MyDigitalSSD 128GB half-slim SATA Solid State Disk Reviewed!

[Vihsadas]

(Not Complete...continually updating over next few days)

Introduction:

If you check out The Acer Timeline Bluetooth & Tidbits Thread, you’ll see that the Acer Timeline series of old (3810, 4810, 5810) comes with a mysterious and unused internal SATA slot that is sized to fit a very uncommon form factor of SSD: the half-slim SSD. This size of SATA drive is generally found in tablets, however, there were certain builds of laptops that implemented the half-slim form factor. This no normal sized SSD. It’s smaller than your standard 2.5”, tinier than the mSATA drives like the Intel 310 or Renice K3vlar, and even less space consuming than the 1.8” SATA SSD. Its form factor measures a ridiculously tiny 5.4cm (2 ⅛ in) wide by 4cm (1 ½ in) long. Reportedly, Toshiba, Samsung, Sandisk, and Corsair make half-slim drives, however, they seem to only be available in bulk to OEM manufacturers. I’ve only been able to find Transcend and MyDigitalSSD fabrications available for retail sale. Unlike the mSATA SSD niche, which seems to be growing rapidly since the Asus eePC, the half-slim SATA niche has not quite caught on.

MyDigitalSSD is a relatively small company and a newcomer to the SSD world. Their motivation, however, to become involved in the markets that the larger competitors have left bare, may help to solidify their name. Additionally, MyDigitalSSD regularly traffics various forums (including this one) so they have the opportunity to really keep their products up to the enthusiast standard. If they listen to their customers, and deliver hardware that appeals to the more knowledgeable computer user, they could do very well. That being said, their products are as of yet untested, and lack the brand reputation of larger SSD manufacturers like Intel. Only time will tell whether or not MyDigitalSSD will produce products that consumers can trust.

With my 3810T, the internal unused half-slim slot was the perfect way to have the benefit of an OS SSD with a larger platter storage drive, provided I could find a suitable half-slim SSD drive.The MyDigitalSSD might just be the perfect drive to fit the bill. In this review, I’ll put the Transcend 64GB half-slim SSD up against the MyDigitalSSD “Bulletproof” 128GB disk, because those were the only two I could find. Unfortunately, the transcend is so shoddily made it's not much of a competition. For good measure, I’ll also include the drive that came stock with the 3810T – the 320GB Western Digital Blue Scorpio.


Overview:

Like it’s mSATA brother (review found here), The 128GB half-slim SATA Drive doesn’t come with any frills. There is no companion software and no optimization tools. This is one area the company could work to improve. There is a firmware update available from MyDigitalSSD, however, it can be a bit difficult to find if you don’t know where to look. A section on their website which clearly lays out the latest firmware updates, and also a small utility which could activate the “Secure Erase” ATA function on the drive would be welcome additions. Luckily, although I have not actually tried it myself, I believe that the HDDErase method for wiping an SSD will work with the MyDigitalSSD hard disk, because it also works with the Patriot Torx 2 drive, which uses the same controller.




The controller on the MyDigitalSSD is a Phison 3105-S5. This is relatively unknown controller, but is also found on mid-range Patriot drives like the Torx 2. It also boasts 64GB of Nanya DDR Memory, and 4 NAND Flash modules at 32GB a module. There are reportedly 2 channels per modules, so that’s eight pipes of data total.

The Transcend, like the MyDigitalSSD, also suffers from a lack of utilities or firmware updates. There is only one section on the website which even mentions the TS64GSSD25H-M, and it really only helps you to confirm that the drive does, in fact, exist. There are no manuals, no firmware, and no utilities. In addition, my rather (angry) posts on the Transcend support forums were never replied to. The controller on the Transcend is absolutely unknown to me. The markings on it, however, are SV2242G AC H6H118 (the G is potentially a C), if you’re interested in finding out what they’ve used. There are 4 Samsung NAND Flash modules on the board at 16GB a piece, however, I do not see any RAM on the board, making me quite suspicious about this drive’s potential performance.

Test Bed:

Acer 3810T SU9400, 8GB of Corsair DDR3 Dual Channel RAM.

Crystal Mark info for 128GB BulletProofSSD:



As you can see, the 128GB BulletProof SSD supports SMART, TRIM, and NCQ. NCQ, while originally implemented to speed up access time on platter disks, is actually useful on SSD drives with newer algorithms designed for SSD access. This is one of the added features of the S5 controller that is not available on the S3 version. Interestingly though, the buffer size is not accurately displayed.

Transcend Crystal Mark Info:



The Transcend on the other hand, does seem to support TRIM, however, it does not support NCQ. Also note that the buffer size is listed as 1KB, and the ATA standard implemented is ATAPI-7, which I believe does not support the Secure Erase feature!

And for good measure, the WD Blue Scorpio 320GB:



Now on to the tests!!

Crystal Mark

MyDigitalSSD 128GB Bullet Proof



Transcend TS64GSSD25H-M



WD Blue Scorpio 320GB



In Crystal Mark, the MyDigitalSSD shows it's mettle. As expected with an SSD, the random reads and writes are much improved over the traditional HDD. The sequential speeds are also rather impressive, however, it's important to note that these scores are not amazing if you were to compare them to normal sized SSDs. The Phison’s performance in the 4K reads category is especially lacking when compared to many SSDs on today’s market. That’s why it’s important to keep in mind that this is the half-slim form factor. At present, there are no competitors in that size. If, however, Intel were to make a half-slim SSD, it would almost certainly be snappier than the MyDigitalSSD drive, but it would also probably cost a fair bit more.

Atto Disk Mark

MyDigitalSSD 128GB Bullet Proof



Transcend T64GSSD25H-M



WD Blue Scorpio 320GB



What most surprised me here, was not that the MyDigitalSSD did show a sizable improvement over both the WD and the Transcend, but rather that the transcend write performance is just criminal in comparison to the WD. The scores are not just lower, they are almost 2700% worse in the .5 through 4.0 categories. To me, this is just unacceptable. The MyDigitalSSD on the other hand shows a healthy improvement over the WD and Transcend reaching almost 270000 in the larger categories, and a respectable 9424 in the .5 category as compared to the WDs 4894, and the transcends unbelievably bad 181.

HDTunePro - Benchmark Read & Write

MyDigitalSSD 128GB Bullet Proof



Transcend TS64GSSD25H-M



WD Blue Scorpio




HDTunePro Random Read & Write

MyDigitalSSD 128GB Bullet Proof



Transcend TS64GSSD25H-M



WD Blue Scorpio 320GB



HDTunePro Extra Tests Read and Write (no cache)

MyDigitalSSD 128GB Bullet Proof



Transcend TS64GSSD25H-M



WD Blue Scorpio 320GB



Summary:

Overall Impressions & Real-world usage:
The MyDigitalSSD 128GB half-slim drive definitely made my computing experience better. My startup time is now 24 seconds from BIOS handoff to OS, as compared to 58 seconds with the WD Blue. The shutdown time is about 14 seconds, as compared to 39 seconds with the WD Blue. In general, programs are definitely more responsive as you'd expect with an SSD. As an example, Adobe Photoshop CS5 which usually takes about 25 seconds to open, now takes 7.5 seconds to open. There are also some reports of battery life being increased with an SSD, however, I have not found this to be so, perhaps because I still have the WD Blue attached, or perhaps because it doesn't really matter. All in all, I'm satisfied with my purchase of the 128GB MyDigitalSSD half-slim. If you have a laptop, or even a tablet that needs an SSD, this will be a large improvement over any platter.

[Phil]

Thanks for the review. 6MB/sec random read performance seems a bit low. Is this normal for these drives?

[Vihsadas]

I've seen it as high as 11MB/s. I tend to do reviews under "real world" conditions (except for HD Tune Pro Write tests). Also, applying the JJB tweak for Intel chipsets increases the performance to about 10MB/s normally. The mSATA version of the drive, which is supposed to be almost the same, clocks in at about 8.35Mb/s. Also, my notebook is only runnin SATA150 instead of 300, but that probably won't affect the results too much.

Even though the 4K without QD32 is a bit slow, I don't notice any stutters of any kind with the drive, so I'm quite happy that way. As opposed to the transcend, which was literally unusable as an OS drive.

[Vihsadas]

I just consolidated free space and forced TRIM and got the following results. It's a bit better than the 6MBs before. But yeah, around 6-11MB/s random read is about right for these drives.



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[MyDigitalSSD]

Hi Phil,

I say Benchmarks Smenchmarks hehe

Is your computer now so much faster that it feels like a completely new machine?

Do you have a 2.5" bay for tons of storage?



Vihsadas, very well written review. I will be posting a link to it in the items descriptions and once I get the new MyDigitalSSD site up in a few weeks I will surely include it in the news feed and blog as well.

[joemmi]

Great review! Bought the 64GB version based on it and have very similar benachmark results (see the 3810 Tibits topic).
Vibrations and noise are completely gone.
Booting and Loading Programs is much smoother (.
Battery life is increased by 40-60 minutes in my case (I access the HDD almost never since my important docs, programs and music is all on the SSD)!!
Now I only would need a faster processor...

BTW, do you know which notebook brands/models have this slim SSD slot so in order to in the future take this nice SSD with me when upgrading??

[mic2mic]

Where can I buy this in Europe ?

[Illustrator76]

Are these drives reliable? I am not familiar with the MyDigitalSSD name, and with all of the problems OCZ had with their drives, I am a little worried to buy any SSD that isn't Intel, Crucial, or Samsung.

Thanks!