OCZ Synapse Cache SYN-25SAT3-64G 2.5" 64GB (32GB cache capacity) SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)

Pros: When everything works together it does what is advertised.

Cons: The software leaves a lot to be desired. I had and work to keep a stable computer so I was surprised with how many times the software would have a problem. Always required two reboots to re enable the software. First you have to disable the software and reboot. Then re able the software and do another reboot. Now back to normal except the catch is now empty and the next time you start one of your programs you are at the main HHD speed.
But one day I logged of windows and the next time I turned on my PC everything was locked up. I couldn't do anything. My computer was locked up big time. Took me about 1.5 days to finally get a back image installed and get back into windows. Checked the drive and I could write and read from it so I thought it was ok. Then tried to re install the software. after about ten tries I was finally able to get the sw re installed and figured everything now of ok, Wrong! When I rebooted the pc It locked up again. This time for awhile I couldn't even get into the BIOS. Finally after another day of working to get my PC running again I was able to get into my Windows 7 os. Turns out that the problem was a combination of the ssd drive going bad which would cause the system to crash but the Dataplex sw would not release itself resulting in the computer being locked.

Other Thoughts: OCZ was very helpful in replacing the Synaple ssd but I will never use it with the Dataplex sw on one of PCs again. The drive is so small, only 30 G of useable that I couldn't use it for anything. I was going to just throw it away. I did end up being able to use the drive on a new build I did for my wife as a boot drive.
Bottom line just get a regular ssd drive and don't try to make this drive/sw do what you hope it will.

Pros: I got it on sale. It is a small SSD.

Cons: It arrived on a Friday and I slapped it right in. Formatted great.

I was unable to use the Dataplex software because the key was misprinted on the label. Got that sorted. Support was helpful.

Once I was able to install Dataplex my Windows drive did not show up. Got that sorted out on the forums. Helpful folks.

Finally I got up and running about a week after it arrived.
Now 9 out of 10 programs didn't work. They would instantly throw an error message. I uninstalled dataplex and everything worked as before.

In the end I used this drive to install a operating system on and use it as a SSD. It is only a 32GB drive for this purpose. If it were returnable I would have done so in the first week.

Other Thoughts: In hindsight I should have purchased a larger SSD for around the same price. The caching just didn't work for me. This will be the last time I purchase a non-refundable item.

Pros: Definitely sped up my system, even though I have a RAID setup with striping and only have SATA II (3.0GB/s) connections on my mobo. I plan to hang onto this to see what it can do when I upgrade my mobo. No issues when running it on Win7 Home Premium x86.

Cons: Upgraded my system to Win 8 Pro when it was released, and have had problems running it ever since. The software (Dataplex) does not support Win 8 yet, although they are promising that it will soon. I can get it to run occasionally when I install the software in Win7 compatibility mode, but the drive keeps disappearing in BIOS (after reboot) after I get software errors, and then I have to disable the Dataplex software and uninstall/re-install before it will work again.

Other Thoughts: Possible sources of issue: software not designed for Win8 (duh!), need to do a clean install of Win8 to correct any issues that were caused by the upgrade, or unreliable SATA connections on my mobo. I am withholding further judgement (and use!) until Dataplex releases a Win8 compatible version of their software.

Pros: Good speed.

Cons: The 50% cache just doesnt make sense to me or for what I was trying to do with it.

Pros: This ssd cache was very easy to install and very obvious system speeds were seen after third reboot. It's a nice idea to not have to buy a new hdd or ssd and image your system, save money and get get significant speed increases for minimum cost.

Cons: I very much want to avoid the known hassles of system crashes, so I will be buying a pure sine wave ups. Some extra cost for security, but overall I think it's worth it. I didn't even realize that my old ups wasn't compatible with my new active power supply so researching this ssd Cache had an unrelated positive result, and I can use my old usp for my modem and router, so I am happy.

Pros: It's an SSD, and it actually works.

Cons: Not happy. Shipped USPS in an envelope. No kidding, an envelope - it's a new SSD drive. Blew me away right off the bat. Next, CFDisk identifies right away that there's 32GB of unusable space on this drive. In a defective partition. Right. That's why I bought a 64-gig SSD, to actually use 32 gigs.

Other Thoughts: Buy two, so when you throw the first one away you still have one left to use. Or pair 'em up to get twice the thrill.

Manufacturer Response:

Hello, this drive is a caching drive. It uses 1/2 of the capacity to store commonly used to data to speed up the booting process and some applications. The Dataplex software that is recommended for download utilizes the other 32gb partition. Please download and install the software to set up your drive. Please also visit our support forums if you have any questions. We are here to help. Thank you

External Link(s):

Synapse FAQ and Downloads|

OCZ Support Forums|

Pros: Relatively easy to install -- there's a nice wizard to take you through everything in Windows.

Performance increase is dramatic. I'm going to miss that.

Uninstallation is similarly quick and easy. After this, you just have your old, slow hard drive back the way it was.

Cons: Pretty much everything else about the software.

Requires a product key, which is silly and obnoxious. I have a physical piece of hardware that this came with! Checking the manual confirms that if I upgrade my hardware too much at once, it may invalidate my license.

There is a manual and a text document called "LIMITATIONS.txt", neither of which I could find until I actually had the product and had downloaded the software. Here is (abbreviated) the main limitations form LIMITATIONS.txt:

1. MBR only, GPT isn't supported.
2. If caching the boot drive, you need a Windows System Partition (the weird little 100 meg partition) on the same drive.
3. Multiple OSes are not supported.
4. Only one cache drive is supported in a system.
5. There cannot be two identical SSDs in the system, one of which is to be used as cache.
6. There is no support for RAID sets as the cache drive.
7. If after uninstallation of Dataplex, the system is restored to a prior state in which Dataplex was installed, Dataplex will be started in a disabled state.
8. NVIDIA storage controllers are not supported.

Some of these are understandable -- 7 is a feature, not a bug. 1 and 2 are weird, but workable. 8 makes me nervous, but fortunately doesn't affect me.

But if I had known about 3, 4, or 5, I would not have purchased this product. After installation, I was unable to boot the Linux partition on the same drive. Examining the drive with a recovery disk showed that my entire 1 terabyte disk now had a single 1 gigabyte partition on it, and nothing else.

So they don't mean tech support will ignore you if you use Linux. They mean installing this will make all other OSes on the drive unbootable! The manual makes this even clearer:

"What happens if I boot from an external USB drive?

"When you boot from an external USB drive, you will not be able to access the Target and Cache Drives unless Dataplex has been uninstalled. These drives are intentionally obfuscated in order to protect the integrity of the data on these drives."

Intentionally obfuscated. Thanks for that.

Fortunately, uninstalling Dataplex restores the drive to its prior state.

Other Thoughts: It seems sketchy, if not outright dishonest, to sell a product with limitations this severe without publishing them anywhere other than in documentation shipped with the product. Again, had I known this would make my drive invisible to other OSes and recovery software, I would not have purchased this product.

It's also worth mentioning that similar caching software exists for Linux which doesn't have these limitations. I am not sure if this counts as a "competing brand", I'm only pointing out that there is no technical reason DataPlex should be so limited.

Manufacturer Response:

Hello, we are sorry for any confusion concerning the use of this product. Dataplex software has become the standard for caching drives, as evidenced by the fact that our closest competitors in the SSD filed have adopted this software for their offerings as well. While the software is award winning for it's performance and useability, any limitations are due to the Dataplex software itself and they way that it controls the caching process. If we can be of any assistance, please visit the link below and create a support ticket to contact our support staff. It is our goal to insure that every customer is satisfied with their OCZ product. We care about our customers and are here to help. Thank you

External Link(s):

OCZ Support Page|

Pros: The speed increase is fantastic! During install, I ran into problems with my PC that I didn't know were present. First I get an error message installing the software (msi.exe) which wound up pointing to missing windows system files(thanks OCZ tech support). Seems oxidation had reared it's ugly head on some of my connectors. So I reinstalled Windows on a new HDD & voila, it works.(had to clean all exposed connectors tho). Now the drive is only limited by my mobo's southbridge, an AMD 790 SATAII.

Cons: Typing in the serial # every time something goes wrong,&, the software is for Win7 only.

Other Thoughts: WEI scored it at 5.9 until I upped my ram from 1333- 1600.WEI then gave it a 6.3. Windows only tests transfer speeds tho.

Pros: I did get some performance increase
but I can't tell how much
boot time is 15 seconds on a win7 64 bit pro
-it was cheap

Cons: this is not what I thought it was

-you can't use RAID
-had to reformat to get it to work
-no drives over 2.5 TB

no space left for me to use for my own caching
can't store a game image or switch my page file over
i'd like to be able to write blu-ray files to it

Other Thoughts: if I could use 32 gig for my own cache
and the other 32 for dataplex then this might be worth it

if you're storing large video or game files then a traditional SSD might not work for you
that being said i'd rather have SSD boot drive with windows 8 and use this thing for page file and cache to try and limit the number of writes to boot drive therefore extending it's life
I won't feel bad if this thing burns up because it was cheap

Manufacturer Response:

This drive does have limited space, with 1/2 being allocated to data cache. We do offer larger models, or possibly an additional SSD might be what you require. If we can be of any help, please visit the link below and post in our support forums for assistance. Thank you

External Link(s):

OCZ Support Forums|

Pros: When I saw the corsair version onsale I thought,"hmm, that's to big." I then researched other drives and found this ocz split type cache drive. Nice concept, half for one thing, half for something else. Bought it for my son who games multiple games verses my other two that stick to the same game, I wanted this put through the wringer so to speak. He loves it, but states when he switches to another game it of course takes it a couple passes to kick in to gear. It will kick into gear though after a couple passes. He uses it on an asrock extreme4 am3+ mobo with the 4100 fx chip.

Cons: When I opened the well packaged box my first thought was, "what? No beer?" My son got me beer though.

Other Thoughts: My son states he notices a very big difference in games opening and loading into the maps. He really likes it alot! He says he's waiting for the new borderlands to come out to put on the rest of this drive so he can have ssd performance strictly for that. Personally, I wouldn't spend any more on a cache drive at this price. This is the sweet spot for gamers, the higher priced and higher gig drives are used in enterprise arenas, otherwise you should buy an ssd from jump street........this according to my son is awesome and makes a mech drive worth having without spending 200+ dollars for a 240+gig ssd. His mech drive is a seagate 500gig that was bought when prices were really cheap.(not all 240gig ssd's are worth 180 or less bucks, buy the best if going that route)