14 DAY TRIAL // Old PC and notebook users or collectors rejoice, Transcend has just announced the new PSD320 SSD on its official website. What’s so special about this SSD? It has an IDE interface.
It comes in 2.5” format and has a traditional notebook 44-pin configuration. Transcend calls it “ultra-fast,” but I’d only say it manifests a mediocre transfer rate of 104 MB/s when reading and 93 MB/s when writing.
These speeds are well below the 133 MB/s maximum transfer rate of the majority of PATA chipsets launched between 2001 and the later years that were UDMA 6 capable. So basically Transcend’s new product is not able to fill the 11-year old Ultra-ATA133 bandwidth although it touts “ultra-fast” sequential read and write transfer speeds.
We wonder how much lower the random read or write speeds can be.
Users will probably appreciate the fast access times of any SSD and enjoy a somewhat good, sustained sequential read and write speeds.
The drive comes in MLC and SLC versions, and Transcend even recommends the latter one for drives used for operating system install. There is no information on the used SSD controller and that’s quite unfortunate because of the horrible experience some users had with their older JMicron-based Transcend SSD.
Wear-leveling technology is included, there’s Advanced Power Shield technology that prevents data loss in the event of a sudden power loss, and the drive also features integrated ECC (Error Correction Code) to ensure accurate data transfer.
If everything is just as promised with the PSD320 SSD, it will likely be a good upgrade for all the Centrino and Centrino Duo notebooks featuring an IDE interface and also for any older PC with IDE if an adapter is available to make it able to connect with a normal motherboard IDE connector.