Are PCI-E SSD Cards Supported?

English Hardware
1

Hi,

I am considering an OCZ RevoDrive SSD that takes the form of a PCI-Express x4 card. I have not been able to find compatibility or support information for Linux, though apparently it works OK under Windows 7.

I want to make this a system / boot drive.

Any information, especially direct experience, would be welcome.

Randall Schulz

2

So I found this quote on the OCZ RevoDrive.

Overclockers Club
Added on: 2010-10-31
“The OCZ RevoDrive PCI Express 50GB drive was a complete pleasure to test. I had no issues whatsoever installing, booting into and running both Windows 7 Professional and Ubuntu Linux 10.10. The installation could not be simpler, just plug into the correct PCIe slot, set the BIOS to ACHI and boot away. The speeds were amazing and I was blown away. When compared to other drives that are in the same price bracket, there is no comparison. The RevoDrive demolished them all. In almost every instance, the RevoDrive took out not only the single drives but also a dual RAID-0 setup using drives with the same controllers and the same striping size. Overall, the OCZ RevoDrive is an excellent implementation of solid state drive use and outperforms even the best of the competition. If you are in the market for an SSD and want better performance than a single drive, then I would look into the RevoDrive. You get what you pay for and this is evident in the outstanding performance that the OCZ RevoDrive offers.”

As long as it is seen by the BIOS on startup, I am thinking it should work with anything. I have two SSD’s now, but both are SATA. Go for at least 128 GB I think.

Thank You,

3

Thank you, James. I was looking at the 120 GB version. I don’t think I need the 240 GB version, which is about 2/3 again as expensive. I always carefully assign different system directories and the home directories to specific drives, so the 120 is great plenty.

Thanks again for finding that for me.

RRS

4

Thank you, James. I was looking at the 120 GB version. I don’t think I need the 240 GB version, which is about 2/3 again as expensive. I always carefully assign different system directories and the home directories to specific drives, so the 120 is great plenty.

Thanks again for finding that for me.

RRS
You are very welcome rrschulz. And of course when I said 128 GB, that is the same as 120 GB as you know depending on how large 1K (1024 or 1000) is. lol! I also have a thread about SSD’s here if you have not seen it before.

Using a SSD Hard Drive with openSUSE and the TRIM Command

So I don’t think using two SSD’s would make me any sort of expert on the subject, but 120 GB is plenty enough room for all of your Linux partitions except for media storage perhaps. The last one I got was a 128 GB Cousair Model based on SATA III and it does work like a champ on a 6GB port. The PCIe cards are said to be even faster, but it is hard to believe, but anything is possible. It is just they are already real expensive in a standalone SATA package. I can say that boot up time is very fast (around 25 seconds, turn on to desktop start, but your BIOS may need some tuning to get done that fast) and things like kernel compiles are between 10-15% faster.

If you buy this SSD card you must tell us how well this works for you.

Thank You,