OK, so it's kinda long. TL;DR is at the bottom.
Maybe my problem was lack of research, I'm not sure. Recently, the OCZ Synapse went on sale on Amazon for a really good price. I'd been interested in a caching solution for a while, so when the price dropped ($100 plus $20 mail in rebate) I picked one up and installed it. My first surprise was that the actual capacity of the drive is not 64GB as advertised, it's 32GB. Search OCZ Synapse on Amazon and you'll see for yourself. Amazon's materials make no mention of this, and OCZ only mentions it in passing. So I paid about $100 for a 32GB capacity SSD. Yes, I know (now) that it's due to over-provisioning, but the advertised capacity is 64GB. Other drives with over-provisioning advertise their actual usable capacity.
Now, onto Dataplex. Once you download and install it, it's seamless. So seamless that you really have no way of knowing if it's working or not. Boot time per Windows Event Viewer was down to 40-45s from about 60-70s. Not SSD fast, but a solid 25% improvement. Other applications showed similar improvement (25-30%). Improvement was not consistent, however. I attribute this to the fact that my computing day is varied. I play a couple different games, sometimes work in Photoshop. The storage demands vary. This is why I wanted a 64GB cache. With a smallish cache I can only imagine that the cache contents are constantly being shuffled and changed. Going over my Event Viewer history from the last week, sometimes the system booted in 40-45s, sometimes 60s, sometimes as high as 90s, and annoyingly, sometimes the boot hung and never finished. That never happened before Dataplex, but it seems to happen one out of every 2 cold boots now. It hangs somewhere either during the Windows logo, or right after hitting the Windows desktop. It also doesn't like coming back from a Sleep state, but I don't use that much.
So, so far, I've gota slightly buggier system with a modest but inconsistent speed improvement. OK, maybe I can live with that.
But wait, I can't boot into my Linux install anymore. Why not? I pop in a Linux DVD (Ubuntu 11.04), boot off that. Check file system. My Windows drive and the cache SSD are not found under Linux.
Turns out that the Dataplex software, despite supposedly being a "write-around cache" solution, meaning that all data is always on the hard drive and an SSD blowup won't result in data loss, renders your OS drive and the cache somehow unreadable by any OS except the OS that the Dataplex software is installed on. This is something I've never seen a reviewer mention and it's a big friggin' deal.
I can deal with the fact that the cache only speeds up Windows, that's fine. But Windows, is ... well, Windows. Stuff sometimes goes wrong when you're an enthusiast and you try new things a lot. Those new things don't always work as intended, sometimes your Windows install becomes unbootable and you need to fix it. No problem, right? You pop in your Windows install disk and do a repair or re-install or whatever you need to do, but your data is always safe except in the case of an actual hard drive crash. There's always a variety of ways to get at a viable functioning hard drive, even if you can't boot off the drive. Linux live discs, installing the hard drive in another computer, etc. If your OS goes tits up, your data is typically safe.
Not with this.
The Dataplex software doesn't just make the OS drive unreadable to Linux, it's also unreadable by another Windows machine or the Windows install disc. No System Restore, no repair install, no rescues possible. Your data? It's held hostage in your Users directory which you now can't access. The only way I can see to correct the situation should a fatal flaw prevent you from booting into Windows is to reformat the hard drive and start over entirely, thus wiping out all your files.
Curiously, since Dataplex authenticates online, this method will also render your Dataplex software key useless. In order to be eligible to re-install the software, you must un-install it while connected to the internet so it can de-authorize that key with the Dataplex server. I'm not sure how lenient they are about re-issuing keys in the situation described above, but it'll be a minor hassle at the very least I'm sure.
TL;DR My review = modest and inconsistent performance improvements with mildly buggy software (it's not bad, but it's not without faults) and some big downsides, including misleading capacity figures from OCZ. If you're going to use this solution, make sure you have an aggressive backup plan in place for your Users directory and any other personal data on your primary hard drive.
Maybe my problem was lack of research, I'm not sure. Recently, the OCZ Synapse went on sale on Amazon for a really good price. I'd been interested in a caching solution for a while, so when the price dropped ($100 plus $20 mail in rebate) I picked one up and installed it. My first surprise was that the actual capacity of the drive is not 64GB as advertised, it's 32GB. Search OCZ Synapse on Amazon and you'll see for yourself. Amazon's materials make no mention of this, and OCZ only mentions it in passing. So I paid about $100 for a 32GB capacity SSD. Yes, I know (now) that it's due to over-provisioning, but the advertised capacity is 64GB. Other drives with over-provisioning advertise their actual usable capacity.
Now, onto Dataplex. Once you download and install it, it's seamless. So seamless that you really have no way of knowing if it's working or not. Boot time per Windows Event Viewer was down to 40-45s from about 60-70s. Not SSD fast, but a solid 25% improvement. Other applications showed similar improvement (25-30%). Improvement was not consistent, however. I attribute this to the fact that my computing day is varied. I play a couple different games, sometimes work in Photoshop. The storage demands vary. This is why I wanted a 64GB cache. With a smallish cache I can only imagine that the cache contents are constantly being shuffled and changed. Going over my Event Viewer history from the last week, sometimes the system booted in 40-45s, sometimes 60s, sometimes as high as 90s,
So, so far, I've got
But wait, I can't boot into my Linux install anymore. Why not? I pop in a Linux DVD (Ubuntu 11.04), boot off that. Check file system. My Windows drive and the cache SSD are not found under Linux.
Turns out that the Dataplex software, despite supposedly being a "write-around cache" solution, meaning that all data is always on the hard drive and an SSD blowup won't result in data loss, renders your OS drive and the cache somehow unreadable by any OS except the OS that the Dataplex software is installed on. This is something I've never seen a reviewer mention and it's a big friggin' deal.
I can deal with the fact that the cache only speeds up Windows, that's fine. But Windows, is ... well, Windows. Stuff sometimes goes wrong when you're an enthusiast and you try new things a lot. Those new things don't always work as intended, sometimes your Windows install becomes unbootable and you need to fix it. No problem, right? You pop in your Windows install disk and do a repair or re-install or whatever you need to do, but your data is always safe except in the case of an actual hard drive crash. There's always a variety of ways to get at a viable functioning hard drive, even if you can't boot off the drive. Linux live discs, installing the hard drive in another computer, etc. If your OS goes tits up, your data is typically safe.
Not with this.
The Dataplex software doesn't just make the OS drive unreadable to Linux, it's also unreadable by another Windows machine or the Windows install disc. No System Restore, no repair install, no rescues possible. Your data? It's held hostage in your Users directory which you now can't access. The only way I can see to correct the situation should a fatal flaw prevent you from booting into Windows is to reformat the hard drive and start over entirely, thus wiping out all your files.
Curiously, since Dataplex authenticates online, this method will also render your Dataplex software key useless. In order to be eligible to re-install the software, you must un-install it while connected to the internet so it can de-authorize that key with the Dataplex server. I'm not sure how lenient they are about re-issuing keys in the situation described above, but it'll be a minor hassle at the very least I'm sure.
TL;DR My review = modest and inconsistent performance improvements
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