SSD's are the fastest hard drives that offer you reliable and long lasting usage. Most of us are using the regular drives that rely on rpm for performance. Today 5400rpm drives are the most common and cheapest one. To extend the output more, 7200rpm drives are also available which increases the read and write speed more. But this limitation is never going to end. To overcome that and offer faster speed, SSD's were introduced. This drives relies on the high speed flash chips which does not have rpm limitation. Data's speed is now measured in Gb/s. In SSD also there are different types of drives which are designed on the basis of requirement. Like boot drives. These are dedicated to boost the function of your OS and applications. It reduces boot time, increases app launch speed and also initiates good processing. The second type is a cache drive. This one is designed to support your existing drive for better data read and write output. This type of drive is further supported by specially designed caching software. It will store the applications and data that you use frequently and increase its launch time much higher. Cache drives work by storing information about your day to day pc usage.
It modifies the list of applications in cache if you choose some other program to work. It is a time saver drive. We will be testing a similar drive today. The model is Corsair Accelerator 2.5" SATA 2. This drive is ideal for adding a bit extra juice to your system. It comes in three sizes 30GB, 45GB and 60GB. The cost of 60GB version lies around Rs.6000 approx. The cost is not clear, but it can be different on some other online retailers. The drive comes with a caching software Dataplex. The limitation of this software is that it does not support Windows 8. It works well on Windows 7 only. A serial key to activate this product is printed on the drive. We will be testing out the drive in more details, before that we will just have a look on its primary features and specification.
Features:
- Speed up system time 5 times more
- Automatic Performance enhancement
- Intelligent Caching Software
- Easy to use
- Good Read and Write speed
- 3 year warranty
Drive Models:
Package:
Design:
Corsair Accelerator is a simple internal SSD which features 2.5inch form factor. There is not much accessories in the box. The drive comes with SATA 3 port. AS per the specification you can get around 270MB/s of max read and 280MB/s of maximum write speed. This drive comes with an old SATA interface, so you won't get much high speed if you connect it on SATA 6GB/s port. The drive is actually designed to boost up your system output by making up a decent amount of cache memory. This cache storage will hold up all frequently used applications, data and other files. You can either dedicate the entire drive as a single caching drive, or you can just create a partition. If you want to use this as an OS drive then it is necessary to have mbr on it. To use you have to first initialize the drive through Disk Management. Then install Dataplex and it will select the drive for caching. You can either provide partition or the entire drive for the caching purpose. Corsair Accelerator is an internal drive. It comes with a simple look. It is a sleek hard drive with metal casing. It is essential that you note down the Dataplex serial key at the bottom side. This will be required to activate the caching software.
Performance:
It is like a regular SSD if use it for storing data or for OS without the caching software. But that does not really fulfill the need of such model. It is an exclusive caching drive which works with a caching software Dataplex by Nvelo. There is no CD provided in the drive nor it is pre-copied. You can download that from the official site. Dataplex has a special caching algorithm that boots the app performance. I had connected the drive to my pc in support with a secondary 5400rpm 160GB Seagate drive. I did not create any partition in it. The entire 60GB space is dedicated for caching. After installation you have to select the SSD for caching purpose. If you face any issue while activating the Dataplex caching software you can visit nvelo.com/dataplex/reset to reset the serial key settings. It happens that sometimes you might format your pc or shift the drive to any other system. At that point you will get the serial key error. That can be reversed by resetting it.
Once Dataplex is installed it will try to generate a cache of your recently used program. All data will be stored in the SSD drive. This drive will not be visible in My Computer. It allows you a faster access to your files and programs. Dataplex is a good caching software that works well in improving the system output. It even works with games. Corsair Accelerator is a kind of affordable upgrade solution for your system. We had tested a 30GB and 60GB version and both works identically. Read speed is lot better than the write speed. Once the cache is build up you will be able to work on your application more frequently. The startup time will be minimum. But the drive does not help you much in the processing part, as we are not using it for the storage purpose. For example editing a video file will not have any great impact after adding it. Corsair Accelerator will boost up your application and data usage performance by giving you a huge and effective caching platform. After testing it I am getting around 186mb/s of read speed and around 63mb/s of read speed.
Test Machine: (Thanks to Antec, AMD, Kingston, Gigabyte, Nvidia & Seagate for sponsoring the hardware)
- CPU Cabinet – Antec GX700 Mid-Tower
- Processor – AMD FX-8350 4Ghz 8 Core (AM3+)
- Liquid Cooler – Antec Kuhler H20 920
- RAM – 1x 8GB Kingston HyperX Blu RAM
- Motherboard – Gigabyte 990FXA-UD5 AM3+ Socket UltraDurable
- Graphic Card – NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti BOOST 2GB
- Hard Drive 1 – Seagate Barracuda 3TB Internal Hard Drive
- Hard Drive 2 – Corsair Accelerator 60GB
- PSU – Antec EA-750 EarthWatts Green PSU
Conclusion:
Corsair Accelerator 2.5" SATA 2 SSD is like a huge fast speed virtual memory to boost your system. There is very limited caching available by default in the processor. And the page file performance is limited on the basis of hard drive you are using. Here Corsair Accelerator SSD can resolve your problem for slow application output. For example if you are having a 15mb ppt file that takes a few minutes to load, after adding the Corsair Accelerator SSD, the ppt file will open in few seconds. The drive just takes some time to build a nice cache and it also alters the same when you switch to some other program. There is few limitation of this drive. It does not work with new OS like Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 or even higher. It is still restricted to Windows 7. You cannot use the drive on multi-boot pc. If you are having two Windows OS or a Linux or Windows based OS then it will work on only one of them. I think a 30GB size is more than enough for caching usage.
Pros:
- Ideal upgrade for low end system
- Good performance
Cons:
- No Support for Windows 8 or higher OS
- Does not work with dual boot system.
