Product WARNING: Transcend Solid State Disk 32gb SATA Review

Product:
Transcend Solid State Disk
TS32GSSD25S-M
32GB 2.5" SATA Interface
Solid State Disk, MLC

Testing Unit:
Sony VAIO SZ38GP/C

Review:
I have been reading many good things about Solid State Disk drives. Most of the articles you can find on the google will have 3 key words, stability, instant access and speed. There are multiple videos on youtube showing demonstrations of this new technology which are quite mind-blowing.

However, do not be fooled by the mere mention of the words Solid State Disk if you are are planning to jump into this technology. It seems not all drives are made equal.

Enter the Transcend 32GB SSD. I purchased this product hoping that it would greatly increase the performance of my notebook with expectations that it would decrease boot up times and be zippy in all manners of file transfers. It's such a pity that it does none of those things.

Build Quality:
The actual SSD is extremely light. Basically it's just chips enclosed in a plastic container with only SATA ports exposed. It does seem to be slightly thicker than a regular 2.5 HDD.

Experience:
After installing the unit, I attempted to setup a fresh copy of Windows XP. The formatting of the SSD was very fast. However the actual usable storage is only 29.82GB. The problems start when Windows Setup commences to copy files on the drive. The first 5% of the copying setup files process is fast and you would think that this would be a sign of the advantages of SSD working. It's too bad that this is short lived, the write speed of the unit fails dramatically after that. It took me on average 3 hours to complete the copying of setup files. After a good 6 hours of trying to install Windows XP fresh, I tried again by cloning my old hard drive via USB.

Once again, boot up seems fast for the first few seconds. Once you get past the Welcome screen, the SSD will seem to have completely stopped. It takes roughly 45 mins for everything to finish loading. Even after loading, displaying your program menus will take 1 minute to load.

Price & Value:
I paid $260USD for this unit. There are sellers trying to get away with $350 or more. As you have probably read, you should not be wanting to purchase this unless you want an expensive paper weight.

Conclusion
If you plan on trying the SSD technology, review your products before buying. Stay away from the Transcend 32Gb SDD. Your money is spent better elsewhere.

Benchmark


Note: If the problems I have had are caused by something else, please let me know ASAP. Thanks

 

Oh wow... lol...lol...lol the benchmark

modern 4200RPM 2.5 inch standard harddrives get higher average transfer rate then that....

 

Strange. The HD Tune result shows a respectable data transfer rate of 20MB/s across the drive while the 3.1ms average access time is far better than any HDD. These measurements are not consistent with your performance observations. You could see a second opinion using another software such as SiSoftware Sandra. Try the physical disk, file systems and removable storage benchmarks. The last-named tests for different block sizes.

John

 

Comparison SSD HDTune results for you...

Memoright/MtronPro/MtronMobi/Samsung/Sandisk

 

would you still like those results?

every result posted by flamenko completely blows away the transcend. how wasteful.

 

I have the same drive that koiking has and I agree with him it is slow but if you buy an enclosure you can turn it into an external drive. Here are the results using Hdtune. The drive is in a 2.5 inch enclosure.

 

What would the point be in putting it in an enclosure? That's one expensive, slow, low capacity external drive. You can buy a 32GB thumb drive thats faster and smaller and uses less power. The speed of the Transcend is unacceptable. I would try to return it. If that doesn't work, contact the company directly and ask for a refund. 20MB/s average is unacceptable when other SSD's get 70-80MB/s average.

 

I will be quite honest... I didnt even approach Transcend after seeing their initial results. Further testing, in my opinion, was unnecessary.

In January I think I will be testing the STEC line which will include their three diff SSDS and all capacity levels to include 512Gb. This would be an incredible thing to have my hands on to test.

It will also force all manufacturers to find a way to produce multi-level/layer NAND SSDs to remain competitive. The market, at this early stage, is changing so quick its almost a race to the finish line, none of which have really got a grip on the consumer market yet. We dont see, however, that enterprise and business sales are huge.

Even STEC stated that they wont be able to get samples to me until those levels are supplied first.

 

Koiking,

I had the exact same experience with this drive.

This drive is being tested in a Dell GX620 Desktop PC.

After a somewhat accelerated initial boot, the drive activity light is constantly on for several min after the desktop appears. Launching any application immediately returns the PC to protracted pauses. I also gave up on doing a ground up OS (from CD) WIN XP install. I cloned an image (using Norton Ghost) and this is the OS image currently on the SSD.

My company deploys/supports thousands of Windows based PCs and I brought a sample Transcend 32GB SDD (SATA) as we would like to eliminate as many “spinning disks” as possible from a product support perspective.

I would be willing to even live with a small degradation in performance relative to a conventional hard disk but this particular SSD appears to be unusable as an OS drive.

Despite the “relatively” attractive price point, this drive is apparently not suitable for an OS hard disk replacement.

Regards,

Scott

 

Dear Koiking,

I saw this message on this forum and just want to give you a reply.

There are 2 categories for flash products with chips in MLC & SLC.
Very simple: MLC = Slower
SLC = Much faster

You bought TS32GSSD25S-M, this part is based on MLC-Chips..
So it is slower then the one with SLC chips.

The 32GB Solid State Disks we offer on 2,5" are the following:
* 32GB SSD, IDE, MLC TS32GSSD25-M
* 32GB SSD, SATA, MLC TS32GSSD25S-M

Soon the following 32GB Solid State Disks 2,5" on SLC will be available again:
* 32GB SSD, IDE, SLC TS32GSSD25-S
* 32GB SSD, IDE, MLC TS32GSSD25S-S

Regarding the speed: You should 100% get the speed that we notate in our datasheets from this product, if you get speed much much slower you will get a new product from Transcend if this is really the fact after our tests.

After every individual product is released for selling to customers,
it is tested many times. Every bits and bits, if the product fullfill the specifications we will sell, otherwise the product will be finished or destroyed.
All products are 100% as the datasheet or better.

Here is the link for the datasheet regarding your product with all specifications including speed:
http://www.transcend.nl/support/dlcenter/datasheet/TS32GSSD25S-M%20Datasheet.pdf

I hope i served you wel
If there are any questions then let me know.

Have a nice day all..

Kind regards,
Michel Uyleman

 

Michel,

I appreciate your jumping in here, much more than you may realize as your the first, although several companies monitor this.

Can I ask about future endeavors of Transcend in comparison to other manufacturers? STEC-Inc is presently in the process of getting to me 128-512Gb SSDs that max out at 100Mb r/wr as are Memoright and Mtron. These three companies are causing quite a stir with not only the speed of their SSDs but also that fact now that they are about to all introduce higher capacity drives.

Do you foresee this with Transcend at all?

 

Hi All,

I thought that I would pass along my first pass Sandra tests of the 32GB drive. (TS32GSSD25S-M)



The test box was a (lab rat) Dell GX620 with a Pentium 4 at 2.9 GHz and 2 GB of RAM. Also show are 4 reference conventional drives:

Although the read numbers are OK, (The random access is outstanding the write numbers are very slow.) (relative to a conventional HD.)

As a basis of comparison, here is a 2.5” 80GB Fujitsu SATA (Conventional Spinning Disk) Hard Drive (MHW2080BS) This hard drive was tested on the exact same hardware as the Transcend SSD.



Regards,

Scott

 

Well, colleagues of mine were testing another manufacturer's SSD and found the same, however, by changing BIOS settings to do with IDE Emulation or something like that, the operation of the SSD was restored to the expected performance. So you might like to read up on and try looking at that.

I was then requested to ghost and test the TS device, only to find other problems - it hangs for seconds, at least on read cycles (I have no benchmark to test write cycles) - this is why I was looking on this forum... so anyone with suggestions as to other setting that may be causing problems - I'd be interested to hear.

Note that the Transcend 32GB device has read and write speeds less than half that of some of it's competitors! In the UK, the public retail price is not much different between the products.

 

Good to hear from a Transcend poster.

However, I do consider purchasing the drive a waste of money since not all countries are as lucky as the US/UK to be able to return products. That said, I will not be purchasing anymore Transcend products.

 

You best watch out for the google police, son.

 

To the Trancsend people if your reading this:
Your ssd is a great concept although its not a new idea, the problem I see is when a new concept type of hardware is introduced, there is a step forward and then there is always a step backwards, as a consumer I want better then this, the step backwards would be the capacity of the new item, to catch my eye, this product would have to be at least the average capacity to date, in this market the comsumer wants bigger, faster and less aggravation all rolled into one, I myself will wait a long time before entering into this type of hardware as Im just plain tired of shelling out cash for something In my own opinion, should be better.

 

Check with Australian Metropolitans.
I know here in Canada, in my city no one sells and barely anyone knows what's an SSD. But in Toronto, Canada's metropolitan, I see stores actually carrying it now. Probably not in store, but on their online store.

But like, if someone where to get decent speeds on it, then I might consider getting it.

 

I have the Transcend 8GB IDE model. It has basically the same performance specs as the 32GB. What you're experiencing is the SSD's ever so often unpublished poor random write performance. Installing the OS and updates is brutal. Waiting for userinit.exe to complete after login can take a minute, virtually freezing the drive until complete. My experience isn't nearly as bad as yours, though. That said, I still love my Trancsend. Silent and no vibration. My laptop is like a calculator.

 

Hi All.

Timacland wrote:

“however, by changing BIOS settings to do with IDE Emulation or something like that, the operation of the SSD was restored to the expected performance.”

I would be very interested in knowing what CMOS parameter was changed. I would like to give the Transcend SSD as fair a shot as possible.

It doesn’t ring any bells as far as what CMOS parameter this might be though…

If there is one, I will change it, retest it and post my findings.

BTW, I send a similar information request to Transcend and never received a reply.

Regards,

Scott

 

The transcend scores are absolutely horrible. I wrote a nice letter to Transcend after finding just the right company contact in order to borrow a sample SSD and maybe help if I could. I have very good relations with all other SSD manufacturers and felt that I may be able to assist in their goal to get their SSD out there.

They responded stating they do not allow their SSD to be tested outside the company by anyone...a little unusual I thought. I replied by asking for someone who could assist in a short interview for an article...again turned down.

Tried though....

Similarly...did we notice that the Transcend rep that apparently jumped into this post hasnt returned to answer the questions posed.

 

I guess they know they seriously need to rethink their product lines. It's damaging to release faulty products on the market then have the consumers give negative feedback.

Boycott+1

 

Wow....i guess all SSD aren't created equal...here is a quick HStune result from my 7200 160GB drive...write speeds are much better than the transend SSD, and it's silent as well.

However, the results from Flemenko's tests are quite impressive...

 

You can sure see the difference between that and the SSD. That prevails over the Transcend but does not with most others. The access time is the most prominent thing that will be observed when differentiating the two.

I have just explained it on my New SSD thread in one of the last posts, but the difference from 17ms to find a piece of info and then come back and 17ms for another piece is a world of time from the .1ms of a normal ssd, this not considering the slowdown of a HD through defragmentation over time.

More specifically though, the transcend will suffer hugely when trying to write files to disk. Imagine trying to save a downloaded program of several hundred MB or even a GB in comparison to the time it takes of a normal HD or SSD.

Where it has been really noticed is on systems that use disk caching or, when they make a change and the system creates a restore point. The entire system slows immensely while the restore point is being written. I am sure this would be similar when hibernating or putting your system to sleep.

 

Not all SSDs are created equal. If I remember correctly, Transcend did explicitly state the write/read spec of 20+ MB/s right on the drive's box/packaging. So, what do you expect from such a low speed drive lol? I decided not to buy this right after I saw the spec. So, it's not like Transcend over-exaggerated the drive performance.

 

This should be a sticky, and the title should say DO NOT BUY! I too have wasted a good amount of money on this waste.

 

Watergun,

I also looked at the published specifications before purchased my evaluation sample.

But the actual “user experience” is much worse than would be implied by the published specifications.

Again, if the actual “user experience” (When used as a Windows XP OS drive) was “tolerable” I would be willing to take a moderate performance hit (as compared to a conventional “spinning disk” based drive.

Regards,

Scott

 

ts32gssd25s-m problem

Hi everyone!

Good to have came by on this topic googling around with similar lag problem of this particular ssd drive solution. Here then I do have to place my judgment and agree that for those looking for a solid and peppy solution with all the valor for ssd acclaims this drive just throes us at way to the dino age. However, I do have a Samsung SSD 16 GB drive <model MCAQE16GAPR-0XA to compare previous to this one to compare to. Completely different story, it works on my Desktop just as well as notebook, Linux as well as to Windows XP. For more eye candy on the subject lookup this SSD drive on YouTube. It is worth the beging price or searching around maybe for an even better deal. So all hopes up, and a farewell to Transcend for their poor and failed effort of selling 8086 chips as state of the art hdd. smells bad

 

They recommend the S model for OS, not the M model!

 

hi there,
last week i ordered a new laptop. due to the fact that i want to be super mobile i decided to configure it with the SSD option. after ordering, i spend some time searching the web on how to best configure & format a SSD for the use with linux (my prefered OS).
that was how i found that page, and i really felt angry about the manufactor offering that cheap Transcend SSD as an option for the laptop, without telling the costumer that it's not really capable of running an OS.
But then i continued my search, and i found that page:
http://home.austin.rr.com/gdrennie/gr_tech_exp.html

the author of the text also experienced problems during the installation of Mint Linux. but he didn't give up. and surprise: with some tweaking of DMA Kernel Settings he was able to configure the device in a way that it has more performance than his old HDD.

Here's his conclusio:

on thursday my new laptop will arrive. and i will tell you how well (or not) the Transcend SSD is working for me

 

Goes to show how much power we have here to pull in somebody from a company and have them register just to defend a product.

Too a certain extent I 100% agree with the guy that "hey the product specs were there, and you should have looked before you leaped"

I pretty much notice there are the cheap SSD's that give no performance boost over a good mechanical drive right now and have a horrible price vs performance/capacity standpoint, and then there are those SSD's we all drool over with the high speeds but they are rare and ultra expensive.

If something seemed too good to be true, like a fast SSD for a cheap price, well it was.


However this was a good wake up call for everybody else to learn from your mistake and do research before buying, and also maybe it will push Transcend to do something to compete with the other brands.

I suppose what you have is a business class SSD for somebody that wants lower heat, better battery life, and longer life time than a mechanical HDD so even tho you were disappointed with the product because it was not what you wanted doesn't mean it does not belong on the market somewhere.

You would have the same kind of feedback if you accidentally bought a 8800GS instead of a 8800GTX. Yet nobody shuns the GS cards because they are slow because they belong in a budget computer for somebody.

 

This drive is popping up again on sales sites:

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=TS32GSSD25S-M&cat=HDD

So there might be an influx of people complaining about it.

 

wow great info thanks OP

 

Man, my portégé is running off a cheap ebay compact flash that benches at 12Mb/s and it doesn't take 45min to boot. It boots faster than i have ever seen actually. But i didn't install the OS directly on it. I installed the OS on my normal hdd, then i just transfered the partition over. And the CF is protected by a write filter so it might not be affected by the write chokes.

 

i assume you mean EWF?

 

Yeah, the EWF of winXPe.

 

I fell into a similar trap with the samsung ssd on my XPS M1730. I paid a $1000 upgrade for a samsung 64GB drive that performed worse then a 5400RPM HDD.

Thankfully I was able to return the entire laptop. These SSD manufacturers really need to stop producing these garbage SSD's and suckering people into buying them.

It's fraud in my eyes. Yeah sure you can say that it advertises X speed on the box, but how many of us get to see the specs on the box?

Most of us buy online or have these bummed drives included in a laptop package. I'm sorry, but there's no way an online computer store is going to advertise these atrocious read/write speeds to inform the consumer.

typical site here:

http://canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=016681&cid=990.545

Notice how this "typical" site leaves out that crucial data that says this drive is a raging ball of sh!t.

I feel terrible for all the people that got suckered into buying this ssd. My sympathy goes out to you guys.

 

You basically bought a 32GB flash drive in a SATA enclosure.

 

"Performance: (32GB) Read up to 26MB/s, Write up to 13MB/s"

That's right there on the site under product specifications.

 

I want to elaborate on the difference between the flash memory used in different flash memory devices. I'm no expert on this but I know the NAND chips used in SSDs and USB flash drives are very different. SSD chips needs to be ultra high speed and have very long write duration. This difference is the reason why you can buy a 32GB USB flash drive for $90, but a 32GB SSD is no less than $400.- The NAND chips are different.

SO I'm almost 100% sure this "SSD" under question is just a USB flash drive in SATA enclosure.

 

Current Transcend 2.5" SSD's listed state 2 different performance specs. The greater ones are tagged as "New Revision".

Does anyone know if Transcend changed something in the drive ? Different type of controller, newer chips or anything ?

 

Hi everyone. If for all that can be said for my experiences with SSD and Operating System sole usage of these. I've had the best experience with SSD's on the Samsung line. Where boot and operations down the line are extraordinary. Simply wonderful! Have about a year ago bought, a brand new Transcend SSD 32GB SATA. And oh did it suck!!! A total rip off. Couldn't in multiple tries get Windows XP 32 nor 64 bit to install. Got Linux to install though and run barely, as in utterly slow. I've been doing PC computing since it's beginnings in the Commodore 64 days. My first PC was a 286/16 MHz in 1990!! Have I never(maybe windows itself hehe) met such an disappointment in technology as I did with Transcend.

I did do some further research on dedicated forums of OCZ(loads of problems also) and it seems that it maybe an issiue with the embedded Jmicron controller chip of these type of drives.

All in all if you'd like to go for an SSD and have some cash on hand to spend to that then go for Samsung or the best out now the Intel made SSD. Other wise Google your potential purchase as: "name of product" problem. See what others tell as can be supposed. Lots can be dependent on the type of computer or mother board config. Some RAID drive options may be crucial to that also.

 

It sure was a problem with JMicron's previous versions of controllers, the JMF60 and the JMF602, but as OCZ's new ssd's use the newest revision of it, the JMF602B, i thought that perhaps Transcend revised their products too...

I am curious to know if the "New Revision" description in specs is real, and if it is, are the new revisions of Transcend potential uprgades with decent performance for old laptops...

 

Humm. As others have stated before just as in OCZ cases the Jmicron controler is a weak bottom line product. In all cases to say why use that in something that is a yet high end product margin. Even as before revised versions of OCZ products have failed miserably for their clients. It's like looking at a problem Ferari would be having using KIA Korean parts in their gear box Performace wise and older laptops, I can say from previous hands on experiances that if you at least have a 1 Ghz and above processor and 1 GB RAM on board on a decent make mashine, you should be good with any proper SSD to begin with. I don't work for Samsung but have used their products before and know for a fact that smoothness of operation and ultra speed are real using their products on Windows XP. Intel is epensive but use their own onboard controler. They have some of the best standings also. Looking up comparisons for other products adds to that also. Bottom line is Transcend as a whole have left urine marks in my book and never bothered to show. OCZ have tweaks all over their forums to maybe help things out. But why then bother with such tweaking procedures on highend just to make things work?! Well we all can ponder.

Find it useful on you tube SSD on laptop, shows the real power of a properly working SSD.

 

The NAND chips used in flash drives and SSDs are EXACTLY the same chips. Here, let me show you the USB drive that uses the SAME chip 80GB Intel X25-M uses: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4548

Difference between SSDs and USB memory sticks are 95% controller 5% flash technology.

 

**Update-While we're here..

Just got a new SSD, and am writing this on my vista x64 system. Works super brilliant, and it is, tada SAMSUNG 32GB SATA2 SLC. Boot and workings as can ever be desired.

Secondly, take a look at this:

http://managedflash.com/
most importatntly this: http://downloads.managedflash.com/documentation/090107_windowsinstall.pdf

and this: http://managedflash.com/understanding/fastest.htm

Am going to test the above, and will feeback later here. But it looks like that MLC drive that wound up in your hands may be well to use..

 

Olejnikster, i hope you got your Samsung SLC from novatech's deal..great price for a great product...hope they could send to Greece so i could have gotten one...anyway, i hope you enjoy your new toy...

Update on Transcend IDE :

Yesterday, i accidentally bumped onto this (translated with Google)... The guy says that the new revision of Transcend's IDE MLC was tested and actually had 83.75MB/s read and 46.53MB/s write...

The visual difference with the "old" revision seems to be only the sticker, which now is plain white with red transcend logo and black letters...

 

This is a very old post but I will reply to it because I'm pretty sure lots of people ask this(they just don't say it openly I assume).

1. 20MB/s. Although not bad in HDD standards, look at the screenshot carefully. The line stays at 20MB overall, but suddenly it plummets to 0.9 MB/s. This is what is bad. HDDs don't do that. They are consistent.
2. 3.1 ms is really fast in the platter HDD world. Unfortunately in an SSD this is absolutely horrible. There isn't mechanical latency of platter HDDs. SSDs should stay under 1 ms. 3.1 ms means there are other problems which are bottlenecking the drive.

In other words it means the controller is crap. SSDs are worlds different from HDDs, but similar benchmark tools still apply for measuring their performance. You just have to understand the new way .

 

**update to that**
Specs are meandering for what that they can really show. What happens alot of the time is that the actual sporadic and sustained ratios and abilities(windows utilizing operating and file usage as it self) never get mentioned. On paper Transcend state a transfer of such, but to a such things go differently as to the whole of what is. Maybe when you need to just copy a file as a whole for storage and find it to access is one thing. But When windows needs to carry out it's operations to run itself(read and write-most importantly and in case of SSD's) is when Trancend's nightmare comes about. Easy to say for what it is, an expensive Memory Stick at a higher spec then USB,AND THAT IS IT!

 

All in all there are a couple of things that can be done on grounds of SSD and Windows working on it.

VISTA 32/64 BIT-FOR ADVANCED USERS
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47212

XP32/64 SSD Windows Registry Tweaks-FOR ADVANCED USERS
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=47244

TWEAKER UTILITY FOR US ALL VISTA 32/64, XP 32/64
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=49779
the last very optimal and quick

Last but not leastly, MFT software is a great tool for those supposing on using MLC instead of SLC as mentioned in my post above.

 

Yup! Got it from Novatech . Again, super,super product!! Bad thing is, they're gone. Some ebayers still had some though..

Thanks 4 the rave