expressCard SSDs for new Vaio Z

As a proud Vaio Z owner (and at the same time a poorly payed PhD student), I opted for the cheap Z with the 128GB SSD and I am already almost at full capacity.

I am looking for someway to expand my available storage. SD cards would be one option but high capacity ones are expensive, read/write speeds are not that good and I have had reliability issues with most removable media I've used in the past so I would not want to put my work-critical files on them.

I have come across these expressCard based SSD drives:

Amazon.com: Wintec FileMate 48GB Ultra ExpressCard Solid State Drive 3FMS4D48M-WR - PCI-e, Mini USB 2.0: Electronics

that seem to provide relatively good performance. However they seem a bit unreliable from the reviews, so I am still not particularly keen on getting one.

Has anyone come across any viable alternatives to the above drives?

 

I've read that the filemate's get super duper hot and like you said reviews are all over the map.

I've been stalking this item as it actually uses pci-e interface vs all the usb based ones around
Welcome to PQI Website

it seems to have a lot of promise, but despite being intro'd last year at CES they haven't actually been on sale anywhere. Newegg had an ETA on them for last month, but when it never showed up and dropped off the website, I gave up and decided to go with the SSD/DVD Drive swap option myself :\

 

I am not saying a word until I doublecheck whether it's a USB or PCI-e driven express card

However, I can confirm that the SD/MS card slots are PCI-e (2.0 x1) bus driven.

 

I suggest you to test it before buy. Because i can't get my eSATA Express Card work with new Z (I used to use it on my old Z and it works fine). If i try to install drivers everything will messup sometimes all USB port can't use, sometimes windows can't boot up. So now i giveup to use it. Not sure that this problem related to corrupted ACPI table or jMicron bad drivers for HM55 chipset.

 

ozbimmer

The express card slot on the Z is driven from the PCI bus. I attach a screen shot where I plugged in a USB 3 controller and you can see it's attached directly to the pci bus. See attached.

 

That's good news then. On the old Z, both the SD and MS readers as well as the expresscard slot appears to be on the same USB bus (which would make it rather pointless to add a USB 3 controller that way), according to SiSoft Sandra.

BTW, how many PCIe lanes does the new Z have? The old one only has 3, which means 1x is the max that can be possibly used (for whatever weird reason, the PCIe standard defines 1x, 4x, 8x and 16x, but not 2x, which arguably could be very useful -- fast enough for SATA 3 Gbps, for example).

 

HM57 chipset should have 8 pci-e 2.0 lanes.

 

You are right. I think the expresscard slot supports BOTH PCI-e and USB 2.0 applications ( http://www.expresscard.org/web/site/about.jsp).

I was using a expresscard modem to test the slot and it's shown up as a USB device.

 

For those who are interested in getting an expresscard SSD for storage in the new Z (VPC-Z1x), here's the CDM3 benchmark. The sequential read/write speeds are around half of X25-M's, whilst random read/write speeds are pretty poor as expected.

And yes I am using the Filemate 48GB Ultra ExpressCard SSD as mentioned by OP.



The slot is indeed driven by PCI-e x1 (2.0?) and USB 2.0 depending on the type of expresscard inserted.

 

does the filemate card heat up?

 

Yes, quite hot to touch.

 

I've got one of these coming for my S series - I'm going to run virtual machines off it - i'll let you know how it goes.....

 

Wow this awesome i i could try this, its pretty cool, 4 ssds and an extra express card slot this machine is the single greatest and craziest ultra-portable i have used.

 

Im using a g-monster 48gb express ssd - read/ write is plus 150mb/s. Its fast and reliable, doesnt heat up either.

I use it to offset wear and tear on my internal 256gb ssd, with programs and games (like left4dead) loaded on it - runs a dream.

available at conics.net

 

The G-Monster one available at conics is for expresscard 54 slot.
Conics.Net

Is this the 48GB expresscard 34 SSD you are talking about? The benchmark results look similar to the Filemate one.
PhotoFast.

 

How about the OCZ 64 gig ssd? It has the same write speeds, but its like 259 lol Way over priced.

 

Which is the best one for this machine Amazon.com: expresscard ssd

 

Hey Ozbimmer,

Yes it is the photofast G-monster express 34 - come to think of it, Brett ordered that one for me specially, but if you ask Conics they will source it.

The question on the Filemate was more one of reliability - apart from being fast, Ive found the g-monster to be very reliable and does not heat up either.

 

I've got one of the filemate drives now.

I'm using it to run development virtual machines instead of carrying them around on USB drives, I swap them out from the main HDD onto the filemate as I need them.

Initial "finger in the air" performance rating is very good - the VMs run a lot faster and snappier than they ever did on USB drives (7200rpm), I run stuff like visual studio 2010, SQL Server 2008 R2, and some other dev bits. Really good for demoing vm stuff to clients - fast boot e.t.c

I tried copying a few gigs using the usb cable earlier, I didnt have any problems with it, seemed a bit faster than a usb hdd as well. So far so good I suppose, if it dies i'll let you know.

I havent tried booting a vhd off it yet, but I know the BIOS in the S series will NOT boot from the Expresscard slot (tried it earlier) so you cant install a bare metal OS onto it that way - ymmv with different machines/bios e.t.c. When I get a chance i'll but a bootable vhd onto it and let you know how it performs that way.

 

Hi,

How much did you pay for yours? Where can I get one from? Thanks!

 

I got mine here:

48GB FileMate SolidGO ExpressCard 34 mini USB Ultra Solid State Disk

Some people have had problems with them, if you read reviews they are mixed, I'm waiting to see if mine dies a death in the longer term or turns out to be brilliant, I've only had it since the weekend so time will tell I suppose, but it's working really well at the moment, I'm interested to see how VHD boot goes.

 

Im interested to boot OS from one of these,would it work ?

 

^Nope.

10char

 

For the old Z with an older BIOS, you should be able to boot through EFI.

Unfortunately, Sony disabled that in the later BIOS versions; at a guess as a knee-jerk reaction to stop people from enabling the Advanced menu in BIOS by booting into an EFI utility, but tossing the baby out with the bath water in the process. Due to this, newer Zs can't do EFI boot at all, even when useful.