Fastest practical SDHC flash cards for use in X200 tablet's 5-in-1 card reader?

Per the other thread, now that I am sold on using Samsung's 64GB SLC SSD, I am thinking ahead to applications for a flash card in the X-series' 5-in-1 flash card reader. Specifically for my circumstances, I see myself using it to archive exclusively; a small music collection, seldomly-accessed documents, and any media that creates little overhead at the time of playback / use. Besides also serving as backup media for actively used personal files, I am going to see about having applications such as Microsoft Word write their incremental backups there (hopefully as a duplication of writes to the primary hard disk). Finally, and likely of most importance to choosing this flash card, I will be employing a whole disk encryption method through TrueCrypt, which will only increase the load being undertaken during normal read/write activity (and yes, I realize this will decrease the card's lifespan by a factor proportional to the amount I will already be using it; despite this, lets assume cost is secondary to guaranteeing performance).

So to generalize, I am looking for a card that will have the best sustained read / write performance across various file block sizes, and should it not prove to be a limit on the overall performance, will take the largest capacity I can find (I could not find any Class 6 cards larger than 16GB). Before I lose you and my original question in this preamble: I would have already simply purchased the top card from a Newegg search sorted from high-to-low price, if it weren't for the fact that the card reader's bus can be a real limit on performance. I seem to remember finding through Google a case report of this for an X-series notebook, but I can no longer find it and don't remember it being very descriptive anyway. Can anyone weigh in on this dilemma, whether it be their own subjective experience of a certain card's performance, actual benchmarks establishing the card reader's capabilities, or even a data sheet covering the maximum throughput? To put things in perspective, a Class-6 16GB PNY SDHC card costs $39.99, whereas a Class-6 16GB SanDisk Extreme III SDHC card costs $133.99. So even if the SanDisk is significantly faster than the PNY (and by most accounts, when the reader is not the limiting factor, this is not simply a snake oil marketing claim), it will all be for naught if the reader is choking things to a relative crawl at ~5-10MB/s. Like the SSD, I have no problem paying a premium for real performance gains, and I am fine with being the guinea pig on this, but I doubt I am the first one to consider this predicament? Also, which particular formats are supported by the 5-in-1 lineup? I'm only assuming SDHC is on the list, I would be very much surprised if it isn't, but knowing which others can only widen the pool of worthy contenders.

 

The 5-1 reader supports SD, SDHC, MMC (an old and very small variant of SD), Memory Stick, and MSPro. SDHC is probably the most reasonable of these choices (wide variety of cards, good capacity, low $/GB).

The 5-1 reader is USB attached, and thus no card will give you extremely good performance due to the limitations of the USB bus. However, your use for the card will likely not require excessively high speeds.

If speed is a top concern, then an ExpressCard based SSD is a far better choice as these can be PCI-Express attached and thus far faster (be warned that the cheap ones are still USB attached).

The best of these (and one I was considering as a boot drive [in combination with a HDD], before finding out it was impossible) is the MTron 16GB SLC SSD. This offers practically identical performance (100MB/s read, 80MB/s write) as the Samsung SLC SSD, and would be a solid choice if performance is your number one concern. Unfortunately, it's only 16GB, costs $150+, and appears to be discontinued so locating one may be a challenge.

Verbatim has announced a PCI-Express attached MLC ExpressCard SSD in 16, 32, and 64 GB capacities. It is supposed to be priced at $100, $150, and $300 respectively. It promises 120MB/s read and 30MB/s write. However, it has not yet been released (late February is stated in the announcement, but I can't find any for sale) so this performance cannot be verified.

I just discovered this Filemate 48GB MLC SSD today, and it looks very intriguing ( Newegg). It promises 115MB/s reads, 65MB/s writes, and a better $/GB than the Verbatim card ($169 for 48GB vs. $150 for 32GB). It also offers a mini-USB port so you can access the data (at a lower speed) on a machine w/o an ExprssCard slot. However, I have been unable to find any review that verifies these speeds.

Back to the original question of SD cards. I can only point you to the cards that I posses. That would be an 8GB OCZ class 6 SDHC card, several 2GB Kingston 2GB SD cards ( this one), and a Kingston 2GB μSD card. I have posted thumbnails of their results in Crystal Disk Mark (1st SDHC, then SD, the μSD), all tests performed in the x200T 5-1 reader. As you can see, they all have very similar results, although the 2GB cards are slightly better for sequential R/W.

EDIT - I included a 4th and 5th image of ATTO scores for the OCZ SDHC and Kingston SD card respectively.

 

I'll basically echo what jonlumpkin said. Based on what you said you were going to use it for, I don't think speed ought to be a huge concern. If you're just going to be using it to store music, videos and Office files it doesn't need to be terribly fast. In fact, I think a class 6 SDHC might even be a bit overboard. It sounds like you'd mostly be doing reads off the SDHC, rather than writes to it. The different classes of SDHC cards mostly differ by write speed. Read speeds are pretty good across the board.

 

Didn't know the card reader went through the USB bus. I wonder why you cannot use a card in the card reader for Readyboost in Vista? Do card readers work differently than USB drives with the same media plugged in? Seems like it would be more convenient to leave an SD in the cardreader, nice and flush and not sticking out, for use as Readyboost, rather than plugging into the USB port.

 

You CAN use an SD or SDHC card for ReadyBoost. As long as the card is fast enough for 4k reads/writes to satisfy the MS minimum, then it will work fine (I tried it for a time before giving up on the concept). If you want to use ReadbyBoost, an SD/SDHC card is a better choice because it sits flush (even if they tend to be slightly slower than a USB flash drive).

 

Hmmm... When I plug in an SD card into the media reader, the option to use it for Readyboost does not appear on the Autorun menu (it is a fast R/W card). When I take the same card and put it in a USB drive and plug it in a USB port, the option to use it as Readyboost is on the Autorun menu.... Is there another way to designate it for Readyboost, if it is not on the pop-up menu when you plug it in?

 

You can right click on the SD card in my computer, select properties. Go to the ReadyBoost tab and you should be able to enable it there. At the moment I am unable to enable ReadyBoost on Win7 because "the system disk is fast enough that ReadyBoost is unlikely to provide additional benefit" .

 

Would the 'MTron 16GB SLC SSD' ( Model number MSD-EXCD3034?) sit flush with the outside of the tablet's case? Going by a vendor's website (it appears they have new models in stock), the presence of a plastic end cap with status lights seems to suggest it would not:



Also, from their detailed specifications sheet (.pdf), they provide all the dimensions, but I have never used an ExpressCard before, and could not find the dimensions of a typical ExpressCard slot, so I can't piece together how much if any overhang there would be (it does at least seem to have the standard 34mm width):



Should it overhang, would that piece possibly be detachable? Also, with regards to it not being bootable, did you determine if that is a limitation of the ThinkPad's BIOS, the ExpressCard standard, or some peculiarity of the drive itself? That same vendor linked above claims it is a bootable device, but at this point I am more inclined to believe they are wrong.

Those two other ExpressCard SSDs sound promising, especially the one with the mini-USB connector, hopefully Verbatim hits the market right along with third-party benchmarks of both drives. I really like the idea of more SLC though, despite the capacity and cost penalties. Between that and a 16GB flash card I would be well into my comfort zone of available space. To both Reggie and Jon, you both are probably right that absolute speed should not be my biggest concern, I just want the widest margin of safety possible, because depending on the encryption algorithms in use (and whether they are being cascaded on top of one another), there may be nontrivial performance hits across block size and read/write operations (sorry, there are definitely better posts over on those forums to address this topic). Given those relatively static benchmarks for the flash cards though, I will probably opt for a sanely priced 16GB flash card and choose one of those ExpressCards.

UPDATE: I came across this thread, and among other things, that does unfortunately answer the boot question. Everything else makes me that much more interested in purchasing one of these MTRON cards, but I am still concerned about the length. To this end, I did find dimensions on the ExpressCard.org Standards website:


So assuming this is the distance to be flush with the X200t's case, there is 17mm (2/3 ") excess on the MTRON card. Can anyone confirm this? And for anybody who has owned oversized ExpressCards, are projecting plastic tips fragile (that has been my experience ages ago with wireless PC Card adapters)?

 

Thanks for the info, jon - I did find the Readyboost tab in drive properties. Of course, some of us do not have an SLC SSD... so we would not get that same message.

 

I am reasonably confident that there would be an approximately 17mm protrusion out the side of the case. The fragility of the tip is largely dependent upon it's size. On a 34mm EVDO modem I used, the tip did seem a little fragile because it was almost a cubic inch in size (16cc). However, the tip on the MTron card is relatively small; as a result I think it should be relatively firm and not prone to breaking off (a DLink PCMCIA WLAN card I used on an old laptop had a very firm tip of comparable size).

Personally, I think your concerns about performance of Truecrypt on one of these drives is a bit overkill. In my experience with TrueCrypt the performance penalty on reads/writes tends to be quite small. It's just that the developers of TrueCrypt and their forum members tend to be extremely thorough and concerned about very small variations in performance and/or encryption (as well they should). In fact, they don't even recommend the use of TrueCrypt on an SSD because the wear leveling makes it impossible to guarantee that the data is as random as TrueCrypt would like.

I would probably opt for either an SDHC or the FileMate PCI-Express Card as they should SIT FLUSH and provide more than adequate performance for your intended usage.

 

Jon,

I was already coming to my senses about what I need, so your suggestions fully nixed the MTRON card for me. Plus, I just today received a Tom Bihn laptop case (Size 6T) that is a perfect fit for 8-cell X200 Tablets, but there isn't any leeway for ExpressCard protrusions, so yet another vote against it.

The FileMate has come up before, and now that I am looking to order one, I was wondering how the 48 GB model (the one you linked to) actually differs from the 64 GB model.

The 48 GB product specifications peg "Sequential Access - Read...115MB/s" and "Sequential Access - Write...65MB/s," and the single Newegg customer review for this model states "...Expresscard slot: Read: ~80 MB/s Write: ~35 MB/s...", which is still fine by me.

The 64 GB product specifications peg "Sequential Access - Read...up to 33MB/s" and "Sequential Access - Write...up to 30MB/s," but if the performance attrition is at the same percentage as the 48 GB model, I would be worried with where that leaves me.

I would love to believe the 64 GB model just came with more honest marketing (it was released after the 48 GB model), but unless there has been a big advance in the SSD economy, the prices just don't bear it out: the 48 GB costs $166.00 while the 64 GB costs $155.00. The only ray of hope they are performance equivalents rests with the 48 GB being currently out of stock, so maybe the 64 GB is the newer generation? But Newegg has an expected restocking date of 4/30, so maybe not? Plus, there is a similar dichotomy with their 24 GB / 32 GB offerings, where the 24 and 32 has the same official specs as the 48 and 64, respectively, but the smaller size is priced more than the larger size ($107.99 versus $94.99). So it looks even more like they're selling two different tiers of MLC. It shouldn't make to much of a difference on my purchasing decision; as long as the 48 GB reappears, it is more than enough space in the face of a 64 GB option, but is anyone able to settle this?

UPDATE: I should have turned to Google on that last bit: FileMate clearly delineates the 24/48 GB models as 'Ultra' and the 32/64 GB offerings without any moniker.

 

I believe the the 32/64GB model is in fact USB rather than PCI Express attached. USB 2.0 is rated at 480mbps, but in practice I have NEVER see a USB attached drive get above 35 MB/s (60 should be possible in theory). I am also pretty sure that the 64GB model is substantially older than the 48GB model (the 48GB only came onto the market a month or two ago).

I'm not sure what kind of falloff to expect on the FileMate 32/64GB model, but the earlier Lexar USB attached ExpressCard SSD was extremely slow (quoted at 15 MB/s, but closer to 4 MB/s in practice [here]).

Conversely, the 24/48GB AKA "Ultra" model is PCI-Express attached. As a result it has the potential for far higher performance. In addition, because USB is device hosted the ExpressCard model should also use less system resources. I would recommend the 24/48GB Ultra model if speed is a concern.

 

In terms of power usage, what are the specs on the 24/48GB Ultra versus the slower 32/64GB model? There are no information on the manufacturer's website... at least that I can find.

Cheers,
Gnimble

 

I've also read on another forum that someone's Filemate 24GB Ultra runs very hot. I am hoping it would not run as hot as my Core Series V2 SSD because the Expresscard slot does not vent well compared to hard drive slots... at least from what I can see.

Cheers,
Gnimble