HWTools.net MR04R mPCIe SDHC drive

This is a copy of my current results experimenting with the MR04R SDHC drive that is intended to be used internally off of a mPCIe bay. My setup uses a Dell E4300, Windows XP Pro, Service Pack 3, no WWAN card (that is the bay space I am using).

The MR04R is a nifty little gadget that permits an SD card to be used internally to the laptop as a ReadyBoost device or a backup drive, or both. My primary interest is in a secure (as in it wont pop out, or be removed accidentally or intentionally) backup drive for fast backup of critical data and config files.


Well, for those who care, I actually received the MR04R today! About a two day turn. Too bad the operational performance does not match the shipping performance.

Some basic configuration information for you:

The device can only be installed in the WWAN bay of an E4300 (this obviously means that you cannot be using an internal WWAN). Installation is mostly easy, though the antenna cables may cause some trouble. Easiest fix is to ever so slightly round the edge of the pcb to minimize the snag. There is a switch on board, though no documentation on settings. No matter, and Ill explain why later.

Round 1

From this point the operation becomes rather random. My first startup attempt saw me get as far as login and starting up the device manager to begin checking the hardware setup with the device. At this point I had a hang that required a hard reboot. Following this came a series of configuration changes between hardware, bios settings, software and event debugging, various SDHC cards, and driver changes.


All for naught. Time for Round 2

After a little research on the controller chip, its a Ricoh part, the R5U231. Dell does not have a reference to this part as far as I am able to discern in either the hardware or driver. I made a second attempt to update the driver. This seems to have worked for now. At this point it ran about 6 hours with no hangs. Here are the settings and procedures:

1. Configure the MR04R to switch setting 2-3.
2. Reset the BIOS to disable the WWAN functionality. I suspect this really is not necessary.
3. Update the Ricoh driver to handle the following parts: R5C847, R5U241. Currently version A00 is available from Dell, their rev is 2.04.01.
4. Shutdown the machine and install the MR04R, but NOT the SD card.
5. Reboot and allow the machine to install the new drivers, detect the new hardware, install the new drivers some more and then tell you it is happy.
6. Install (or fully insert the SDHC card) and allow the machine to finish the install if necessary, sometimes it does, sometimes not.
7. Wait a few hours, rinse and repeat if necessary.


Round 3

System stability during round 2 was better, but every few hours I would have a system hang, or if I needed to restart for other purposes the device may or may not boot with the system. This is due in some part to the PREST function which is allows the clocks to stabilize prior to the Ricoh controller being fully active.

After a little debug and a little research I decided to try changing the drive letter. There does appear to be some conflict between the media bay device (DVD in this case) and the MR04R on startup as regards the drive letter. I have seen similar issues in the past, but not with this level of consistancy towards system hangs.

With the drive renamed to T:/, a 16Gb card, and installing some Dell drivers speciffically intended for the Ricoh R5U23x chip (the 'x' indicating the driver will work for any part in this family) the system can run stable for at least 18 hours with no system hangs. The biggest fail point continues to remain the transfer of files in excess of 1Mb. I will try a smaller 4Gb card at some point, but a card that small is barely large enough for any worthwhile backup.


Conclusion as of 5/12/10

The MR04R remains a potentially fantastic piece of hardware for certain niche markets as long as it works. Wow there is a thought. Providing an internal, secure backup module for critical data or configuration at this size and cost is a great option for any individual or IT department that does not want to risk an easily lost thumb drive or external SD card or drive for backup of critical information. The ability to utilize some of the other solutions found in SDIO cards, providing the laptop has the internal space, can also be alot of fun for gadgety folks. Some of the current crop of GPS products are nearly small enough to be used, especially with some creative routing of addon antennas.

I have ordered two additional products, one is a USB based reader and one is for the micro SD version of the same. As they come in Ill keep posting the results.

I should mention that it was not today that I received the card, but several days ago. The notes above have been part of an updated documentation effort. I have more details and bits of information if anyone is interested.

 

Be aware that the flash memory on 'memory cards' (cf, sd, etc) are NOT designed to take the kind of constant, random I/O that the flash chips used in real SSD are capable of.

You can run into crc/parity problems, overheating problems, longevity/premature failure problems, etc, etc.

A weeks or a months worth of testing is probably not enough time to bring these problems to the fore. When a single or dual chip memory card fails, it fails hard meaning that there will likely be no access to any of the memory locations i.e 100% loss of data.

Flash memory as used in real SSD products generally has at least two paths, and sometimes as many as eight paths, to each memory cell. If a memory cell fails on that kind of flash, you stand a good chance of being able to get around the failure and of recovering a lot of the data elsewhere on the SSD. A much better chance than with the single access path flash used in cf/sd cards.

Be careful out there.

 

The whole point behind using a backup drive in this scenario is critical -or- low cost backup in something approaching real time (i.e. seconds or minutes or hours) for use when access to network servers is unavailable. Its single advantage to just using an external SD card or thumb drive is what I said, where policy prohibits the use of non-encrypted or removable drives. Its easy to lose a thumb drive, or if your minded, pop one out of someone elses machine.

In this case flash make or card architecture vs SSD does not mean anything. In no way, shape or form should anyone ever use something like this as a primary data storage source. I hope that was not implied in my post!

I have, in the past used a very similar approach for a client on an SBC utilizing an iGLX based motherboard. The Linux OS was loaded onto a flash drive for size reasons, with 4 USB ports, VGA, 10/100/1000 Ethernet, and a few other custom goodies. Total system volume was about 2"x3"x4". Size and field ruggedness was absolutely critical. Reliability of the system was second place. The MR04R would have been a better COTs solution if it had been available.

Everything has risks, some may acceptable in some cases and not in others. If anyone is interested in this solution, the risks 'ought' to be obvious, and the volatile nature of flash is not the most obvious one.

 

Quick update for anyone that cares. I plugged in the MR04 (mPCIe->USB->SDHC) several days ago with no compatibiliy or operation issues so far. Cost is much lower than the MR04R as well, so that is a bonus. I also picked up the MR09 for a micro SDHC or SDIO but have not done any testing on that one.

If you are interested in any operational details let me know.

 

I have recently moved to Win 7pro with 64bit. There are some driver issues with the drive at the moment, though operation seems to be minimally affected it at all. Here is a photo of the card in my Dell E4300 with a 32Gb SDHC card.

 

I would certainly like to hear about compatibility and performance on the MR09 card.

 

MR04R is not compatible with my 3G slot. YMMV (doesn't try to load drivers or show up on Device Manager, win7)

Also as a side note - there are two LEDs on the board; D1 for power and D4 for access.

 

I am using attempting to use an MR04 card in my M11x that I pulled from my CR-48, but haven't been able to get it to read. The system displays it as an unknown device under device manager - I have the WWAN slot enabled in the BIOS. Could it be that it has to be whitelisted in order for it to work?

 

Get past the white listing by blocking the connection to pin20
see this post from the m11x forum

 

holy old thread Batman!