OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 series RVD3X2-FHPX4-240G PCI-E 240GB PCI-Express 2.0 x4 MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 series RVD3X2-FHPX4-240G PCI-E 240GB PCI-Express 2.0 x4 MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Pros: It's fast after it's booted up.

Cons: Slow boot time with my asus exetreme motherboard adds 30sec to the boot. Before it booted up in 6sec with my old vertex 3.
I thought these things lasted 1 milliom years, lol Anyhow this one only lasted about 7 months...

Other Thoughts: Wouldn't boot up after 6 1/2 months so I did a secure erase updated filmware and fresh windows install 2wks later Disk Read Error won't repair, won't boot. It's already back in the box.
Guess it's time to make the dreaded RMA call.

Pros: have had no problems since 1st install. Still run'n 1st OS install with no slow downs, thanks to all the ssd tips I've been reading up on.

Cons: No cons. (knock'n on wood)

Other Thoughts: I hope all who have issue with the product and/or support will finely enjoy what this card can do for you.

Pros: Very very fast. My Windows 7 load from power to start menu. 9 sec. what a fast hard drive

Cons: Dose not work for very long. I have had this for a Month now and twice it has up and lost the NFS and wont boot. have to reload windows all over again. Very bad customer service. I also have the RevoDrive x2 and that drive reminds me of the old 54k 77 ultra IDE hard drives back in the day. very slow. I reached out to OZC for both hard drives ( mind you both are under 3 months old) And got no help. No help on fixing the problem, no help on getting a RMA. Was told it was a firmware problem even though we check and verified that it was up to date. very disappointed in OCZ on how I was treated and these hard drives. Don't think my self or the company will buy there products again. Don't waste your money on these.

Manufacturer Response:

Dear Anonymous,

We are glad to help you with this. Please contact our Support Forum and detail your system and the problems you are experiencing. We will correct the issues (if possible, as some problems system dependant and can only be helped on the system end) or arrange for a warranty resolution if necessary.

We are very sorry for the inconvenience!

Kind Regards,
OCZ Support

External Link(s):

OCZ Support Forum|

Pros: knowing this card is selective of mobo's the the risk was worth it. card came in different than advertised. heat sink is bigger & back plate has vent holes. that shows OCZ is listening.

Cons: will keep posting as time goes on. so far NO cons

Pros: Lightning fast. Installed Windows in under 10 minutes.
30-35 seconds from power on to Windows login screen

Cons: Have to use the driver disk it comes with to retrieve the SCSI driver in order to install Windows to it.

Other Thoughts: Its probably more my case than anything. I tried installing it in the second PCIe 2.0 x16 slot (The first was taken by the video card). It would not allow me to install Windows. I put it into the third PCIe slot which is an x8 and was able to install Windows.

Pros: Faster than my HDD on Ubuntu 12.4. It's not my boot drive, and is even formatted in EXT2, and I still only get an average of about 615~630MB/s read (though it'll randomly jump as high as 1.7GB/s and as low as 300MB/s). This is likely because OCZ did not develop the Linux driver for this product.

Cons: OCZ refuses to write drivers for Linux; they blatantly said this in their support forum on their company website. The only reason I'm able to do this is because a really cool guy wrote a driver for this exact device and gave it to OCZ (thank you really cool guy).

Other Thoughts: I got this "opened but not used" from a trusted user on another reseller's website because it wasn't compatible with their motherboard, so I don't think it's because it's "used". It's true that it's faster than my HDD, but if I'd known this drive would severely under-perform on Linux, I'd have bought another drive.

Manufacturer Response:

OCZ is very clear regarding OS support for the Revodrive 3. I am glad you have located unofficial Linux installation methods in our Support Forum! We do offer many PCIe solutions with Linux driver support and those can be explored on our Enterprise website.

If you have any questions about PCI Express solutions to meet you Linux needs don't hesitate to contact our Enterprise Support at the link below.

Thank you.

External Link(s):

RevoDrive 3 Specifications|

OCZ Enterprise|

Pros: Super-duper boot drive with Win7 Pro. Lives up to the hype.

Cons: Upgraded OS to Win8 Pro, and it's a dog's breakfast. Agonizingly slow. And it just goes wrong unaccountably. Loses capability to use the printer. Freezes the computer, which supposedly win8 is not supposed to do.

Other Thoughts: i7-3930k
asus p9x79 pro
16 gb g.skill ram
etc.

Updated everything possible for win8: bios, all drivers, revodrive firmware, everything, to no avail. And once you go to win8, you can't go back to win7. possibly excepting a clean install. Haven't tried that yet. However, I had to change the bios from ROM to CAB (something like that), and you can't go back to ROM on my mobo per ASUS.
Trying to install a ramdisk to alleviate my distress, but haven't yet been successful. Also installing Win7 on another SSD on the pc (Corsair Force GT), and don't think that doesn't screw things up. Can't connect to the internet booting from that drive, and it bollixes things when I go back to the revodrive for boot.

Now I love Microsoft, but I wouldn't install win8 on an existing OS on a bet!

Pros: works well easy install no special knowledge needed to install outstanding performance. See my earlier article of 10/13 where this pci express ssd would not work at all in an amd cpu asus Saber Tooth motherboard but worked well in an asus workstation xeon motherboard.
I then replaced it in the xeon mb with a raid 0 off the mb pair of intel SSDSC2CW120A310 120 Gig ssds just out.
Only $240 all up versus OCZ $420. Passmark over 8K versus 7.5K and hd tune over 1000 versus 400. the ocz did beat in the atto test doing 1400 / 1600 versus intel 1000.
Need I say more?

Cons: very expensive. intel simple raid 0 ssd pairs give signicantly better performance at a significantly lower price.
the ocz product would not work in a sabertooth mb.
to get the intel pair to work I had to remove the ocz product. possibly not compatible with mb raid??

Other Thoughts: buy an ssd pair instead. get hd tune 1000 versus the oz 400.

Pros: Absolutely None

Cons: Wow OCZ I was just reading reviews on SSD's and deciding what to buy when I began reading about the Revo drives it is real obvious you don't have a good drive and you all KNOW this and yet still sell it and make your customers real sad over this. You all deserve to loose biz over this. I have to make this commit as I hope someone who is thinking to buy this will back out unless they want to throw there money away cause it will not be lasting any 2 million hrs. Shame on OCZ for selling this drive!

Pros: Bought Revo 3 X2 for computer with brand new Sabertooth 990 FX R2.0 MB. While the card lit up when put into the slot the MB did not recognize it. As I later learned when the machine boots you should see the "Fast 5.0 " or something like that on first black and white screen upper left hand corner. This did not happen. Sure I tried 3 slots including taking out my raid card and using that slot so I was positive I had a working slot. Dead! Dead! Dead! Do NOT buy if you have this motherboard.
On the other hand out of curiosity I put it in an arbitrary slot at work on an Asus workstation MB P8B WS running an Xeon CPU and ECC memory. Absolutely no issues!
All i had to do was install the hopelessly out of date driver off the CD. ( From that I would imagine the drive itself was also hopelessly out of date? ) I then installed Win64 Ultimate from scratch to test it out as the main drive. I then used it for normal jobs for several hours. Absolutely no issues and it seemed fast too. Based on my experience with Raid 0 pairs of older ssds and some modern hard drives I would have thought the HD Tune score would have been around 325 possibly 350. Using HD Tune gave a score of 400. Later I installed all new drivers and the score first test after that was 450. However it reverted to 400 next test. But the range between high and low numbers increased considerably. Maybe the old driver was better?
Tentative Conclusion: Does NOT give enough bang for the buck. Maybe buy a pair of INTEL SSDSC2CW18 or similar and set up as a raid 0 pair.
BUT consider this. I gave it the ATTO test. The read write scores were mostly between 1400 and almost 1600. I was impressed and if you are going to enter a contest with a money prize for a high ATTO Score this is the Drive to buy!
In the real world I say so what? In fact I found a technical article that concluded that it was around a 400 speed drive despite the impressive ATTO Score. I guess if I had paid $700 for this low bang for the buck drive I would be bragging about the ATTO score too instead of the very ordinary real life performance!
Rebuttals? I will hold this drive for a week before I return it for store credit. Will be the first return in several years.
Make my day and show me how to get real speed out of it!

Cons: Does not work at all DEAD DEAD DEAD on just out
Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 MB but does lite up so easy to see it so you can remove it.

Other Thoughts: Look at Passmark.com scores and buy a Raid 0 SSD pair.