Friday, September 05, 2008

MyDigitalSSD on Asus Eee PC


I got the sample SSDs from MyDigitalDiscount few hours ago..

Continue reading..





Lot of testing and playing.. here is all on one page:

There are 2 different types, SLC and MLC. SLC ones are faster and more expencive. They currently have 8GB / 16GB and 32GB SLC SSDs
and 32GB / 64GB MLC SSDs

These SSDs are designed for:

Main Storage on:

Asus Eee PC 702 8G
Asus Eee PC 900 16G
Asus Eee PC 900A 8G/16G

Second disk for:

Asus Eee PC 900 12G/20G
Asus Eee PC 901 12G/20G
Asus Eee PC 900-X 16G
Asus Eee PC 1000 40G

But you could use them as main disk on any of those by swapping the boot order.

Then to benchmarks:

( I used ATTO Disk Benchmark, SSD as formated OS drive )

MyDigitalSSD 16GB PCI-E SLC SSD


MyDigitalSSD 64GB PCI-E MLC SSD


Asus Eee PC 900A 8GB PCI-E SSD


Asus Eee PC 900 16G 16GB PCI-E SSD



If you have Eee 900 16G or Eee 900A and you want more storage with same performance, you could be happy with the MLC ones..

If you want more speed, you need to check SLC ones. The bottleneck on Eee 900/900A is on SSD write speed.

If you have Eee 900/901 and want more storage, MLC is ok.

If you are fed up with 4GB 1st drive on Eee 900/901, you could get SLC one and swap the boot order and install the OS on it.

... I'm happy with 16GB SLC on my 900A, thanks MyDigitalDiscount for the sample. It's not coming back :)


Get yours from MyDigitalDiscount [ US ]

Or MemoryC [ EU ]


Add 8, 16, 32, and 64 GB to your ASUS EEE PC with MYDIGITALSSD PCI-e SSD!
Buy from MyDigitalDiscount.com
Buy from MEMORYC.com







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84 comments:

mtotho said...

so the write speed isnt the 41mb/s they promised? Still looked great. How would u compare the speeds with the default eee fast ssd(4gb in 900/901 for example)?

JKK said...

I used my 900A with the 4GB SSD from 901 and it felt just like this 16GB one..

.. ATTO gives better write results for the 901 4GB SSD but HD Tune thinks this 16GB is better..

Anonymous said...

I have a 701 4G, with the extra mini PCIe connector... would there be any problem using one of these with that?

JKK said...

It should work fine..

Anonymous said...

hmm, reading about these ssd upgrades for eeepc makes me think back to reading amiga magazines and finding page after page of third party upgrade parts.

Anonymous said...

coming from someone that is only familiar with the HDD world. how do you think a 5400 & 7200 RPM would perform in comparison to these? somewhere in between the MLC & SLC? YES i realize an HDD wont fit, im just trying to get a sense of speed.

although i am not familiar with your setup obviously, to be quite honest the 64GB MLC seemed pretty decent overall & reminded of how an HDD equipped unit might perform.

mtotho said...

Modern 5400 & 7200rpm hard drives are SO much faster than these SSD.

for example, my 2 year old 7200rpm hard drive in my computer gets about 70mb/s read and write, i believe newer ones can be even faster.

The Slow MLC has 30mb/s read, and 15mb/s write.

the fast slc has about 35mb/s read and 25-30mb/s write..

Good 5400rpm drives (yes there are bad ones that are much slower) can be like 50-65mb/s read and write. (hard drives are good at achieving same read and write speeds).

I know you are just trying to get a sense of speed.. so i will say that the SLC SSD he tested is very quick, even by 7k rpm standards, it may give it a run for its money. It has very fast access times, very responsive in some cases.. but of course some things will be slower (in some cases, 2-3 times slower). But you also need to think of the benefit of size and durability.

a 1.8" drive (this is 1.8" drive, SIZE of ipod drive) is rated to survive a G force of 1500G when idle/off, and 500G when read/writing. this is VERY impressive when you consider SSD are 1500-1600G All the time (off or read/write)... but when you scale up to 2.5" and 3.5", the durability significantly decreases.

on another note there is power consumption. I cant speak for SSD and 3.5" drives, but my 80gb 1.8" drive only consumes 400mah when reading and writing, and next to nothing when idle. My 160gb 2.5" drive consumes 500mah read/write. The max usb can support is 500mah, so this is equivalent to plugging in a high powered device. (of course a hard drive isnt reading and writing 24/7)

Anonymous said...

Oh, a European reseller! I'm getting an SLC drive right away for my 900A. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

Man that is bad I sure hope my dell mini is not that bad

Anonymous said...

A big part of the knock to the speed of things on booting up is due to the extremely crappy RealTek driver for our sound cards in the EEE PC. That driver just decides to write loads to the disk on startup.

You can test this by disabling it in msconfig. But then the drawback is of course you're booting up without sound. If that's something you can live with, then of course by all means disable it.

Strange that the SLC disk was nearly half of what they advertised though JKK, in the specifications it says sustain up to 47 MB/s on read and 40 MB/s on write. However 25 Mb/s is of course livable and a pretty decent upgrade over the extremely slow 16 GB disk in the EEE 900 PC at least. I can't wait for my 32 GB one from MDD now. FedEx, hurry up! (>^_^)> <(^-^<)

Anonymous said...

@mtotho I like what you said and I agree with you. 1.8" HDD is the best option up until we can find a 64GB SSD that is faster than the 1.8" HDD with a decent price. Otherwise I dont see anymore why to go into SSD option when you have such a competing 1.8" HDD, durability and performance wise.

thazlett said...

Im going to be putting a 1.8" into my 900a when i get it. mtotho has opened my eyes..

Anonymous said...

Yes, the 16GB SLC looks the best choice - and good to see these being sold in UK as well...

Anonymous said...

No Benchmark compare , the video takes it all. The Winner for me is SLC , next Year i hope the prices for Bigger SLC are coming down!!! Not for long time we have slow 20GB HDD (2,5" @ 4200rpm) in notebooks . I think last year are 80 GB @ 5400rpm Standard. So I think 2010 or earlier we have this as SLC as standard hopefully

Anonymous said...

Hey JKK,

is the 900A wity this new RAM your favorite macchine for a daily use ? You said to be favorable to the 900 form factor some weeks ago....

Is your graal here ?

Anonymous said...

I'm satisfied with the 12 GB Space of my Eee 901, and I think I won't put any Games or Programmes on it which need fast access.
But well, yeah. It would be great to have an 16 GB SLC SSD :D
I'll see, If the 12 GB and my 16 GB aren't enough or too slow, then I'll get the 16G SLC.
I hope then they are cheaper, around 100€

Anonymous said...

Hmmm i am wondering whats going on. JKK your Windows boots over all too slow. I boot up in less 40 seconds on standard ssd. The MLC is slow but the 16 GB SLC whow i think this could be mine in a few days ;-)

But you should go to a Songcontest, may you can win a price ;-)

Anonymous said...

I whatch the Video twice after the second i will say that the Speed of the slc is real good, but i have it on the factory ssd too.
I used nlite, ccleaner, Teakui, xp antispy and com! XP Optimizer and i have the same reactiontimes as you have on your system.

I dont know why, but your installed windows was slow at all.

Anonymous said...

Jkk:

Great note.
How could i replace main store in 901/1000?
SSD option for?
Thanks.
Yuo are the ONE!!!!!

JKK said...

jtj, you cant compare normal install to nlited..

.. mine is default xp pro with all default settings.

only tweak was page file/ff cache on ramdisk

that test system was not about how to speed it bot to compare ssds on sa cloned image.

JKK said...

hmm.. letters jumped a bit,,

Anonymous said...

A shame they couldn't deliver.

Anonymous said...

so JKK do you have any benchmarks of a HDD based netbook to compare? i realize it's not a perfect comparison but all these netbooks are speced similarly so it's close enough.

JKK said...

Last one here is 1.8 HDD... but i can't talk HDDs and SSDs same day..

http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2008/07/asus-eee-pc-ssd-read-and-write-tests.html

.. I like them silent, cool and durable.

Anonymous said...

Hey JKK nice vid, how much faster is the 1.6 Atom compared to the 900 Celeron? I want to purchase a Eee pc 900 or 900A but I still can't decide wich to choose. Can you make a video for a boot time comparison of both? Thanks.

Anonymous said...

I wish you'd have a feature on installing this MyDigitalSSDs on an eeepc 701A's pci-e slot.

mtotho said...

@aezok, he could make a video of boot time comparison, but that doesnt mean ANYTHING. The atom is a nicer cpu than the celeron. Better battery life, newer extensions, Cooler, the 900a will also be cheap. There are many benefits.

Anonymous said...

@mtotho alright thanks, I just wasnt sure what the diferences were. Mainly I would prefer the 900A if it was noticably faster like running apps and such.

Anonymous said...

@jkk
yes thats right, i dont compare nlite and normal standard xp prof. but i saw that it is real slow.

Must be real fun to see what a nlited system will do on a slc ssd :-) speed up

Anonymous said...

@JKK http://jkkmobile.blogspot.com/2008/07/asus-eee-pc-ssd-read-and-write-tests.html

My Samsung is doing better than the toshiba!

Anonymous said...

where is the 16gb slc ssd module available?

JKK said...

Gutman:

Get yours from MyDigitalDiscount [ US ]

Or MemoryC [ EU ]

Anonymous said...

I thanks jkk for opening my eyes to what possibilities open for my EeePC 8G in future should my ssd goes down. I am from Singapore and seems that here we do not have myDigital or conics.net to buy from. Even the ASUS agent is not aware of any where we can purchase from. I love jkk and USA.

Anonymous said...

MemoryC is OK for an order. :-)

Anonymous said...

Hello,

Is the XP Version 900 16 Go SSD (not the 4 Go inclued too) as slow as the 900A 16 Go, and can i swap those models for a better 900A ?

Thanks a lot

JKK said...

All 2nd drives on current Eee PCs are as slow.. all are slower MLC.

..so swapping from another Eee doesn't help..

..only way is to buy faster one.

Anonymous said...

thanks jkk,

the ssd is expected on 16.09.08, so i have to wait...

Anonymous said...

Hey, have you ever heared about stec ssd (jkontherun sais they are built in dell's mini):
http://www.stec-inc.com/downloads/flash_datasheets/SLMPCIxGM4U_M_61000_05494.pdf
Do you think this one could be good for eeepc901?

Anonymous said...

are there any plans from these guys or others to produce a REALLY fast and decent sized 'PRIMARY' drive to replace our 4Gb ones, say an 8 or 16Gb mini SLC? Speed is perhaps more important here.

Anonymous said...

how would one of these do in an 3 yr old ipod? easy swap?

Anonymous said...

is there any for EEE 701 4G?

JKK said...

You can use themon Eee 4G if you have the pci-e connector there...

Konrad, Dell's SSDs are slower than 901s

Anonymous said...

You say the SLC's are faster but your figures show the MLC as the fastest. Which is it?
Mydigitaldiscount even shows faster speeds for the MLC, strange.

Anonymous said...

I wished the SSD could be compared to the 701's 4 or 8GB SSD.

They are lots faster then the 900 SSD.

Load-times could have better be done with a timer (chronometer) next to the screen. Not to get the micro seconds, but to get the general idea of minutes or seconds.
maybe a little accelerated in 'boring' (non active,waiting) moments.

It was expected that SLC was going to be way faster. Maybe "Performance Mark" would be a great program for disk testing; it's one of my favorite.

Anonymous said...

Nice, but check THIS out for SSD speed
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/Intel-x25-m-SSD,2012.html
Hopefully they'll also make ZIF and PCIe versions?

England said...

WOOOOOOO! Just ordered my EEE 901 from Amazon for a decent $499 (Check it out). I got the 20g version and plan on sticking XP on it. Man I'm happy.

Anonymous said...

Will the SLC-drive totaly get rid off the lag-problems in XP I have with the slow SSD on Eee 900 16G?

Anonymous said...

Samsung is also in the manufacture of SSD for EeePC market. I got one in my EeePC 8G from Samsung and it is pretty good so far. I hope JKKmobile could laid their hands on Samsung SSD for testing too. I may be upgrading my 8GB SSD to 16GB SSD if it crashes.

Anonymous said...

@Anonymous re: Samsung SSD, where did you get yours from? Do you have a company name or part number?

Anonymous said...

Hey JKK nice video. I just wanted to know which imaging software you used for making hard drive image. Thanks.

JKK said...

I use Acronics

Anonymous said...

For those prices, just swap in an OCZ Core SSD. Infinitely better performance (90MB+ read, 50MB write). I put one in my 1000H with no problems at all.

Anonymous said...

Which part number has / from which ssd drive is your OCZ Core SSD?

Carlos Martins said...

OCZ Core was available at $99.

But keep in mind it fails miserably in some tests, sometimes taking a couple of seconds to perform a write operation.


(And you can't install Vista on it... but I guess that wouldn't be a real disadvantage. ;)

Guess you get what you pay for... :)

Tough it works nice in a few other tests...
For $99 I'd risk it getting one of those.

Anonymous said...

Hi JKK. When you use one of these SDDs as the boot drive by swapping the boot order, will the system register the new drive containing the OS as drive C: or still as drive D: ? I ask because some applications insist on installing themselves (or parts of themselves) on drive C:

Many thanks!

JKK said...

the drive you have booted the os is always c.

Anonymous said...

Hey JJK,

I put my 64 Gb instead of the 8 Gb in the 901. After Bootup, i see Error 3 a few seconds. In "my computer" there is no drive "D". In the Bios there is 64 Gb drive. Also in "hardware". What's wrong you think?

Anonymous said...

Will the drives on mydigitaldiscount work in the Dell Mini? I have ordered a 16GB mini but would like to go to a 32GB would the 32GB MLC be a dramatic slow down compared to the OEM 16GB drive?

Anonymous said...

The reason I asked the Dell Mini question above is I want to install Vista on the Mini with Office 2007 Standard

Anonymous said...

@JKK: Does the 901 come with a full XP install disk so I can use it on one of these larger SSDs or would I need to buy a copy separately?
Thanks!

JKK said...

you can't use these on Dell.. Dell uses 50mm SSDs and Eee 70mm ..

Eee 901 comes with recovery disk which you can use..

I often use Acronics true image to make back ups and restores... it's faster than installing and i don't need to setup my settings again..

Anonymous said...

JKK

Thanks. Are there any manufacturers that will be coming out with 50MM drives? I am pretty pumped about the 2GB memory upgrade.

I have some experience with the Mini and I know Vista will work on it quite well. It was faster than XP that was origianlly on the box.

Anonymous said...

By the way, is it possible to use these in regular laptops w/ mini pcie slots?

Anonymous said...

Anyone know any good, free disk benchmark tools?

Oh BTW the retail version packaging for the SSD was the same as in JKK's video hehe :-)

The 16G SLC has got rid of all the waiting around I had with XP on my 900-16G and now it runs like it always should have. Plus I have a backup SSD now :-)

Yes, the SSD was expensive for just 16gb and yes this is still slower overall than my other 15" notebook from 3 years ago, but for me the trade-off is worth it.

With the SSD and Mugen 7800 battery it gives 3.5hours, at 1.2kg, approx $750 it's half the price, size and weight, double run time of the old beast.

I take it everywhere, it's perfect for trains and planes. It stays in my hands all the way so it uses no carry-on allowance. For long haul I can recover the old battery from the depths of my fridge and pop that in a pocket. I wish I had touch screen and 3G...

Unknown said...

JKK - I can't find this anywhere.... Is the 4GB on the 901 a MLC or SLC?

For what it's worth: I currently double-boot my 901. XP is on the 4GB and Ubuntu is on the 8GB, but Ubuntu is slow. I'd like to leave XP in place, install the 16GB SLC and move Ubuntu on to that using Acronis. Then Ubuntu would be my primary system.

JKK said...

4GB on the 901 is SLC

Anonymous said...

JKK

Does the 901 4 GB internal SSD exist in a bigger capacity??? I know that it is smaller than the second ssd, but i can't find one with more capacity small like it......

Anonymous said...

Hallo JKK,
I'm owning a eeepc 900A 8GB (MLC?) with LINUX. Thanks to your nice video I feel encouraged enough to upgrade to 8GB SLC. But would this be a plug and play upgrade with no need to reinstall the OS? In other words, do you know whether 900A 8GB memory is split up into two 4GB modules, one - hard wired to the motherboard - hosting all of the OS and other programs, and an other one plugged into the PCIe slot, ready for exchange? I opened the my eeepc already but couldn't identify the memory size of the module in the PCIe slot.

Thanks in advance,
kay.

Anonymous said...

hello all, i bought and installed the 16gb slc ssd stick into my 900 running xp (replacing the the 12gb i believe).
i changed the the boot order/priority in bios and reinstalled windows.
on restarting i was presented with a black screen with small white cursor flashing top right.
on restarting i hit escape and selected the original asus 4gb hd to load from, which it did.

what have i done wrong to make it reinstall on the old 4gb hd?

i couldn't work out how to change the slave master settings which is the problem i guess. how do i do this? do i need to open up the eeepc and flip a jumper switch or something?

any help would be greatly appreciated!

charles.cowper@googlemail.com

Anonymous said...

Hi to everyone, i buy the64GB MyDigitalSSD PCI Express PCI-e SSD and put in my eee 901 linux, then i put the xp on the 64gb ssd and i have 4gb free in another disc, my problem is the eee pc are to slow crash in basic operations and i need a solution to that... please can help me? Thanks.

Anonymous said...

I wonder how ssd on asus pc 900 would function running a Windows install with split partitions, e.g. C drive handles running dlls and windows files and nothing more while another partition would handle temp and tmp file folders along with temporary internet files folder from IE, and dowloads, while the third and final partition would be dedicated to Program installation. Test read write on a system like that, or send me an eee pc 900 and I will test it. I am just majorly interested on the outcome being that from my experience every system I have ever organised this way funtions usually 30%+ faster. e-mail: philatlasvegas@hotmail.com

Anonymous said...

I installed a 64GB MLC as secondary SSD in my 901 XP, and no problem;
then I tried to upgrade the primary and I installed first a 8gb SLC from Asuspart (the same installed on 1000) and the BIOS doesn't recognized the secondary SSD;
then I installed the 16gb SLC from MDD for DELL as primary SSD and the same thing, the BIOS doesn't recognized the 64GB as secondary
so the only configuration is 4GB native as primary and 64GB as secondary, but WHY?
So every SSD is accepted as primary but if the size is over than 4GB the slave is not visible
everyone has just done this work?
everyone has just resolved this problem?
it is a BIOS upgrade problem?

Anonymous said...

weird; usually SLC drives have about the same write speed as read speed eg: 40MB/s / 39MB/s.

The first drive acts like a MLC drive.

Anonymous said...

JKK, any information on drives for the 700 series?

Anonymous said...

Are these all SLC?

Anonymous said...

Too many of you people running XP on your netbooks. That's why they're so slow...

JKK said...

..On all my tests XP has been actually faster on most tasks.

Anonymous said...

I have a pc1000 ssd, Ubuntu is terrible,we live in a Windows world can't even print or scan (no drivers) I need XP and Office, Star office is a joke, cant exchange properly with Excel. I need SPEED and XP is the 16gb ssd from Mydigital a slc, faster than the 8gb in the pc1000? and if so am I better off using the 16gb as primary and the 8gb as secondary? and scrap the 32gb as I have heard its slow. Whats the best config? Pleasse help

Anonymous said...

Also is the upgrade from 1gb to 2gb DRAM worth it???

Anonymous said...

So on the 901 the 1st drive with the OS is buried inside and the easy one to get at is the second (on mine ) D: drive?
I have seen conflicting articles about the speed of the SSD on the 901 , that it is, and some say it is not as fast as the Runcore SSD . So upgrading to the Runcore 64G would add storage but no performance. But then some articles talk about an EU version of the 901 or 901 GO that is the one with the fast SSD already installed, confused much yes !
I am in Canada and just have a 901 no idea if I should get the Runcore or not.
Should be easy ghost the image from the existing C: drive after installing the second drive.

Unknown said...

please helpme...

can u give me suggestion what should i choosing eee900 or 900a???(without upgrading)

i want to buy the 900a coz the atom but you according yours video the 900a is slow coz the ssd... but if i buy the 900 its using celeron 900Mhz and it just works at 633mhz.. can u give me suggestion??? im very2 confuse... i'm using eepc coz i want to try leopard inside eee.... thanks for jkkmobile

Unknown said...

please helpme...

can u give me suggestion what should i choosing eee900 or 900a???(without upgrading)

i want to buy the 900a coz the atom but you according yours video the 900a is slow coz the ssd... but if i buy the 900 its using celeron 900Mhz and it just works at 633mhz.. can u give me suggestion??? im very2 confuse... i'm using eepc coz i want to try leopard inside eee.... thanks for jkkmobile

Fede said...

get the 900A if you only plan to use it to check emails, and web stuff.
You'll get more battery life, which is very important in this devices. Of course, the SSD is slower, but you aren't going to be saving files all the time, are you?
It's also cheaper, so why not just go for it?
Anyway, if I were you, I'd get the acer aspire one, with the 160gb HDD and 6-cell battery.
Better keyboard, design, no SSD trouble, and, in my country (Argentina), almost as cheap as the 900A.

Hope this helps!

Anonymous said...

Hey,
But it still cannot overpower the 900's internal SSD power!!! ):P

900's In-built/MDD(in MB)
Read:-44.223/42.744
Write:-27.114/25.492

And if using nLite we remove default apps and use 3rd party apps like Firefox instead of IE and VLC Media Player instead Windows Media Player we get even better

VLC best part you can bump up the sound up to 200% with it!!!!!!!!!

Reply to Fede
Use the internal for OS as I mentioned above:- and use the pci-e slot for Zif SSD for storage like at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iLjqPpZ83M .

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