1.8" ZIF PATA SSDs available

Color coded value recommendations: COL=high performance COL=balanced battery life & performance. COL=great all round value.

Ranked by 4kb random read speeds. ​

1.8" ZIF drive +order link​ Controller+stp ^1​ Price $US 32,64,128GB​ Perf.UDMA5​ Win7 trim low pwr Notes​ 4kb​ seq​ Mtron Mobi 3000.SLC Mtron 200,000,000 28 83/74 n/a​ no​ Review. 64GB never made. Renice K3VLAR & Indilinx BF+Marvell ... 22 88/75 yes​ no​ Review. +fast, -runs hot, -discontinued Runcore Pro IV & Indilinx BF+Jmicron Indilinx BF+Marvell 070,110,210 21 83/76 yes​ no​ Review. +fast, -runs hot, -Jmicron version less compatible. Sabertooth ZT Indilinx BF+?? 170,290,000 2? 8?/7? yes​ no​ Hana Micron Forte Indilinx BF+?? ... 17 92/61 yes​ no​ Bench. SLC variants. Asia only. Photofast GMonster.V3 Indilinx.BF+Sunplus ... 17 86/56 yes​ no​ Bench. Intel X18M G2 Intel+DIY.US$20 000,120,000 15 89/66 yes​ no​ Bench/review. low power. Renice K3VLAR-E & EastWho EWS720 110,140,280 15 91/75 no​ yes​ Review-120GB+60GB. Photofast GMonster.V4 EastWho EWS720 099,149,299 15 91/73 no​ yes​ Review-120GB. SLC variants. Mach Xtreme MX-Nano EastWho EWS720 089,115,240 13 89/61 no​ yes​ Problematic. Bench-120GB &. US/EU/JP/AU orders. SuperTalent ZT2 & Eastwho EWS720 075,125,225 13 89/30 no​ yes​ Bench-60GB, comment &. Sabertooth ZF Eastwho EWS720 090,140 - - no​ yes​ - Solidata Z6 Eastwho EWS720 000,200,330 ?? ??/7? yes​ no​ There's also a Indilinx Z6. Sandisk UATA 5000 Sandisk? ... 15 64/28 no​ yes​ Bench &. Samsung 100/80 MLC Samsung+DIY.US$20 ... 14 83/56 no​ no Bench/pics. SuperTalent GF & SM2233G 074,107,193 13 80/40 no​ no​ Poor performance. Kingspec SM2233G 054,079,142 13 80/45 no​ no​ Review/Bench. Sabertooth Z4 SM2233G 079,120,240 13 80/38 no​ no​ GMonsterV2 SM2233G ... 12 76/35 no​ no​ Bench. Samsung ZIF Samsung ... 13 56/33 no​ yes​ Bench. Runcore Pro 1.8" JMF602? ... 10 63/63 no​ no​ Bench. 5400rpm HDD (up to 240GB!) PATA ... 0 35/35 no​ no​ Bench. 240GB 4k sector issue, fix, non-issue. 4200rpm HDD PATA ... 0 24/23 no​ no​ Bench. Comparative: 2.5" sata SSD with stp Mtron 3500.SLC-sata Mtron - 19 84/56 n/a​ no​ Bench. OCZ Vertex 60GB Indilinx BF - 18 88/66 yes​ no​ Bench with Marvell stp caddy. Crucial M4 Marvell 9174 - 16 90/69 yes​ no​ Bench. Runcore Pro IV SATA Indilinx BF - 15 84/65 yes​ no​ Bench from here with Jmicron STP Intel SATA X25M G2 Intel - 15 89/56 yes​ no​ Bench-Marvell. Bench-Sony. Kingston SSDNow V+100 Tosh T6UG1XBG - 13 88/61 yes​ no​ Bench-Marvell. Samsung SATA mlc/slc Samsung - 10 68/55 no​ no​ Bench with Sony stp.

Explanatory notes:

• 000: not available
• ...: discontinued or not sold in American markets. Can check eBay for used units.
• n/a: SLC SSDs do not require TRIM.
• ^1 Requires a sata-to-pata (STP) adapter. Example: DIY solution. As a comparison, sata-to-pata bridge in optical drive bay adapter measured here found to add 0.8-1W overhead to do the translation. DIY may be lower since it doesn't need to do 5V to 3.3V voltage regulation and conversion.
• UDMA5 has max 100MB/s read and 88.9MB/s write speed

Notes

1. Some SSDs don't have TRIM support.Use Tony Trim to help GC along. Note: XP/VISTA doesn't support TRIM. Only Win7 and up does.
   
   
2. flashfire accelerator increases small file writes on older or Jmicron SSDs.
   
   
3. To use a ZIF SSD in a 2.5" sata system, order a shipped adapter.
   
   
4. Seeing <30 sequential writes? See explanation and workaround for ICH8M and ICH7M.
   
   
5. The ZIF PATA interface provides no AHCI NCQ, so streaming multiple reads/writes cannot occur in parallel. This means that ZIF SSD work best with an optimized SSD controller for single queuing. For example, for sata AHCI interface, Intel 1x25m G2 has faster 4 kb multithreaded read performance than an SSD based on Indilinx, but when using the pata interface (queue = 1) an Indilinx SSD can have faster 4 kb multithreaded read performance. Some example Benchs here.
   
   
6. There are other options if you have a PATA optical drive. In this case, you could apply the following: DIY: Adding SSD or HDD storage using an optical bay caddy using a 2.5" SATA SSD/HDD.
   
   
7. http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...rives-wanting-sata-16.html#post8240199"]US$20 microsata-to-ZIF adapter, de-shelling and soldering.
   
   
8. sata-to-pata bridge user review - Sunplus (Newmodeus) and Marvell (eBay) and another.

​

Please post any new ZIF details/benchmarks so theycan be include in the table above.​

 

thanks for posting this.

i'll be receiving my 32gb mtron zif ssd this week and will run some benchmarks on a dell d430.

looking at the chart the best value seems to be the k3vlar @ $120 from mydigitaldiscount. The mtron is available on ebay for around $150. I didn't even know about the k3vlar drive until I saw your chart. do you think the mtron is worth a $30 premium?

 

Mtron has SLC longevity and great speed, but is only 32GB. The K3VLAR and Nano is recommended. Nano order details as supplied by manufacturer below. Renice will be releasing an equivalent EWS720 product as well. The EWS720 SSDs offering the best balance of battery life and performance imho.

Mach Xtreme MX-Nano 64GB ZIF SSD ordering details

 

moved from here:

Marvell sata-to-pata bridge is what I'd be going for if going an Indilinx solution. It's faster and more compatible than the jmicron based ProIV. The other Indilinx Solidata and Sabertooth products make no mention of what stp bridge they use.

My suggestion? A EWS720-based Renice product will soon be sold via MyDigitalDiscount (MDD), a reputable US company. MDD back their products with a return/refund policy if it's not up to scratch.

The EWS720-based ZIF SSDs giving the best balance of performance and battery life, with GC but no trim. The Indilinx product is the higher performer, with higher power consumption, with GC and trim. I've used both and admittedly it was hard to notice the higher performance of the Indilinx product. What I did notice was the longer battery life and cooler running temps the EWS720-based V4 offered. I guess it comes down to which criteria are important to you.

 

Has anyone used a Runcore ProIV ZIF SSD in a Lattitude D430 notebook?
I have searched for confirmation ... thanks

 

Funny how you've posted the details for Mach Xtreme - I literally just bought one of their 1.8 inch SSDs (50 Pin PATA for Fujitsu P1510, what a PITA to locate).

I had some back and forth communication with their sales team from October 29th to November 3rd, had the drive shipped out via EMS on Nov 3, arrived in Vancouver Canada Nov 9, stuck in customs for 3 days and finally delivered to my house just this morning.

Haven't had a chance to install it, probably won't for a little while. Probably sound like a shill with my first post, but perhaps my username still pops up in Google cache over at LeoG's old Fujitsu P series forums

 

Still looking for some feedback on these questions ... Thanks

• Best ZIF SSD for a notebook?
• Success with a Dell Latitude D430?
• Clone or fresh install of the Win 7 OS?

 

Best ZIF SSDs are the K3VLAR and EWS720 units, depending on your preference for outright speed or balanced speed/battery life respectively. K3VLAR with the advantage of Win7 TRIM support to maintain write speed.

D430 uses a ICH8M chipset, same as my 2510P but with the simpler single master device on the channel setup. It will work without issue.

A fresh Win7 install ensures the partitions are aligned to NAND page block size offsets for maximum performance.

 

Mtron 32gb ssd zif. D430 @ udma5

Not sure why the bad write speeds. I tried editing with baredit (both 1033 and 3033 but still same results. 1033 did get me to 45 once).

 

Thanks for posting your benchmark resuts.

Any idea if the KingSpec or Super Talent drives on Ebay are compatibile with the Dell D430?

 

Check very carefully what controller is on the drives - they're almost certainly the old and broken JMicron controller, and suffer from the stalling problem.

The Renice drives are known to use a none-broken controller : Renice 1.8” PATA Zif SSD | Apple MacBook Air SSD | My Digital Discount

 

What is a none-broken controller?
Oh wait, did you mean a "non-broken" controller?
I'm not being a smart-. Just want to make sure b/c I just bought this drive.

 

The Renice drive uses a good controller, and will perform well.

Some old drives like the Kingspec and Super Talent have used JMicron controllers in the past - and they are junk. The problems are well documented - don't buy one.

 

Thanks for your reply.
I am planning to upgrade my Dell Latitude D430 running Win7.
So do the SSD listed below all use the new improved controllers?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...rades/531052-1-8-zif-pata-ssds-available.html

 

Well the best value is the new renice 32gb at mydigitaldiscount for $125 shipped. It uses the marvell sata to pata bridge.


You should either get the mtron which is more expensive and limited to 32gb (my results above) or the renice (upto 128gb available). I'll post my renice 32gb results tomorrow night. Running the same system as you.

edit: how much are you willing to spend?

 

Got my Renice 32gb zif ssd.

Seems similar to the mtron. Nice thing about this was the included 1.8" zif enclosure (though there weren't any instructions and the screws are TINY).

Here are the CDM results.

One thing to note. The computer wasn't able to find the hard drive once after a restart. Had to completely shutdown and then turn it on again and then it was fine. Not sure why it happened.

 

Results look good. Though the writes for the K3VLAR and mtron you posted are lower than expected. It could be due to partition offsets being unaligned to NAND pages so a logical 4KB write actually requires the SSD controller to write on two 4kb physical NAND pages, slowing performance. See Partition Alignment or do a fresh Win7 install to gain the higher write performance. You'll probably gain a little more read performance as well.

 

Thanks.

Both the CDM results were done on fresh installs (Win 7 Home Premium 64bit).

Not sure why the write times are what they are. I tried doing the <30 fix but nothing. I'll try again and see what I can find.

edit: okay so reinstalled windows again. fresh install and the speeds are the same. seems like a dell d430 limitation as both the mtron and renice have similar write speeds. still extremely satisfied. for anyone who wants to upgrade their zif drive the renice is definitely the best value @ $125 shipped.

 

Thanks for posting the benchmarks.
Did you purchase the Renice SSD from MyDigitalDiscount?

 

Mach Xtreme MX-Nano 120GB ZIF SSD

Benchmark from a Dell D430, U7700 1.33GHz, Win7 32Bit



is this result good or should i expect more? especially the write performance

 

Your 4K read speeds seem slow relative to other benchmarks that have been done. I dunno about you, but that's the number I care about. I don't care about write speeds because other than win 7 install, I hardly ever write.

 

Yeah, Windows NEVER writes on your drive. Right....

Some of us do other things with disk drives, apart from running synthetic benchmaks.

 

yeah those speed are slower then my renice.

install baredit ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...52887-2510p-owners-lounge-10.html#post5519419)

what does your value say @ offset 54, bus 0, device 31, fct1?

maybe something with the d430 that's holding the write speeds back.

 

Hi,

thanks for your response
the value is 10F0
what frequency does this represent?

 

0x10F0 means bit1 and bit0 are set to zero, so is using the slower 33Mhz timings as shown here. Use baredit as shown in the link to change 0:31.1 54h to 0x1033 or 0x10F3 to use the faster 66Mhz timings and I believe your write performance will double. Please post new benchmarks so we have a set for the MX-Nano.

The EWS720 units will have slower 4kb reads and all writes, have no trim, but will run cooler and use less power.

 

Seq Write speed has now indeed nearly doubled, but the 4k hasn't changed.
New Benchmark
Mach Xtreme 120GB SSD ZIF 1.8"
Dell D430 U7700, 66MHz timing.


It has no trim, but can't i rely on the integrated GC?
Perhaps it is better to send the drive back to my reseller and buy a faster 64gb with trim. What do you think?

 

I wonder. Some of the users of PATA SSDs drives still use XP and can't use TRIM. And report their drives slow down and wish they'd opted for a fast HDD like the HM160HC. Perhaps they didn't give their drives enough idle time?

Anyone got any thoughts on that?

 

The most aggressive SSD in terms of GC is the Indilinx Martini right now.

Everything else is below - with SandForce drives being miles and miles below (9/10 hrs at the logon/BIOS screen gave zero performance back to a SandForce based Inferno in an U30Jc).

While some users may not allow the system to idle and let GC kick in - most SSD's currently don't allow GC to go full tilt anyway - because of battery life issues.

Not something I would depend upon on current SSD tech.

 

Can perform a periodic Tony Trim to NULL out empty blocks so GC can scrub the drive to 'as new' write performance levels. <strike>Even simpler is to schedule sdelete to do this instead, eg: 'sdelete -c c: & sdelete -c d:'</strike> <--- writes zeros (0x00) instead of NULL (0xFF), so is no good.

Code:

<strike>SDelete - Secure Delete v1.51
Copyright (C) 1999-2005 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com

usage: sdelete [-p passes] [-s] [-q] <file or directory>
       sdelete [-p passes] [-z|-c] [drive letter]
   -c         Zero free space (good for virtual disk optimization)
   -p passes  Specifies number of overwrite passes (default is 1)
   -q         Don't print errors (Quiet)
   -s         Recurse subdirectories
   -z         Clean free space</strike>

You otherwise have the most balanced battery life+performance ZIF SSD at a great price. If willing to sacrifice battery life for faster performance OR want maintenance-free TRIM support then consider the K3VLAR. I've used variants of both drives finding it difficult to see the faster Indilinx performance. Maybe under very heavy load? It was however easy to see the increased battery life and cooler operating temperature the EWS720 unit offered.

Note too that 120/60-rated 60GB EWS720 units have lower write performance than the 120/90-rated 120GB.

See Tony Trim comment above.

 

Having issues with detecting the drive :/ my 2510p wont detect the drive at startup. Any one having the same issue with the MX nano?


Found the issue, i did relly think the zif cable shold be turned downwards to the ssd like the standard HP drives, but apparently not

 

thank you nando4, i'll consider this.

thrusty, could you please post some benchmark of your mx-nano?

 

I have a dell d420 that I installed a runcore iv and windows 7 on about 4 months ago. the drive has fw 1819 on it, and I'd like to install 1916. I never did any ICH7 tweaks, which I think y'all recommended, so I should do those too, right?

1. Do I need to reinstall windows 7 after updating the firmware to take advantage of it? I seem to remember it being a PITA the 1st time around, and having to format the drive from a 2nd computer, so I'd like to avoid re-install.
2. Would y'all be interested in before/after benchmarks? I would need to be instructed on those.
3. Any help, all the way up to hand-holding, would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks to nando4 for all his research! Anyway, since I upgraded my SSD, thought I'd give ASAX 1.8" ZIF SSD a benchmark. It's quite bad lol, I thought it was me so I put it on a desktop with a SATA caddy and still got the same result (or maybe, I just completely do it wrong, but um.. same on both PC, also did the slave uncapping, no difference.)


I just ran CrystalDiskMark with a ZIF to SATA bridge then connect to my i7 Desktop just in case it was my laptop that's sucking '~"



Yea lolz >.>, my traditional HDD can do better '~"

Here's the official website.

Price: 150USD. I bought at a computer mall in Hong Kong. It came with absolutely no boxes, manual, cables etc. Just in an anti-static bag as if its OEM lolz.

 

I just updated the firmware on my PhotoFast G-monster V4 IDE50-PATA drive. It didn't get any better compared to my old numbers (I have a Fujitsu LifeBook P7230). My "old" (and broken) MTRON 3000 was superior - I just can't get anotherone...

 

Just a heads up - Mach Xtreme Nano and SuperTalent ZT2 drives are now both orderable from MyDigitalDiscount (US). Both linked from the first page. The former is definitely a EWS720 based SSD, the latter I'm not 100% sure other than saying the specs match a EWS720 controller. SuperTalent's sales team has so far been unwilling to provide benchmarks and controller information. The SuperTalent ZT2 drive is listed for US$146 for a 64GB, which is a new pricing low.

 

Great info on the ZIF SSD availability.

The 64GB SuperTalent ZT2 is in stock for $145.99
Super Talent 64GB DuraDrive ZT2 1.8" MLC PATA ZIF SSD Solid State Drive - FZM64GW18P Super Talent 1.8 inch 64GB DuraDrive ZT2 ZIF Solid State Drive(MLC) Detail Page

The 60GB Mach Xtreme Nano is pre order only for $179.99
Mach Xtreme Technology 60GB 1.8" PATA MX-NANO Series ZIF SSD - MXSSD1MNANOZ-60G Mach Xtreme 60GB MX-Nano PATA Series SSD 1.8" ZIF Detail Page

Does anyone have benchmarks for the ZT2?

 

Yes - we are now seeing truly affordable ZIF SSD.

Only comment on the ZT2 is posted here where keos2000 picked up a 64GB for $110 after coupons.

The ZT2 specs say 125/60 for the 32/64GB and 125/90 for the 128/256GB, and can go up to 256GB capacity. Those numbers are indicative of it likely using a EWS720 controller. However, neither keos2000 nor SuperTalent's sale team have replied to confirm that.

Perhaps you may be the first to identify what controller the SuperTalent ZT2 uses by buying it? Don't need to pull it apart to find out.. just need a 'hdparm -i /dev/sda' output so can see the firmware tag. VATExxx indicated EWS720. 1819/1916/2030 indicated Indilinx. If it's anything else then would need to see what's under the hood to identify the controller.

 

Hi,

I'm a 2510p user and I'm looking for a ssd.
I was going to take a K3VLAR (non E because of the lack of TRIM and the difficulty to find it) but I saw the MX-NANO.
In Europe the K3VLAR 64GB is, for the moment, available at 200€ and for the exact same price we have a 120GB MX-NANO zif ssd so I hesitate...

The problem is that the data-sheet of the MX-NANO doesn't seem clear. In all the news announcing it they say that it supports TRIM and have 256MB cache (ex : VR-Zone.com). But on the website of the constructor they say 64MB (so I guess it's actually 64MB).
But for TRIM you say here that it's not supported but I haven't seen any other website saying that.


(Sorry for my english)

 

Hi Felix,

Those advertisements for the MX-NANO ZIF SSD are simply incorrect. The MX-NANO uses a EWS720 controller which does not have TRIM support. Here's the crystaldiskinfo output from K3VLAR-E ZIF SSD (EWS720) confirming that:



Not having TRIM is not a big deal. Can do periodic runs of 'sdelete -c c: & sdelete -c d:' to zero out free blocks speeding along the hardware garbage collection, if you notice write performs starts to slow down.

I've had the ProIV/K3VLAR (Indilinx) and the K3VLAR-E (EWS720) and prefer the K3VLAR-E for the lower running temps and power consumption. During basic web surfing and admin work I couldn't really see any performance improvement the Indilinx unit offered. If you can get a 120GB EWS720 unit for the same price as a 64GB Indilinx unit, then I'd jump on it.

Before buying the MX-NANO perhaps ask for a quote for a Renice K3VLAR-E using their live chat. The K3VLAR-E comes delivered with a ZIF USB enclosure.

 

Thanks for the quick answer !

I mainly use linux then replace trim isn't so easy that a sdelete. I saw that there was a script developed for that but its still a little bit more complicated.

But yeah I think I will go for a MX-NANO, now the question is 60GB (130€) or 120GB (200€). As I will put a HD in the bay I could deal with 60GB but I understood that there is a difference in performance ?


For the K3VLAR-E I already contact Renice to ask for a dealer but they were only capable to sell it to me directly. It was 200$ + 25$ shipping + 20$ bank cost + my own bank cost and conversion and the only way to pay was a bank transfer which is very complicated at the international with my bank. So I dropped.
Normally they have about the same perf. ?

 

Yes - 120GB is faster. It's rated at 120/90 and 60GB is rated at 120/60 on UDMA6 interface. So the 60GB has 66% the write speed of the 120GB drive.

MX-NANO and K3VLAR-E will have the same performance since they use the same controller. 120GB MX-NANO for 200€ is a good deal. That's what I'd go for.

A linux script that does a 'dd if=/dev/zero of=[file]' can do the same thing as Tony Trim/sdelete.

 

It's worth pointing out that http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/ will ship worldwide, and they'll take payment by Credit Card and PayPal and Google Checkout.

 

Hi there Felix,

I'm also from europe. Can you tell me where i can find the 120Gb for 200 euro ?

regards,

René

 

I got it from here:
http://www.caseking.de/shop/catalog/HDD/SSD/Solid-State-Drives-SSD/Mach-Xtreme-Technology-Nano-ZIF-Series-18-Zoll-PATA-SSD-120GB::15379.html

 

Yeap, it's here.

And by the way I confirm, I finally took the MX-NANO.

 

Mach Xtreme MX-Nano 128GB (hp 2710p Win7 64bit)

With default settings:



With 0x3033 settings:

 

Is there a thread for those with 2.5" 44-pin IDE drive bays ?

If so, then this needs to go in it : IDE 44 Pin to 1.8&quot; Micro SATA Adapter or IDE 44 Pin to 1.8" Micro SATA Adapter - eBay (item 290508236238 end time Feb-01-11 20:20:26 PST) allow 1.8" mSATA drives like the Intel X18-M to fit a stock 2.5" 44-pin IDE bay.

 

MDD has a pre-order listing of the EWS720-based Renice K3VLAR-E

It's the cheapest 60GB EWS720-based SSD at US$140. The Renice K3VLAR-E comes with a ZIF USB enclosure, very handy for cloning purpose. Something that the MX-Nano or Supertalent ZT2 does not provide.

I've updated the first post with revised pricing details.

 

there is a K3VLAR-E 256GB. does this drive work ok with a 2710p?

 

Works great with my 2510P. No reason why it wouldn't work with the 2710P. Both using the same ICH8M IDE controller.