Runcore ProIV ZIF SSD User Review

[nando4]

Update 11-16-2011: MyDigitalDiscount are now stocking units that use the Marvell sata-to-pata bridge chip marking it architecturally the same as a Renice K3VLAR ZIF SSD. This should alleviate issues with TRIM and incompatibility stemming from their previous Jmicron sata-to-pata bridge.

Introduction - ZIF equipped notebook owners now have a great value performance storage upgrade option. The Runcore ProIV ZIF SSD combines a high performance Indilinx Barefoot controller, as used on the OCZ Vertex, with a sata-to-pata bridge chip for connectivity to ZIF systems. Performance testing shows an average of 3.4-times-faster performance than a ZIF HDD. It's available for purchase from MyDigitalDiscount or MemoryC.

1: ProIV ZIF internals. Indilinx Barefoot controller, Samsung NAND flash, Jmicron JM20330 sata-to-pata bridge chip
2: Package contents: USB enclosure, instructions, SSD drive, 3 ZIF cables, USB cable, 2 screwdrives and stickers
3: ZIF SSD/HDD width comparison. ProIV circuit=~2mm, ProIV chassis=5mm, Toshiba 80GB HDD=8mm
4: ProIV ZIF SSD as installed in HP 2510P

Runcore ProIV 1.8” ZIF PATA SSD Specifications summary

Interface: 1.8” ZIF ATA7 Standard Retail Price: 32GB-US$90 64GB-US$150 128GB-US$290 Random 4kb reads | writes: 21MB/s | 18MB/s (measured 21MB/s | 9MB/s @UDMA5)

Sequential read/write: 85/75 MB/s (measured 83/76 Mb/s @UDMA5) Average access time: 0.1ms Power consumption idle/active: 0.5/0.83W (measured 0.5/2.0W)

Installation

Installation was easy. A USB enclosure is provided to house the SSD supplied with Acronis Trial EasyMigrate to clone existing data. Initially I had a hard time inserting the ZIF cable into the ZIF socket until I realized the black strip on the ZIF socket is a stiffener as shown here. Flicking the stiffener into an upright position allowed very easy insertion of the ZIF cable.

Performance Comparison: Runcore ProIV ZIF SSD versus Toshiba ZIF HDD

Drive	Idle/Active Power^1	Benchmark
		IOMeter^2	Bootup	2GB file copy^3	CrystalDisk|PerformanceTest|atto|AS SSD^4
Toshiba MK8009GAH 80GB 1.8" ZIF HDD 4200rpm	0.4W/1.1W	low	82.1s	350s
Runcore ProIV 64GB 1.8" ZIF PATA SSD	0.5W/2.0W	boot: 1185/48.2 4k-r: 5470/21.4 4k-w: 1565/6.1 seq: 80/73	21.6s (3.8x faster)	122s (2.9x faster)
OCZ Vertex (Indilinx) 60GB sata SSD in 9.5mm sata-to-pata caddy from here	N/A

Tested platform: XP SP3, HP 2510P U7600-1.2 2GB ICH8M UDMA5/ATA100 I/O.
^1 - measured using powertop in Linux/Recovery console. Toshiba ZIF HDD's 1.1W rated Active was used as a reference point.
^2 - industry standard used to measure performance.
^3 - link shows drive hparm output and partition alignment details
^4 - 4kb-64thrd a good reflection of overall os/app responsiveness

The above benchmarks compare the HP supplied 4200rpm 1.8" ZIF HDD against the Runcore ProIV ZIF SSD. An identical XP partition image was used to give back-to-back comparison of bootup time. The image and partitioning was optimized for best performance on both the SSD and the HDD by setting it to be (i) defragmented using Perfect Disk (ii) it was aligned to a 512MB boundary for best SSD performance. WinBootInfo gives the precise bootup time data. The actual 26GB of total data occupied the top third portion of the 1.8" ZIF HDD so the benchmarks are better than average and will worsen as the drive fills and seek times increase.

The Runcore ProIV ZIF SSD is a very noticable improvement in performance over the 1.8" ZIF HDD. Going from a coffee break inducing 80.2 seconds to 21.6 seconds XP boot time, or taking 122 seconds versus 350 seconds to read and write a 2GB file. That's an average of 3.4 times faster performance, the sort of disk I/O activity that can be said to extend to all disk activity. There's no ticking noise, Firefox doesn't have momentary seek delays when scrolling windows or reading/writing cache. Applications just popup instantly. Once experiencing this sort of speed it's hard to go back to using the ZIF HDD.

The OCZ Vertex in a sata-to-pata optical bay caddy is included for comparison. We see it performs very similarly to the Runcore ProIV. It's virtually the same setup but in 2.5" factor and uses the Marvell 88SA8040 sata-to-pata chip. Back-to-back comparisons of the both bridge chips is in the optical bay caddy review.

Power Consumption

We do see the SSD consumes more idle and active power consumption than the 1.8" ZIF HDD, though it's higher performance means more time spend in idle mode. So far it appears to be at least on par with perhaps a slight battery life improvement than the supplied 1.8" ZIF HDD.

Garbage Collection

I'll also add that at one point in my testing, after what must have been a complete write to all the cells on the SSD, CrystalDiskMark write performance halved, exactly as described here. This was solvable by either (i) installation of firmware 1916 which delivers internal, transparent garbage collection and Win7 trim support or (ii) older versions of firmware without GC/trim can manually run wiper.exe the write performance was restored to "as new" levels per OCZ's recommendation of running wiper.exe 2-3 times a week. It took less than 30 seconds to do it's work when I ran it.

Pros

• one of the best performing ZIF SSDs as shown by 4kb random and sequential i/o performance
• x3 faster bootup and sequential read/write performance improvement over a 1.8" ZIF HDD
• Win7 trim garbage collection maintains write performance [ requires firmware 1819 or newer ]
• internal automated garbage collection maintains write performance [ requires firmware 1916 ]
• defaults to master but can be pinmodded to run as slave [ Runcore tech support can advise ]
• great bang-per-buck

Cons

• higher-than-advertised power consumption

Conclusion

The Runcore ProIV is the highest performance MLC ZIF SSD at one of the lowest prices making it one of the best ZIF SSD upgrades available at this time.

---

Related links/articles

• Runcore support forum - direct interface to Runcore engineers.
• 1.8" ZIF SSDs available - competing products currently available.
• 1.8" ZIF to 2.5" SATA enclosure - allows future use of the ProIV ZIF SSD in a 2.5" sata system.
• Partition Alignment and Linux instructions. Though my aligned/non-aligned benchmarks were identical.

[nando4]

Appendix: Notes about realistic performance from the ZIF PATA interface

Many candidate units for the Runcore ProIV ZIF SSD such as the Dell D420/D430, HP 2510P/2710P, Toshiba R500, HP Mini 1000, Lenovo U110, Asus U1E will have the Intel ICHxM UDMA5/ATA100 PATA I/O interface rated at 100MB/s read and 88.9MB/s write. With transfer overhead this decreases to approx ~90MB/s read and ~80MB/s write. There are some exceptions that can do UDMA6 which is limited to 133MB/s reads.

You may ask, well that interface speed is a lot less than SATA-II's 3Gbps or ~250MB/s read. Yes, SATA-II SSDs do perform better at sequential read/write operations such as hibernate or multimeda file reads, but your OS/App loading time is predominantly affected by 4KB random I/O transfer rate. The OS reads multiple small files on your filesystem. 4KB read speeds are only just crossing 30MB/s by Intel X25M's SSD, so the ZIF interface still has plenty of bandwidth to accomodate advances in SSD technology to come. 21MB/s 4KB/s reads puts it within reach of the fastest consumer SATA SSDs.

Though these Intel X25M G2 ATTO benchmarks would suggest 4KB read speeds are already hitting ZIF interface limits.

[Borh]

With the old firmware, I wasn't able to run the wiper tool.
Now that I have upgraded the firmware thanks to your link on the support forum, Nando, I can execute the wiper tool. But after nearly 24h, It's only at 0.44%.
At this rate, it will take 6 months. Maybe that's because I've been using the SSD for 4 months without TRIM, I don't know....

Do you know another way to recover my performance, a faster way, even If I loose my data and I must reinstall my OS ?

[nando4]

Originally Posted by Borh

Do you know another way to recover my performance, a faster way, even If I loose my data and I must reinstall my OS ?

Ensure your SSD is partitioned to use an erase block size boundary as discussed here. A fresh Win7 install will align to a 1MB boundary which will do the trick. Wiper will then run in seconds/minutes.

If reinstallation/repartitioning is not feasible, can try a Tony Trim instead.

[Borh]

Well now I have a big problem.
I have started to run perfect disk 10. And after 30mn it crashed my OS. And I cannot reinstall it, the installation program says that no drives ar found. Even Ubuntu doesn't find any disk.
I fear that Tony TRIM has killed my SSD.

Edit : my laptop is working again. I didn't do anything except letting it rest for a few hours. Even Windows is working without a reinstallation. Strange.

[anik]

Hi, nando4!

Do you have any problems with your Runcore ProIV ZIF SSD and TRIM in Win 7 like here? :
Problem installing OS on RunCore Pro IV 64G 1.8'' PATA Zif SSD

runcore pro iv RCP-IV-Z1828-C freezes when deleting

[flatsix911]

Excellent information - Thanks.

[arnokb]

Thanks nando4 for the information about the Runcore Pata SSD.

I am deeply interested in "converting back" a 44pin IDE runcore Pro IV ssd in a native sata product by bypassing the JMicron controller.

I have a 1.8inch SSD so the J1 and J2 are positionned differently but they are present. The sata connector isn't a 6pin but 7+1pins. I said 7+1 and not 8 because 1 pin is a little further than the 7 other, separated by a few millimeters.

My goal is to use it on as a 2.5inch SSD natively Sata because I changed my laptop much sooner than I expected. The other option is to sell the SSD because it is nearly completely new (I used it lightly only 3 month therefore it's still in warranty). So if Anyone is interested in a perfectly mint and working Runecore SSD IDE44 pin (useable in a 1.8 or 2.5 space).

Therefore can you ask more information to the Runcore ingenier you contacted ?

Regards

arnokb

[nando4]

Originally Posted by arnokb

The other option is to sell the SSD because it is nearly completely new (I used it lightly only 3 month therefore it's still in warranty). So if Anyone is interested in a perfectly mint and working Runecore SSD IDE44 pin (useable in a 1.8 or 2.5 space).

I would not recommend modifying the SSD. Instead suggest you sell it on ebay. PATA SSDs are rarer than their sata cousins so you'll get a good price for it. Then could get an equivalent Indilinx 2.5" sata SSD for your system, or can go newer SF1200-based SSDs for faster performance.