Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

I have tried this card in 4 windows laptops so far and I am really surprised at the lack of driver support. I tried 2 Vista and 2 Windows 7 OS's and while sometimes the OS will mount the card for the most part it is pretty useless. There are no drivers on the WinTech site for this card. It seems this card works well for Mac users (based on the reviews) but beware that Windows users may have a pretty spotty experience with it like I have.

Started out really good, was booting and running my MacBook Pro (Late 08) just fine. But sadly today it died and Disk Utility now reports random amounts of total storage ( between 2 and 4gb ) every time I plug it in and the green light just flashes. When I try to format it I get an error message saying it cannot access memory and stalls out.

Very disappointed and looking for receipt to see if I can get a replacement or something, since it's a lot of money to throw away so quickly.

Background:

I bought my first Apple computer in June 2009 - I was a hardcore PC guy since the '80s, even though my work is heavily focused on graphic design and photography. This always came as a surprise to people since creatives have historically been associated with the Apple brand - so be it, whatever. Growing up with computers and not having a ton of extra cash, I always justified my PC-partisanship with the ol' "you get more bang for your buck" argument. However, as a youth, I spent many, many hours tinkering with my windows machines, figuring out problems 90% of the time. Since I was young and in school, I never thought to attach a dollar amount to my own time. Now that I'm a grownup, have a family and work a ton every week - I most definitely attach money to my time - and anything that saves me time saves me money. It didn't take long to discover that, after purchasing a 17" unibody MacBook Pro, this machine (and Apple in general), was going to save me a ton of money!

I apologize for the long-winded intro, but a little background provides context to better understand my motivation. Being frugal by nature, I'm always on the lookout for things that will improve my workflow - the more time I can save, the more billable hours I have available to the world. And if a product happens to accomplish this, and is inexpensive - I have to try it out.

What's this little slot for?

Many MacBook Pros have a small ExpressCard/34 slot on the side; only the 17" unibody models have it now, but I believe older MacBook Pros have them. I recently read about a Solid State Drive (SSD) that fits in the small ExpressCard slot - there's not much use for this port, and I doubt many people even use it - but anything that does fit it can take advantage of the amazing 3Gb/sec throughput provided by the internal eSATA connection. By putting an SSD in this slot, you can easily supercharge your mac!

I won't get into the nitty gritty details of why SSDs are so much better (see: faster) than conventional hard drives, but believe me when I say they offer many advantages over their mechanical, spinning counterparts. You can use an SSD in place of the hard drive in your MacBook Pro - but they are 3 to 4 times as expensive right now - and typically at lower capacities. So unless you're independently wealthy or don't mind eating ramen for a few months, you're probably not rocking an internal SSD in your laptop.

Good, fast and cheap? You don't say...

Last year Wintec released their Filemate 48GB ExpressCard SSD - what makes this card special is threefold. First, it's cheap. And by cheap I mean inexpensive. I picked one up for $140, shipped (it seems to fluctuate in price by $30). Second, it's FAST - especially its read performance - often exceeding 120MB/sec. Third, it's bootable. 48 Gigs isn't huge, especially compared to the MacBook Pro's internal 500GB hard drive. But 48GB is plenty of space for the Snow Leopard operating system and a good number of applications.

Click here to read the rest of this review on my blog: [...]

Love the Drive but unfortunately died after three days.

No plans to replace it - seems to be too unreliable to offer as a good bootable drive alternative.

Just received today and tried to install on MBP 15 unibody, Late 2008. Can't install OS X, the card overheats too fast and locks up the install. The system is well designed and therefore there is really no breathing room for the card, however I wouldn't expect it to over heat so quickly.

I bought this to supplement my MBP SSD 2565GB drive and use the empty slot for something useful.

When it is good it is VERY VERY good, but when it is bad it DEAD to me.

I am now on my Third, and will try the fourth for good measure.

First one:
Worked perfectly for 29 days, then dismounted and all data lost.

Second One:
Works great but any file copy which takes more than 2 minutes ( apx 8GB ) the card just dismounts, no data loss.

Third one:
Copies round 50MB then pauses for 30 secs.

Amazon as always saves the day with there return policy so I will persevere.

I bought the Wintec FileMate 48GB ExpressCard SSD for the purpose of running Windows 7 via Parallels. The SSD worked flawlessly the first day, but then when I tried to access the drive the second day it was unreadable by my MBP (Late 2008). I then connected the drive to my iMac (24" 3.06 GHz early 2009) via the USB cable and it was also unreadable. I tried to format the drive with either machine (both running 10.6.1) and I keep receiving some memory error message. I also tried inserting the ExpressCard SSD to my Sony Vaio SZ 670 N/C laptop (Windows 7 Pro 64-bit) which has a ExpressCard 34 slot, and the card was also unreadable and unformatable I read many reviews from other users noting that their Wintec ExpressCard SSD died in a few month, therefore I was anticipating it will eventually fail depending how long you use it. But I would have never guess it would die on me in less than two days. While the card was working, it was running extremely hot. It might be isolated incident. But based on my experience, I would not recommend this card.