Corsair Accelerator 30GB SSD Cache Drive Review

Installing The Magical NVELO Dataplex Software

The key to making the Corsair Accelerator SSD Cache Drive work properly is to install the caching software. You might have noticed that the software needed to actually run the Accelerator as intended is not included in the box or on the drive itself. Corsair told us that they didn’t want to ship a product with with an outdated version, so they are making consumers download the software online.

We mentioned that Corsair placed a product key on the back of the SSD and that is the number that is needed to download the Dataplex software. We were able to go to corsair.com/acellerator-software and enter in the product key without any issues. We downloaded Dataplex v1.1.3.7, which is the latest version of the caching software. Also notice that there are release notes and limitations shown on that page.

Dataplex Software Limitations:

• The target drive must be the primary boot drive. Caching of a
  secondary drive is not supported.
• Only MBR (Master Boot Record) partitions are supported.
  GPT (GUID Partition Table) partitions are not supported.
• The Windows Reserved System Partition (100MB partition) must be
  on the same HDD as the Windows installation (C:Windows folder)
• Multiple OSes are not supported.
• There is no support for target drives > 2TB in capacity.
• Only one cache drive is supported in a system.
• There cannot be two identical SSDs in the system, one of which
  is to be used as cache.
• There is no support for RAID sets as the cache drive.
• If after uninstallation of Dataplex, the system is restored to a
  prior state in which Dataplex was installed, Dataplex will be
  started in a disabled state.
• The following configuration(s) are not supported:
  – NVIDIA storage controllers

Once you have downloaded the Dataplex SSD Cache software you can run it and when you do, you’ll see the above setup wizard.

After you click next you need to accept the EULA and click next again.

You have to enter the product key again to activate the software. This is the same 28-digit code that you used to download the software and is located on a label on the back of the SSD. Be sure to write this down before you install the drive. The Corsair quick start guide even has a place for you to write down the activation code.

Once you click next it will ask you what target hard drive you would like to cache. Our system has just one hard drive in it and it is a 500GB Western Digital Caviar Blue hard drive with part number WD5000AAKX. This is a mainstream 7200RPM hard drive that has 16MB of cache, so it is the ideal hard drive to use an SSD cache with.

The Dataplex software will only cache one drive, but it should cover all the partitions on that drive. Not that it also does not support hard drives larger than 2TB in capacity.

After you click next you come up to a screen that shows you all the settings that you enabled and a warning that says all data on the selected cache drive will be lost. The cache drive comes unformatted, so it has no data on it as long as you picked the right drive. Once you are sure everything is okay you can click install!

After a few seconds this screen will pop up and the Dataplex has been successfully installed.

You’ll then be prompted to restart your system, which is something you must do for the caching software to begin working. There is no additional configuration or installation necessary. You can just go about using your computer like you normally do and the caching software will learn as it goes and begin caching items you use. You might need to launch an application a few times, so the Dataplex software knows to cache it, but things should get quicker. We can’t end the review this way, so let’s do some testing.