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The current storage market is all about contrasts but the OCZ Synapse 64GB cache drive is trying to act as an intermediary. On one hand we have the SSDs which offer nearly unlimited performance but are limited in capacity and come at a steep price that’s usually beyond the means of most consumers. The other end of the spectrum holds the faithful spindle-based hard drives that are inexpensive and can store massive amounts of information but due to technological limitations just can’t provide the same raw speed as a typical SSD.
In order to offer consumers the best of both worlds, some manufacturers have resorted to exotic “hybrid” storage solutions like Seagate’s Momentus XT and OCZ’s RevoDrive Hybrid. The OCZ Synapse 64GB on the other hand takes a slightly different approach since it doesn’t supply the hard drive part of the equation, nor does it rely on a dedicated controller to meld the two dissimilar technologies into one cohesive whole. Rather, it is simply a modified Agility 3 60GB SSD which uses third party software to meld the SSD part of the equation with your existing hard drive to form an entirely new “hybrid” storage device.
Naturally, a software based solution requires a certain amount of processor overhead but this philosophy of using your (hopefully multi core) CPU to do the heavy lifting does its merits. It allows for increased storage flexibility while also keeping the associated costs relatively low. There are some major questions which largely center around the SSD’s capability to cope with degraded states and just how much CPU overhead is actually required but if OCZ has been able to successfully navigate around these pitfalls the new Synapse line of drives may just be the Hybrid drive many consumers have been waiting for.