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The SSD market is continuously growing, yet high capacity devices will most likely not be affordable by the bulk of consumers for several years to come. Even after the Thailand catastrophe which increased mechanical drive prices by as much as 300%, high capacity SSDs were far too expensive to be competitive. Many manufacturers are working on solutions to improve hard disk drive performance without having to use a large capacity SSD; Intel introduced the SRT (Smart Response Technology) n their Z68 chipset, Seagate designed hybrid mechanical drives with a small SSD cache installed and OCZ introduced various solutions, the most popular being a hybrid PCI-E 1TB drive. OCZ however also introduced another very interesting product, an SSD baptized “Synapse”, which has been designed to be used as a plug & play caching solution. OCZ promises SSD speeds while using virtually any mechanical HDD of up to 2TB capacity as a primary system disk. Sounds too good to be true? We will find out in this review.

The SSD market is continuously growing, yet high capacity devices will most likely not be affordable by the bulk of consumers for several years to come. Even after the Thailand catastrophe which increased mechanical drive prices by as much as 300%, high capacity SSDs were far too expensive to be competitive. Many manufacturers are working on solutions to improve hard disk drive performance without having to use a large capacity SSD; Intel introduced the SRT (Smart Response Technology) n their Z68 chipset, Seagate designed hybrid mechanical drives with a small SSD cache installed and OCZ introduced various solutions, the most popular being a hybrid PCI-E 1TB drive. OCZ however also introduced another very interesting product, an SSD baptized “Synapse”, which has been designed to be used as a plug & play caching solution. OCZ promises SSD speeds while using virtually any mechanical HDD of up to 2TB capacity as a primary system disk. Sounds too good to be true? We will find out in this review.

Manufacturer features and specifications

Available in 64GB (32GB) and 128GB (64GB) capacities

Interface: SATA 6Gbps / Backwards Compatible 3Gbps

Use in conjunction with your existing hard drive

MLC NAND Flash

Native TRIM support

Integrated Dataplex™ caching software

ECC Recovery, Data Encryption

Slim 2.5" Design: 98 x 69.9 x 9.1 mm

Lightweight: 79g

Operating Temp: 0°C ~ 70°C

Ambient Temp: 0°C ~ 55°C

Storage Temp: -45°C ~ 85°C

Low Power Consumption: 2.7W Active, 1.5W Idle

Shock Resistant up to 1500G

Included 3.5" Desktop adapter bracket

Compatible with Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit

MTBF: 2 million hours

3-Year Warranty

64GB Max Performance