Kingspec SSD, are they any good?

It does appear that Kingspec is one of the remaining companies that makes 2.5" PATA SSDs. ZIF PATA being far more available.

It's obvious then there is a market for a sturdy ZIF to 2.5" IDE enclosure so it could house one of the EWS720-based ZIF SSDs instead. Those SSDs offer great performance, battery life improvements and price. The Renice K3-E series even featuring a conformal coating on the circuitboard to protect against environmental hazards.

 

So is the Kingston 128GB SSDNow V + Series any good like this one Kingston SSDNow V+ Series 128GB (SATA SSD) Hard Drive - eBay (item 160535218302 end time Jan-25-11 09:12:30 PST)

 

The above drive is far better than the one I am currently using. So it's not the drive that the question mark is against, or for that matter, any of the drives featured in nando4's Review and Benchmarks.

The issue from my side of the fence is the reliability and performance of the sata-to-pata bridge you will be using with that or any other drive.

 

+1. The sata-to-pata bridges introduce three issues:

1. additional power overhead to do the translation. Anything from 0.5W-1W. That can be significiant if have a low power setup and wish maximum battery life.

2. problems with sleep/standby as seen with the Runcore ProIV on their forums.

3. some bridges cannot transmit TRIM commands which means you're reliant on the SSD's GC instead.

My experiences is the Marvell sata-to-pata bridge as featured in the Renice K3VLAR (Indilinx) has no issues with 2 and 3 above. The Jmicron JM20330 has issues with 3 and probably 2.

Can read a users experiences b/w different bridge chips here and here with the ebay caddy=Marvell.

For highest compatibility I'd recommend a Marvell sata-to-pata chip OR a native PATA SSD such as the Kingspec or perhaps a EWS720-based ZIF unit in a ZIF-to-2.5" IDE enclosure/adapter.

 

I think I might pass on the kingston because you can not upgrade the firmware

 

Do you know of a source for SATA to PATA 2.5 hard drive adapter boards with the Marvell chip? All the ones I have seen are the Jmicron JM20330 chip. They have been inconsistent in compatibility and quality. Ebay versions anyway.

sata -pata drive adapter.

 

You are pretty much confirming my findings. All the ebay IDE-to-SATA, ZIF-to-microsata and IDE-to-microsata adapters I've seen are either Jmicron JM20330 or Sunplus. I know Photofast V3 ZIF SSD uses the Sunplus chip which they disbanded quickly due to incompatibility reasons.

The ebay sata-to-pata optical bay caddies use the Marvell 88SA8040 chip, which duplicates what Lenovo used initially in their ultrabays.

I did contact sales1@polotek.cn about their adapters who could make a Marvell one, but wanted a 100 ordered at $6 a piece, as you see quoted here.

Could be an idea to contact polotek and ask them to make a Marvell based adapter?

 

Wow, I'm a bit surprised. Not that I have $600.00 to invest, but for $6 a pop to design and mfg a board seems like a cheap price. If they worked, reselling the balance for a modest profit should be easy. Especially if shipping from here in USA.
But to invest $600.00 on a maybe it will be better idea, is more of a gamble than I am willing to take. It is good to know that's the chip Lenovo choose. I imagine they researched and tested it much more than we could.

 

You don't know - they may already have produced it/be producing it for another party and already have the tooling. Then it's just a matter of setting up for a production run...

mnem
Think global, buy local.

 

For those interested in installing an SSD, ZDNet is running a series on these drives with step-by-step tweaking instructions and empirical before/after speed comparisons. Also some links to good explanations of TRIMMing SSDs and to software for monitoring and measuring performance:
Windows 7 and SSDs: Setup secrets and tune-up tweaks | ZDNet