Runcore ProIV ZIF SSD User Review

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.

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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.