Engadget reported on a new device called the Z-Drive today.
…a PCIe enclosure that’ll contain 1TB worth of SSD storage with maximum read rates of up to 600MB/sec and maximum write speeds of up to 500MB/sec. Oh, and the sustained write speeds are right around 400MB/sec. Essentially, this device will contain four 256GB MLC-based OCZ SSDs along with 256MB of ECC DDR2 RAM; when slapped in one’s desktop, they can choose to set it up as the boot disk or a slave. OCZ is also hoping to offer a 4TB edition by the end of the year…
Now, this device fascinates me. What are the main drawbacks of SSDs, especially on the desktop where security doesn’t matter? They’re not fast on large writes and they’re not cheap. Price is not such a big deal, as they’ve been falling like anvils out of the sky of late. When 32gb went for $1000 just a few years ago, now we can have 1TB drives for that and we have SSDs in the cheapest EeePCs.
Lets take a look at the speed. This basically uses four 256gb drives in a RAID-like formation. We’ve already solved the speed problem with RAID0 for hard drives, it makes perfect sense to do the same for SSDs! Look what else it offers. Because orientation, width, and heat aren’t nearly as big a deal, you’re not constrained into a standard drive bay. You can put it right next to your graphics card. It’s not uncommon to see motherboards with 2, 3, or 4 PCI-E slots nowadays. Most people don’t need Quad-SLI, so why not use it for a screaming-fast, super-huge SDD?
Think about it. With something like this you won’t need front drive bays, which saves on space. I think we may very well see cases that are built wider to accommodate enormous graphics cards and drives like this instead of built longer to have an array of hard drives.
With a 4TB version coming out next year, the future for SSDs on the desktop is looking very promising.