32GB KingSpec 1.8-inch IDE CF 50-pin SSD Solid State Disk (MLC) by KingSpec

I wanted to get my X1 running XP running again. It now runs quick too.

great product at a great price from Chinese based Original Design Manufacturer and brand Kingspec giving storage possibilities to old industrial-grade quality computers using 1.8" drive interfaces

these are proper old-school SSDs without TRIM (like back when running a full Operating System on a 512MB Compact Flash card used to cost upwards of £500 for the card) and closer to the real spirit of what SSDs are supposed to be

i mostly use the Compact Flash connecter versions but the IDE versions are also rated as standard for hundreds or thousands of physical connections/disconnections unlike modern consumer-grade SATA drives and modern computers which ironically needed that when their SSDs needed replacing

these old-school 1.8" SSDs generally have high read speeds and low write speeds and are designed for efficient embedded systems and software and i have been running these for servers and mobile flawlessly for years effectively 24/7 with important user-data written and stored on normal magnetic HDDs ;

'to each their own' i suppose but i compare this to modern SSDs which are basically only being sold and used for read and write "speed" and 'supposed' to be replaced constantly (even though there is absolutely no reference to 'speed' in the term "solid state drive" and old-school Compact Flash SSDs (which were generally the fastest non-volatile (non-RAM-based) SSDs around) were always generally much slower than mechanical Hard Disk Drives except for spin-up time and random-access) and indeed SSDs were not used by 'overclock' type folks but rather 'underclock' type folks which is apparently not even a word in modern dictionaries unlike 'overclock' ;

the whole point of a SSD is supposed to be for things like toughness reliability (solidness!) especially for portable use and low power consumption (like a fridge freezer rated at 100 watts can easily draw over 1000 watts for several seconds when it's motor spins up like the disk platters of a mechanical Hard Disk Drive need to spin up constantly and/or then continue spinning)

(and a SSD is still etymologically a 'Hard' Drive as opposed to a 'Floppy' Disk Drive but it is not a 'Disk' Drive or a Solid State 'Disk' because there are no disks or discs involved like a DVD or Optical Disc Drive ; and good quality portable CD music players specifically had some of the same Solid State memory technology installed to hide issues with using a non-solid-state spinning CD drive while moving around ; they did their best to read a number of seconds past the current playback time position of the song from the CD and temporarily stored that data in Solid State memory until it was played back from the Solid State memory ; nothing to do with speed)

Kingspec have continued to develop these 1.8" SSD drives and/or firmware to include some SMART functionality but the Sleep States could do with being improved because they run almost 20 Celsius less cool in my smallest computers than the original 1.8" Toshiba mechanical HDDs and consume that extra electrical power

it is a pleasure to use these drives for example cold/hard booting my general purpose Operating System is almost as fast as coming out of (RAM based) Sleep Mode on any normal modern laptop computer straight out of the retail shop

and i get that performance every time with no manual or automatic maintenance whatsoever even after a year of visiting bloated websites or a year of viruses trying to watch me through a built-in web-cam for example two of my sisters (one is a (successful university-educated professional web designer) tech) just spent another couple grand on new macbook pros (or whatever they are called) because their previous ones started running slow again but to each their own

one final thought ; i stopped watching f1 ages ago but from what i remember their most respected aerodynamics engineer doesn't even drive a sports car let alone a modern one "with f1 parts bolted on" but instead likes doing doughnuts in his back garden in his old banger

thanks Kingspec for supporting old hardware and therefore 'the environment' and MemoryC for another straightforward transaction !

Product arrive Thailand in 4 days, faster than expected for normal registered mail. The only complain is can't track the package when it goes outside shipping country. Product itself worked as expected. :-)