FileMate USB + PCI-e Express card 48GB SSD Retail

by Filemate

Product Details

• Item Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• ASIN: B001QSZDJ8
• Item model number: 3FMS4D48M-WR
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #85 in Electronics > Computers & Add-Ons > Computer Accessories > Memory Card Adapters
• Date first available at Amazon.com: January 26, 2009

Product Description

The Wintec 48GB Filemate ExpressCard Solid State Drive is a NAND memory flash drive, designed to deliver a high performance, removable storage solution.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I love this SSD!, May 11, 2009

By 

aaron barrus (provo, ut) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: FileMate USB + PCI-e Express card 48GB SSD Retail (Personal Computers)

Used in my Macbook Pro 17" unibody. Since the cost of high performing laptop 2.5" SSDs are still unacceptably high, I decided to try this.

The performance is stellar, and I love it! I use it as my boot device now, and the internal drive for data. Using SpeedTools for Mac has shown sequential read speeds ~100mb/sec, sequential writes ~65mb/sec. Random speeds depend on the block size of course, but for 64k random reads, 64mb/sec, 64k random writes, 20mb/sec. This greatly exceeds the stock boot drives stats, 40mb/sec read/write sequential, 6mb/sec read/write random on 64k blocks.

This results in noticeable speed improvements with the OS. Boot times, app load times, and spinning-beach-ball-of-death times are all greatly reduced.

I conclude that this is an excellent device to utilize SSD without the unrealistic price tag of current laptop 2.5" SSD drives.

An additional bonus is that, using several, it is easy to boot any OS I want to: one card for Mac, one for windows. I can also pop my card out and put it into somebody else's mac to diagnose or operate their machine with my OS. I am in love with this card and will be buying more.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Too thick for MacBook Pro 6,1 (04/2010) Model, April 30, 2010

By 

T. J. Bittner - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: FileMate USB + PCI-e Express card 48GB SSD Retail (Personal Computers)

Recently purchased two of these units for my new MacBook Pro 6,1 (04/2010) model. Neither unit fits properly into the ExpressCard slot. While it is possible to force the SSD unit all the way into the ExpressCard slot, it then becomes wedged into the slot and the spring loaded eject feature no longer works. I had to use various tools to pry the SSD unit out of the ExpressCard slot. I don't imagine the enclosure of these SSD units will last very long if I have to pry them out of the ExpressCard slot each time I need to eject them. These units slide in about half way just fine, and then they start to become wedged into the slot. Let that be a warning to anyone else trying this...if it doesn't slide in all the way with ease, I'd advise not forcing it in unless you never plan to eject or remove it.

I also happen to have a Lexar 16GB ExpressCard SSD and a Transcend 32GB ExpressCard SSD. Both of those units fit properly into the MacBook Pro 6,1 ExpressCard slot and the spring loaded eject feature works just fine.

These Filemate ExpressCard SSDs do fit properly into my MacBook Pro 4,1 (02/2008) model and the spring loaded eject feature works just fine.

Comparing the thickness of the various SSDs, there is no noticeable difference or anomaly I can see with the naked eye. But based on how these varying units insert into the ExpressCard slot, it seems obvious the Filemate SSDs bow out in the middle of the enclosure. I'd also say the ExpressCard slot in the MacBook Pro 4,1 is a hair taller than the new unibody MacBook Pro 6,1 model, so maybe Apple's manufacturing tolerances have changed between the older assembly style MacBook Pro enclosures and the new unibody enclosures.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Supercharged my Macbook Pro, August 5, 2009

By 

Mac Fan "Mac" - See all my reviews

This review is from: FileMate USB + PCI-e Express card 48GB SSD Retail (Personal Computers)

Wow! I purchased one of these to fill the unused express card slot on my Macbook Pro 15 inch and used it as the OS X system and application drive (Installed OS X from retail media to the drive and migrated my settings from the original Macintosh HD volume. Left my very large "Users" directory on the original HD.) The speed improvement on my Mac is outstanding. The system cold boots in under ~20 seconds and applications launch in a snap. This card provides a noticeable immediate improvement across the board. Although this is anecdotal and may not be directly due to the addition of the card, I am seeing less beach balls in applications and generally waiting less for my Mac as well. As a bonus I was able to free up ~30GB of space on my original HD.

I have not taxed the virtual memory of my Mac (4 GB installed) but will be launching a few VMs in Fusion and see how having the swap space on this SSD drive effects performance.

For now, nothing but great things to say about this card and the improvement it made to my Mac. I highly recommend this to anyone who has an older Mac with an empty express card slot and is not afraid of doing a slightly custom install of OS X.