Information technology'due south been almost three years since I tested my offset solid-state drive and that offset impression has lasted to this day. Anyone that has used an SSD in their computer volition tell you that it completely transforms performance. Past removing the 6ms+ delay associated with hard drives, almost everything loads snappier -- often instantaneously.

For that reason, we have maintained for years that the unmarried about important upgrade y'all can make to an enthusiast-grade automobile is adding an SSD for your operating system and applications. The primal downside to SSD technology is its cost per gigabyte, which is significantly higher than traditional mechanical difficult drives.

When we published our get-go SSD roundup in 2009, Intel's X25-M 80GB was the best option bachelor and toll a crazy $4.87/GB. Alternatively, the OCZ Vertex 120GB was available for $340 at $ii.83/GB. Although the Vertex was more toll constructive, effectually the same time 1TB hard drives were fetching less than $0.15/GB.

Although SSDs are quicker and more reliable today, their price relative to mechanical drives has only improved slightly. For example, the Crucial m4 128GB costs $1.56/GB, the OCZ Vertex iii 120GB is $1.75/GB, while Intel's SSD 510 Series 120GB is going for $2.33/GB. Meanwhile, 2TB HDDs are bachelor for equally petty as $0.04/GB.

There accept been many attempts to bring SSDs down to mainstream pricing but we're still a ways off. Smaller capacity 32GB and 64GB drives have become pop as boot drives and for some time they've been bachelor for approximately $100 to $150 -- inexpensive enough that you won't feel guilty, just still pricey per gigabyte.

Some manufacturers have taken other approaches to delivering SSD-like speeds to the upkeep segment. For example, Seagate'due south Momentus XT combines both HDD and SSD technologies to create a hybrid solution. It has a 4GB SLC NAND flash scrap used as a read enshroud, while all the data was really written to the hard drive.

This permit the Momentus XT outperform traditional hard drives quite comfortably, though the caching feature required repartition to piece of work efficiently. More than recently, Intel released its Smart Response Technology (SRT) with the Z68 Cougar Point chipset, which uses a similar hybrid concept simply lets you pair an SSD with any HDD.

Hoping to nab a piece of the hybrid market, OCZ has launched its RevoDrive Hybrid which fuses a 100GB SSD to a PCB aslope a 1TB 2.five" difficult drive and connects using the PCI Limited 2.0 x4 bus. At $500, this solution is priced at a peculiar $0.50/GB. That's significantly less than any SSD, only more than you'd expect to pay for an HDD.

The RevoDrive Hybrid isn't exactly an entry-level product, regardless of its cost per gigabyte, folks shopping for a $500 drive might exist inclined to opt for a pure wink-based product. We're non sure what to expect from OCZ's latest offer, but before nosotros find out, let's have a closer look at what makes the RevoDrive Hybrid tick…