MemoRight 32GB IDE SSD Review

by Kevin O'Brien

Upgrading a notebook has always been a fun and exciting task to breathe new life into old hardware. The most common upgrade is RAM, with users seeing the biggest jump in performance if their system was lacking a decent amount, and has always been the cheapest route. The hard drive and processor are sometimes overlooked, with either cost or complexity scaring people away. Now a new type of upgrade has hit the market, easily being one of the most expensive upgrades, costing more than many notebooks! This upgrade is the solid state drive (SSD), offering incredible speeds at an even more astonishing cost.

In this review we will cover the MemoRight 32GB IDE SSD used to upgrade an aging notebook. The specs for the SSD, on loan from DV Nation (the exclusive US distributor for Memoright), are as follows:

Manufacturer's part number	MR25.1-032A
Capacity	32GB
Form Factor	Standard 2.5", 3.5" adapter available
Dimensions	Standard 2.5" (100mm x 69.85mm x 9.5mm)
Interface	44-pin IDE (PATA)
Weight	100g
Unique Features	"Fastest write speed," "Fastest write IOPS,"
	Secure Erase a.k.a. "Security Erase" capable
Rated Performance	100MB/s read, >100MB/s write, .1ms access
Enclosure	metal
Warranty	5 years

Test Notebook

The only notebook we had in the office that used IDE was my old Lenovo C100. It is no stranger to upgrades, already seeing a RAM and processor upgrade, but this SSD takes the cake. Previous upgrades were a 512MB stick of ram from another notebook, and a 1.6GHz Celeron (up from 1.5GHz) that I acquired on eBay for $12. Spoiling it with a SSD that costs more than twice the notebook new was quite a treat.

Notebook Specs:

• Lenovo C100
• 1.6GHz Celeron M
• 768MB RAM
• 40GB 5400rpm Hitachi hard drive and 32GB MemoRight SSD
• Vista Ultimate 32bit w/ SP1 RC

Comparison Notebook Specs:

• Lenovo T60
• 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo
• 2GB RAM
• 120GB 7200.2 Seagate hard drive
• Vista Business w/ SP1 RC

Upgrade Procedure

Upgrading the notebook with the SSD was very simple. The C100 has a caddy that holds the drive, which is secured with a single screw. After this screw is removed, the caddy slides out and you can easily swap out the exposed drive. The only time consuming part of this upgrade is installing the operating system, which took about 15-20 minutes. Each drive was given a clean install of Vista Ultimate with SP1 RC, then had all available updates installed. The only additional programs were PCMark05, HDTune, and HDTach for benchmarking the system.

Benchmarks

For this review our primary goal was to give a side to side comparison to see the benefits associated with this upgrade. I also threw my Lenovo T60 into the mix, to show how these results compare to another notebook with much better overall specs.

Our first test is startup and shutdown times. For a faster startup, the notebook had no login password prompt. I stopped the clock when the notebook was sitting at the desktop idle, and ready for work. Shutdown times were from a shutdown signal to the notebook switching off.

Startup

C100 40GB 5400rpm HD	64.78s
C100 32GB SSD	44.10s (45% faster)
T60 120GB 7200rpm HD	47.30s

Shutdown

C100 40GB 5400rpm HD	16.00s
C100 32GB SSD	10.70s (60% faster)
T60 120GB 7200rpm HD	13.22s

Here is PcMark05 showing the performance jump associated with the SSD upgrade on this notebook.

C100 40GB 5400rpm HD	1,640 PCMarks
C100 32GB SSD	1,968 PCMarks (20% faster)
T60 120GB 7200rpm HD	4,816 PCMarks

Below we have our HdTach and HDTune benchmark comparison images.

HDtach:

5400 (view large image)

SSD (view large image)

7200 (view large image)

HDTune:

5400 (view large image)

SSD (view large image)

7200 (view large image)

In both tests the SSD easily beats out both the 5400rpm and 7200rpm drives, in both transfer speed rates, and access times.

Conclusion

If you happen to have $1,000 lying around burning a hole in your pocket, and you really want a smoking laptop, the MemoRight SSD might just fit the bill. Offering great speed and reliability compared to spinning drives, it will really help give your notebook that extra kick other upgrades have failed to provide.

Pros

• Super fast
• No noise, little heat

Cons

• Costs about as much as a new notebook

Purchase Information

The MemoRight 32GB IDE SSD is available at DV Nation for $999.

 

Thanks for the review Kevin. Nice and expensive.

 

That is fast, I cannot wait till this stuff gets cheaper.

 

Nice speed but a horrible price and not much capacity.

For me, the way forward may be the combination of several GB of fast flash memory on the main board plus a conventional HDD to give the capacity.

John

 

I don't understand why these things are so expensive.

A 16gig SDHC card is around 100 bucks on Newegg. Can't there be some sort of array of them, costing less than a grand?

 

Wow, those results are impressive! But I agree with above, the price and the capacity still put this out of reach.

If it were half the price, it might be suitable for me to eek another year or two from my current notebook to wait for some mobile Nehalem to shake out. But to spend that much on an upgrade (not to mention on an IDE drive that can't be transplated into a new system when the time comes?) seems rather fruitless.

 

Excellent Review Kev...I am surprised at the results of the IDE SSD.

We are seeing capacity increase with STEC-Inc reaching 512Gb and Mtron/Memoright reaching 128Gb in the SATA but yes prices are still incredible. They will come down eventually when the competition level increases.

 

Doesn't these wear out after a while?

 

There is a much greater lifespan with the SSD because of advanced wear levelling algorithms (or something like that). If you go to any of the sites that manufacture SSDs, they describe this.

Actually wait...from one of my earlier reviews, I have attached a diagram which illustrates.

To assist though, I would suggest you take a look at my review below...An Intro to the SSD.

 

Getting cheaper? Are you guys joking, these bad boys are dropping in price as we speak! They are still rather pricey, but note that half a year ago, most of us couldn't even remotely buy a 32GB SSD. Now they're much more affordable - although the catch is buying the 'right' SSD as there are many SSDs out there still utilizing cheaper (slightly less) though far slower technology...e.g. you'll be spending minimum of $700 for a 32GB to actually get a 'real' SSD instead of one that's actually slower than your current HDD!

SSDs are truly the future - I can easily see HDDs on their way out (of course it will take many more years for them to be completely replaced) and it's analogous to the arrival of DVDs vs VHS, CDs vs cassettes, LED vs incandescent, direct fuel injection vs carburetters, you name it!

 

Considering the speed, price and capacity. SSD wins one and HDD wins 2. Price drop is a the law of competition.

 

i bought one for my inspiron xps gen 2 (ill get a new laptop when nehalem is out at year end) - thanks to an intel southbridge bug, it hobbles the drive to just under 70 MB/S read and write. Even with that, the .1 ms access time makes it soar Windows XP, visual studio and a few other apps and i still have 18 GB free - plenty for development / every day use. any ideas if the bottleneck is / will be fixed? would intel release a fix?

thank!

Dan

p.s.

in regards to the sdhc cards - their read/write rate is horrible (5-8 MB/s at best) so you could maybe raid them but you'd need about 12 of them to get the performance...and then chances of your array dieing goes up with each drive...samsung 32GB with 65/35 R/W for 399 but its a 50 pin 1.8 IDE....