An interesting thing about NAND Flash SSD technologies, beyond the fact that the market is flush with competitive product offerings, is that the technology itself is very flexible and adaptable to a number of different design approaches. Take for example a RAID 4-pack configuration with Intel's X25-M SSD or perhaps the omnipotent Fusion-io ioDrive. Granted, these are rather high-end, pricey setups, but you get the gist that solid state storage arena is just getting warmed up.

In a sort of hybrid version of Fusion-io's product and our RAID 4-pack array, OCZ Technology has introduced an almost fully integrated solution of their SATA-based SSD technology, along with a third party RAID controller, all wrapped up clean and tidy on a PCI Express X8 adapter card.

Dubbed the Z-Drive, we first got a look at this wild-eyed beast back in May. It wasn't quite ready for prime time back then and it re-emerged again in early September with specs that admittedly caused a pavlovian response of our salivary glands. Today, we get to satiate ourselves with a deep dive look at the new OCZ Z-Drive, in a tasty 256GB variant that drops in at an almost reasonable $899 price point that is on near cost parity with a standard mid-range SSD...