards will have to start allowing more PCIe lanes with products like this coming to the market. Perfect for photoshop scratch disks!

Bloddy expensive though

The 250GB version which delivers read/write speed of 450/300MB per second is priced at EUR1399.99, and 500GB version with read/write speed of 510/480MB per second is available at EUR2199.99, while the 1TB version sold at EUR3399.99 promises read/write speed of 500/470MB per second.

250GB Max Performance
Read: Up to 450 MB/s
Write: Up to 300MB/s
Sustained Write: Up to 200MB/s

500GB Max Performance
Read: Up to 510 MB/s
Write: Up to 480MB/s
Sustained Write: Up to 200MB/s

1TB Max Performance
Read: Up to 500 MB/s
Write: Up to 470MB/s
Sustained Write: Up to 200MB/s
 
Anyone tried one of these in their MP's?

OCZ have revamped the Z-Drive into 3 models in different capacities. The E84 (Enterprise SSD, meaning big bucks$ top end model), P84 (Performance SSD, mid range model) and M84 (Mainstream, base model)

E84 = SLC SSD
256GB Max Performance
Read: Up to 800MB/s
Write: Up to 750MB/s
http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/solid_state_drives/ocz_z_drive_e84_pci_express_ssd

P84 = MLC SSD
256GB Max Performance
Read: Up to 770MB/s
Write: Up to 640MB/s
Sustained Write: Up to 600MB/s
http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/solid_state_drives/ocz_z_drive_p84_pci_express_ssd

M84 = MLC SSD
256GB Max Performance
Read: Up to 750MB/s
Write: Up to 650MB/s
Sustained Write: Up to 600MB/s
http://www.ocztechnology.com/products/solid_state_drives/ocz_z_drive_m84_pci_express_ssd

I'm interested in the P84, for my Mac Pro 2008 8 core. I'm asking specifically about the "P84" edition. Not the E84 as its too expensive, and not the M84 as it seems lacking in performance reviews.

It says compatible with "Linux"... since Macs are running on Linux platform essentially, this drive 'should' work?

Also, the motherboard compatibility PDF states:

"compatible with most motherboards, and requires either a X8 PCIe socket or a X16 (used by video cards) PCIe socket."

Looking at my 2008 MP, I have: two PCIe x4 slots, and two PCIe 2.0 x16 slots.

I have 1x 3870 ATI Mac and 1x 4870 ATI Mac installed already. Does that mean I have used up all my slots and can't fit a z-drive unless I take one of the Graphics cards out? I'm assuming my two spare PCIe x4 slots would not be useable with this SSD?
 
It would most likely run in a x4 slot, but the performance would suffer. Perhaps one of your graphics cards would not need so much bandwidth?
 
hmm. I wonder if I can move my 3870 up to one of the x4 slots. I'll have to open up my MP this w/e to have a look-see
 
Doesn't work

The 512GB p84 Z-Drive does not work in the Mac Pro 2008 nor the Mac Pro 2009 that I tested (both 10.6.1). Shows up in the system profiler OK but is not recognized as a drive by Drive Utility... it just sits there, unusable. OCZ is aware that it doesn't work (see their forums) and they removed the Mac from their compatibility list on the marketing page (after I ordered it!!). It uses a SuperMicro RAID controller, and there are no Mac drivers for any product on the SuperMicro website...

scsi:
Type: SCSI Bus Controller
Driver Installed: Yes
Bus: PCI
Slot: Slot-2
Vendor ID: 0x1000
Device ID: 0x0058
Subsystem Vendor ID: 0x15d9
Subsystem ID: 0xa180
Revision ID: 0x0008
Link Width: x8
Link Speed: 2.5 GT/s


You can get mighty fine speeds from software RAID 0 (backup daily or hourly!!) on those 160GB gen2 Intel drives... 4 of them according to xbench gives you uncached random writes of 270MB/sec and uncached random reads of 380MB/sec. Pricing is about the same as a Z-drive... and you can double your throughput with a Highpoint RAID controller if you were adventurous.

Nonetheless, I'm hoping OCZ is working on a Mac driver for the Z-drive...
 
I tried a highpoint with Supertalent MEs, which basically have the same controller I believe. I could not get the Raid array stable. The drives dropped off. I had no problems with Intels on that card. So my recommendation will allways be Intel for RAID compatibility.
 
I expect OCZ to write drivers or add support, eventually. They went to the trouble of declaring their SSDs (and making a more expensive one with an  on it) OS X compatible. And this particular market is only going to grow.
 
the only  they put on was the Vertex edition SSDs as far as I'm aware. These were labelled "Mac Edition". But on the OCZ forums there is apparently ZERO difference between these and the PC non-Mac SSDs
 
I'm fully aware of this, hence "Putting an  on it," but their drives were OS X RAID friendly and plenty compatible without the labeling; not all SSDs are. It just shows that they consider the market important enough to bother with, so right now they're the only company I expect to bother making their PCIe storage solution Mac compatible. That said, their Colossus drive looks nice as well. We'll just have to wait and see.
 
Hi
anybody here test the
OCZ Z-Drive p84 with Mac Pro ?
i buy 4 x intel ssd g2 (80gb) and raid it - software but im hear about OCZ Z-Drive p84 and i think its a best solution for my desing work.
 
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