Final thoughts and rating

There's a scenario in which an SSD cache is a near-perfect solution. If you're unwilling to part with your hard-disk's high capacity and only want to improve performance, a caching solution such as Corsair's Accelerator will prove to be an excellent fit.

A streamlined setup makes this a product that's ready for the mainstream - even mums and dads should be able to install the Accelerator in under 10 minutes - and Corsair's competitive pricing makes it an option for just about anyone. The 30GB model in particular, priced at £45, is on the verge of impulse-buy territory.

A SATA 3Gbps drive aimed at the masses is a good idea, but the economics of Corsair's 60GB drive do muddy the waters; it isn't quite as attractive at £65 and it's out-foxed by rival solutions that offer high-speed SATA 6Gbps connectivity for just a few pounds more.

Bottom line: You can't beat a standalone SSD for ultimate speed, but for users who do have a lot of data and are unwilling to navigate the complications of migrating to a typically-smaller solid-state drive, the Accelerator cache is a drop-in upgrade that's easy to use and able to significantly boost performance over a hard-disk only configuration.

The Good

Significantly faster than a hard-disk only configuration
Pairs with mechanical drives to deliver speed and capacity
Low-cost 30GB model looks particularly attractive
Simple setup and installation

The Bad

Only compatible with Windows 7
SATA 3Gbps interface limits performance

HEXUS Rating

Corsair Accelerator Series (60GB)

HEXUS Where2Buy

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For a drive like this, some real world boot/application timings would have been incredibly helpful, because it is obviously a very differnet product to a regular SSD. Whilst the synthetic results are helpful, when a drive is sold specifically as an “accelerator”, it'd be nice to see examples of real PC use.

Also, what versions of Windows (or other OSs) are supported? Again, with the idea of it being an “accelerator”, it would be useful to know whether it can be used with older PCs (which would only have slower SATA ports anyway) running Vista or even XP.

Agree with Irien. Maybe I missed it, but any real world benchmarks of how long it takes to load windows with results in seconds would be great

Irien
Also, what versions of Windows (or other OSs) are supported? Again, with the idea of it being an “accelerator”, it would be useful to know whether it can be used with older PCs (which would only have slower SATA ports anyway) running Vista or even XP.

From what little information that's available on the DataPlex software this looks like it's Windows7 only - although at least it's both 32bit and 64bit versions. So if you've got older Windows then I suspect you'll be out of luck. As to Mac and Linux - forget it.

Back to the article, this looks like an interesting product, but restricting it's use case to only the boot drive seems pretty short-sighted. I'm sure that there's a lot of folks (besides me of course) that'd like to apply this kind of caching solution to a large HDD-based “app” drive. As it is, I'm going to have to wait until the price of large SSD's falls to an affordable level.

Tempting, though you have to wonder how long it will last being thrashed around so much. Though if it does die it should all be fairly safe and at worst you would only lose the very latest data (I think)

Am I missing something? It's almost the same price as a SSD drive. The only thing this is doing is helping people who are lazy to reinstall OS on a new SSD.

Has FAIL written all over it?