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Super Talent SATA Mini 2 PCIe SSD
A pricey upgrade offers a tantalizing look at the future of netbooks

SuperTalent has been broadening their range of Solid State Drive products over the last several months. They introduced the first 512GB SSD for consumers, and later unveiled SSDs with an IDE interface for older computers and the embedded computing market. Meanwhile, their UltraDrive SSDs for laptops and desktops wield the Indilinx Barefoot controller well enough to compete against Patriot's Torqx and OCZ's Vertex series.

One of the biggest sellers in this recession has been netbooks. Thin, small, lightweight, and with astonishing battery life, they have been sought after by the busy business traveller and eager young student alike.

Many netbooks come with SSDs due to the low power consumption of the NAND flash memory used for storage. However, most netbooks use antiquated controllers with performance on par with first generation USB flash drives.
 
For example, the ASUS Eee PC 901 uses a secondary SSD using a Phison controller for primary storage. Read speeds are surprisingly fast at 40 MB/s, but writes are very slow at 15 MB/s. However, due to the near instantaneous access times afforded by using flash storage, it can feel faster using a Core 2 Duo laptop at times.

Super Talent is now unveiling the world’s fastest SSD upgrades for the ASUS Eee PC 900, 901, 901A, 901 GO, and S101 netbook PCs. Their "SATA Mini 2 PCIe" SSD is recognized as a SATA drive, but works through a mini-PCIe connection.

Drives using Multi-Level Cell flash are available in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB capacities. They feature sequential read speeds up to 150 MB/s and sequential write speeds up to 100 MB/s. The MLC drives come with Super Talent’s 2 year warranty.

For customers with greater endurance requirements or faster write performance needs, a Single-Level Cell version will be available in 16GB and 32GB capacities. It features sequential read speeds of up to 170 MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 130 MB/s. This is over four times the rated read speed and over eight times the maximum write speed.

The SLC drives come with a 3 year warranty, while the MLC drives come with a two year warranty.

Model

BIOS Revision Required

ASUS Eee PC 900

0906

ASUS Eee PC 900A

0703

ASUS Eee PC 901

1808

ASUS Eee PC 901 GO

Any

ASUS Eee PC S101

Any

 

Part Number

Description

Expected Street Price

FPM16GLSE

16GB SATA Mini 2 PCIe SSD MLC

$85.99

FPM32GLSE

32GB SATA Mini 2 PCIe SSD MLC

$125.99

FPM64GLSE

64GB SATA Mini 2 PCIe SSD MLC

$219.99

 

 



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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

bah
By vapore0n on 6/1/2009 8:27:21 AM , Rating: 2
Should have made them SATA> This upgrade applies to the old Asus EEE netbooks or people with an empty mini pci slot, which is usually occupied by a wifi card




RE: bah
By oralpain on 6/1/2009 10:01:47 AM , Rating: 2
The netbooks these are targeted at don't often have SATA ports.

They already have equivalent SATA SSDs anyway.


RE: bah
By amanojaku on 6/1/2009 10:10:13 AM , Rating: 3
quote:
Should have made them SATA> This upgrade applies to the old Asus EEE netbooks or people with an empty mini pci slot, which is usually occupied by a wifi card
Actually, that's not true. Each Eee PC has two slots, one with the WiFi card and one empty, which is where this drive will go. The article did point out that this was targeted for the Eee PC, and not random netbooks.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eee_pc#Specifications


RE: bah
By vapore0n on 6/1/2009 11:38:52 AM , Rating: 1
That spreadsheet is quite old. And yet its also says that newer models don't have a second mini pci-e slot.
My 1000h sure does not, and its "old" by today's standard.
Most of those that could really use that upgrade are discontinued models.
Here is a list of all the eees discontinued:
http://www.superwarehouse.com/Asus_Notebooks/b/28/...

Oh, and my 1000h does use a SATA connection for the drive.


RE: bah
By amanojaku on 6/1/2009 11:50:24 AM , Rating: 4
Jesus, Mary and Joseph in a tiny canoe!!! Read the damn article!!!
quote:
Super Talent is now unveiling the world’s fastest SSD upgrades for the ASUS Eee PC 900, 901, 901A, 901 GO, and S101 netbook PCs.
This drive isn't for you and your 1000h, so quit complaining and go buy one that is! And of course the speadsheet is old; it's about old, discontinued models!


RE: bah
By RU482 on 6/1/2009 7:29:55 PM , Rating: 2
whoa whoa whoa...wait a min. I thought the "PCI-e" slot that these SSDs plug into were "actually" a PCI-e minicard connector, with an IDE signal pinout. If so, it would mean that this drive can't just plug into any old PCI-e minicard slot.

Can anyone confirm this?


RE: bah
By sprockkets on 6/1/2009 7:53:03 PM , Rating: 2
Think of it, as an add on card to any normal slot, pci, mini pcie, etc., with a built in SATA or PATA controller and built in storage medium all in one. BIOS updates for the EEE PC allow a pcie card to have a SATA controller on it, while the one it came with used PATA.

Of course it goes directly over the slot. Plugging it into a slot then going over IDE would be silly.


Sounds nice, but...
By oralpain on 6/1/2009 10:03:41 AM , Rating: 3
What controller chip will these be using?

Blazing sequential reads/writes are pretty useless on an Eee PC if general usage (random writes) sucks.




RE: Sounds nice, but...
By sprockkets on 6/1/2009 7:32:54 PM , Rating: 2
I wish Anand would test them. They sell 90/55 r/w versions on newegg, which are better than the other 40/15 being sold there.


Upgrade or work-around?
By CZroe on 6/1/2009 3:48:27 PM , Rating: 2
Upgrading 4, 6, or 16GB netbook SSDs to the faster 16GB miniPCIe product just isn't worth it for any netbook because it costs almost half as much as a whole other similarly-classed netbook!

Also, many do not have miniPCIe connectors, like most of the SSD-equipped Acer Aspire Ones (you can add one if you are good with a soldering iron ;)). That said, there is a software project that I have been following with some interest:

"FlashPoint" (yeah, the name has been used elsewhere)
http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f...

It's a device driver which can drastically improve system performance by caching SSD writes in memory. It seems rather unstable and the latest release slows things down a lot for the sake of stability, but it shows promise.

I haven't tried it on my AAO yet because I recently discovered that disabling "D2D" in the BIOS, a recovery feature, also improved performance significantly, though not nearly as much. I want to put it through it's paces this way first before attributing any more improvement to FlashPoint.




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