KingSpec128GB 2.5 inch PATA/IDE SSD, MLC Flash SM2236 Controller Internal Solid State Disk

For most of this "review", I'm going to specifically concentrate on the installation of the KingSpec SSD to my [relatively] ancient Acer "ultra-light" laptop. But part of this review is *definitely* going to be generally useful to anyone contemplating upgrading an older PATA based machine (including, lol, probably at least one reviewer who reported performance problems with his XP install after a few months had passed).I figure that almost anyone even thinking about doing something like this is probably pretty technically adept already, so my primary purpose here is less in recommending the drive itself (and, I do recommend it) than to detail specific details of my own machine upgrade. And to include some generally useful procedures (new "tricks" whoo-hoo) for doing this sort of upgrade....if you weren't a relatively experienced DIY'er, you probably wouldn't be bothering with something like this.--------------------------------SSD BRIEF REVIEW:As for the Kingspec SSD itself? - Well, it's a good price for a relatively rare beast. PATA SSD's aren't ever going to be all that common ...it was just luck of the draw that I took this over the Transcend version I was also looking at.To cut to the quick, I'd buy another Kingspec in a heartbeat, and I have no problem in recommending it. (I have five other machines with SATA SSD's btw, so I'm not exactly a noob' regarding their care and feeding.)--------------------------------SSD DETAILS:I had no dimensional fitment issues:_1. the SSD was *exactly* the same size in every dimension as the OEM Seagate Momentus 4200.2 (Mod. No. ST960821A) I pulled out of the drive tray_2. the SSD bolted to the drive bay as expected_3. the tray assembly subsequently slid into the laptop HDD drive bay perfectly_4. the SSD pins plugged into the internal PATA connector smoothly_5. there were no clearance issues whatsoeverI had no BIOS-related issues: the Kingspec was immediately picked up by the [old] Acer BIOS. (The drive jumper came set to the typical "master" setting that a boot PATA drive should be set to ...it's been awhile since I've seen one of those lol.)I have had no performance issues for the few days it's been running (and I will follow-up if I ever do) ...I've observed the performance is significantly better than the Momentus it replaced (in W7 WEI, the SSD has a 5.9 rating ...so it's easily the fastest HW component in the little Acer lol ...uh, there's no "WEI" in XP, so all I can say is that the OS boots faster, the laptop resumes from hibernation - and sleep mode - WAY faster, and applications and the like load way, way faster).Battery life seems the same (although at this point, both the batteries on the Acer are - unsurprisingly- in dire need of replacement); I just don't have a good baseline of comparison here though, so YMMV.--------------------------------BACKGROUND:I purchased a 3002WTCi [ultra-light] as an onsite laptop in late summer 2007 ...it was a faithful and invaluable asset for onsite work (I'm a sys admin with 30 plus years experience) for over 3 years. After that, it did yeoman duty for another couple of years plus as a "bedtime companion", to catch up on the news and blogs late nights - I have minor insomnia - before I finally bought a 'droid Nexus tablet. The little Acer has pretty much sat on a shelf since then.The Acer originally came with a 64GB Seagate HDD that was partitioned into two 30GB logical drives ...one partition was still empty, and the boot partition was about 75% used with XP and MS Office and the various software utilities and files I found it useful to carry with me to onsite locations. So I was pretty sure the 64GB of the Kingspec wasn't going to pose any capacity limitation issues.I'd thought about upgrading it with an SSD for several years, but it was hard justifying the expense (especially when I started to use it less). Plus, the techie community consensus seemed to be that the performance of a PATA SSD wasn't exactly all that much of an upgrade. (And finding PATA SSD's was no piece of cake a few years back, either.) Regardless, that was then, and now is now, and I've my own SSD experiences to draw upon ...and at least as far as price (and aforementioned capacity), the Kingspec at 64GB wasn't going to be much of a budgetary hardship.--------------------------------OS UPGRADE:I decided that even though there's absolutely no driver support for Windows 7 for the little Acer (which has an old-school Intel 915GM graphics engine, and various other ancient and non-W7-supported HW bits and pieces ...you're not going to find W7 support for the 3002WTCi no matter how good your mad googling skillz are lol), it was still worth it to me to try a fresh W7 install, just to avoid the lack of support for TRIM in XP ...especially as TRIM support is kind of vital for an SSD, for longevity and performance, making a W7 attempt was "worth a shot".I also didn't want to deal with alignment issues with XP on an SSD either (there's a thread at oczforum.com - google "How to Align OCZ SSD in XP using USB - SATA and Vista recovery disk" - that explains the procedure pretty thoroughly).Sooo ...since W7 has TRIM support built-in, I decide a fresh install "just to see" would be worth the little additional effort involved in a new W7 install, even if I eventually decided I'd have to undo it all, and go with XP (I didn't really have any vital and/or personal files to worry about - they'd long since been copied to network storage - so there wasn't even a reason to clone the original drive: I just pulled the old HDD, and set it aside).Plus, I had the luxury of a spare W7-Home Premium license that I purchased years ago that I've never used: like I said, "...worth a shot."--------------------------------OS INSTALL:The 3002WTCi is an ultra-light (by the old definition); it didn't have an internal optical drive to boot the W7 DVD setup disc from.So I googled around a bit, and found (and followed) instructions by Steve Tyler at instructables.com - google "Install Windows 7 without USB or DVD without upgrading!" - for doing a self-booting SSD install.Basically you copy the \boot and \sources folder and the "boot" file from the W7 DVD to the root of your freshly NTFS formatted SSD using a working PC, and use the Windows 7 diskpart utility to make the SSD active ...then, install the SSD to your laptop, and at first boot the process goes right into the familiar Windows 7 setup screen.I had absolutely no issues whatsoever with the setup portion of W7 on the little Acer. After a couple of the typical W7 setup process restarts, I had a working OS. Cool.NOTE: My W7 license was an upgrade license ...and the setup wouldn't accept the [entirely legal, as the laptop came with XP Pro] upgrade key because it was a "new fresh install" which was "not supported by the upgrade license". (The help menu suggested re-installing an earlier version of Windows, and then re-installing W7: LOLOL. *That* wasn't going to happen!) So I skipped past the license key entry screen (which turns a new install into a 30-day trial), and went looking for an alternative solution.To get around that problem [error code 0xC004F061], I found instructions by Kapil Arya at thewindowsclub.com (google "FIX : Error 0xC004F061, Unable To Use Product Key For Clean Install") that detailed changing a DWORD key setting in the Registry (change the value of HKLM/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Setup/OOBE/MediaBootInstall from the default value of "1" to a "0") and then running the command "slmgr /rearm" in an elevated prompt command ...which fixed the issue.--------------------------------POST INSTALL DRIVER ISSUES:After the Windows Setup process was finally complete, I booted into an 800x600 resolution display (heck: at least it was better than 640x480), and was able to change that to 1024x768 using the default W7 VGA driver. The trackpad worked as far as basic functionality. The keyboard worked just fine. The wired network port didn't report any errors (thank you Broadcom). The USB ports worked (good thing, too). Gratifyingly enough, the laptop was more than marginally functional at first boot.All the more specialized HW bits were down. No internal wireless (this was *not* a huge issue AFAIWC, since I had stopped using the internal wireless years ago, as it simply couldn't connect to any modern-era, n-capable routers ...it was great with the old Linksys WRT54G, but c'mon lol). No sound card (I'm not sure there is sound yet, though the error is gone ...just haven't tested it). UPDATE (06/2014): I got the internal network card to work after all (it was me, not it lol).But - more serious - the stock W7 VGA driver didn't support the 1280x768 native resolution of the little Acer (a Very Big Deal that would have killed continuing using W7 for me).To cut to the chase: most driver related issues were fixable, by the simple expedient of installing the original XP drivers, in compatibility mode.(Find the particular XP era, driver setup executable, and right click, choose Properties, click the Compatibility tab, and check-mark "Run this program in compatibility mode for:" (choose XP) and you're good. At least in the case of the little Acer, XP drivers haven't appeared to cause any deal-killer problems.)The only caveat to installing XP drivers in compatibility mode is that the older Intel graphics driver - while supporting the resolution just fine - isn't, ever, going to win any speed contests.Plus, the Intel 915GM chipset simply does *not* support W7 Aero functions at all at the hardware level (which is not the fault of the driver itself); it's old, and that's just the way it is. There's no work-around. Which leads to: I'd suggest (highly!recommend!) that you set the graphics properties to "Classic Windows" and change the Advanced Options to "Performance" ...because with those settings, the display performance is at least perfectly acceptable for mundane Internet related purposes like browsing and emails.The WEI 1.0 rating of the graphics card is the worst rating (of any piece of hardware) I've ever seen. You're not going to do any gaming beyond solitaire with this, lol. But its performance *is* fine for almost anything else.--------------------------------MISC. OBSERVATIONS:I'd do this again in a minute.It was well worth the $70 to have a reasonably quick "spare" laptop (whose entire history I am intimately familiar with).The Acer is much, much quicker in common usage with W7 on the SSD. Much. Quicker.(This observation seems to contrast with other reviewers who stayed with XP installs, and reported lesser gains. While the little Acer is [still] not a speed demon due to the use of an SSD, it is transparently and obviously faster ...which was also the case when we updated my wife's older Lenovo X-series laptop. So if you have a Windows 7 license, you might want to try upgrading even older, non-supported hardware - using XP compatibility mode for drivers - before you stay with XP. Just sayin' - and YMMV - but W7 worked for me.)...I will follow-up in a few months if I have any additional observations. If the SSD has any issues at all, I'll also do a follow-up.--------------------------------UPDATE (06/2014):As stated above, the internal network card is, actually, working. (Basically, I should have been paying closer attention during the post-install setup lol.)...and I've found the little laptop useful enough to have installed an old Office 2010 license to it (which install demonstrated that some hardware performance issues aren't mitigated by the faster SSD: the 2010 install took a couple of *hours* lol ...I've upgraded to Office 2013 subscription for the rest of my workstations, and as the little Acer has proven to be - again - useful, I decided it needed a proper email app' ...and I've long since been an Office Outlook "fanboy" lol)....still no real issues. It's not a multi-tasking warrior (the Acer's 2GB of RAM is adequate for single-tasking), but it's proven pretty do-able for keeping a few IE tabs open. (I open Outlook "as needed", and close it afterwards.)

I use a Roland VS1680 for recording music still up to this day. It is the best, but the hhd has been giving me problems. I saw this new school meets old-school type of ssd and I gave it a chance. Last week my old hdd gave me some weird noises and I decided to order one of these ssd's and not even turn on the machine anymore until I got it. I installed it and everything went flawlessly. It fits better than the original. Slightly smaller in thickness, faster, no noise, cooler, and i have more partitions than before. I am so happy. Here are some pictures of the roland working with new ssd and a picture of where it goes in.

so far so good. wanted ssd based hdd with pata interface for an older dell 9300 laptop project. Works out of the box with linux. currently have 5 versions of puppy linux and just added antix and mxlinux to list of installed OS's. Performance is good considering the laptop is older 32bit CPU/bus speeds. Antix runs great with it. This 120GB SSD + 2GB memory turned the boat anchor into something usable.

Right now I'm in the middle of upgrading every single machine in this house to the joys of solid state, and that includes the vintage PATA fleet. Sadly KingSpec's "Yansen" lineup of PATA SSDs is not exactly a plug and play solution. Not without some research, which you WON'T find online!First, the good points:- Build quality is surprisingly good - case is made of metal sheet instead of flimsy plastic, and the PCB is secured to the case with screws.- By far the most affordable PATA SSD, even if the price/capacity ratio is awful compared to SATA/NVMe SSDs of the same size - this is a "boutique" product after all.- Intel MLC flash - not modern low-grade QLC garbage!- Read performance is good - up to 90MB/s on a UDMA100 port, not bad for PATA at all.The "meh" points:- Controller is a SiliconMotion SM2236AC, which is meant for CF cards. Not exactly the best choice for a proper PATA SSD, but it's basically the *only* native PATA SSD controller in production in the 2020s, it looks like.- No documentation - getting the jumpers right was matter of trial and error! The drive comes jumpered by default with the jumper at the leftmost position (when viewed from the label side), which will NOT work on many systems as is, and in others it will experience severe delays with drive autodetection. The *proper* position is as shown in the photo - jumper goes on two topmost pins to signal a Master drive!- Write speeds are hardly impressive, as expected from old MLC.- Flash chips are new old stock (?) - my drive had Intel chips made in 2014 (controller itself was made in 2022, HDD was assembled in late 2023)And now, the ugly points:- No TRIM support on firmware. Believe it or not, TRIM works over PATA if the drive supports it and the host knows how to issue the command (tested on many SSDs using PATA to SATA bridgeboards). Most likely this is because of the CF card controller from SMI used on the SSD.- Other firmware features come disabled for no good reason at all. Need an HPA? (useful for preserving recovery partitions and other things like IBM's Predesktop Area) Sorry, can't do. The controller firmware SUPPORTS HPAs, but you have to get a copy of SMI's SM2236AC MPtools and reflash the drive firmware to enable the feature (and by reflashing the drive you WILL lose some capacity!). Of course doing that likely voids all and any warranty.- Drive case is marginally bigger than a standard 9.5mm 2.5" drive. This will definitely cause installation problems on many computers - on my T40 is a ridiculously tight fit, and the plastic bezel on the drive caddy warps a bit!- Kingspec/Yansen support is non-existent. No documentation AT ALL, no tech specs, and the only end user support they offer is over email and a phone/Whatsapp in China! And of course they have changed specs without prior notice (including the rebranding of their entire PATA lineup to Yansen). This hurts me especially badly since I'm in Venezuela and shipping things back to Amazon is a non-starter.Compatibility tests:- IBM ThinkPad T40: tight fit, doesn't get detected on default jumper settings, works fine after figuring out the correct jumper setting, Predesktop Area works after enabling HPA with a firmware reflash.- JMicron 2033x USB to SATA/PATA bridgechip: takes a while to get detected on the default jumper setting, after figuring out the correct jumper setting it gets detected instantly.Despite having jumped all those flaming hoops, the drive works like a charm ONCE you manage to get it going, and the upgrade is a great way to inject a new lease in life to your old metal. Getting rid of HDD-specific problems like high latency, fragile moving parts, and high power usage is worth the investment, even if the PATA interface is rather performance-limited for solid storage media. These Yansen SSDs are not bad drives, but the lack of documentation, the mystery jumper settings, disabled useful ATA features, and missing TRIM support means it won't be smooth sailing from the moment you unbox them! I would expect better from a 64GB drive worth the same as a nice 1TB Tier 1 SATA SSD!But then your other option is that Trascend PATA SSD that costs DOUBLE and it's always in short supply, so it's not like we retro hardware enthusiasts have it easy :/