14 DAY TRIAL // Active Media Products has just announced the introduction of a new series of ZIF SSD upgrade kits for first-generation MacBook Air, Sony VAIO and other ultra-portable notebook owners that enables them to quickly and seamlessly increase the storage performance of their notebooks.
Users have the option of choosing between three ZIF solid state drive models ranging in capacity from 64GB to 256GB, and all of these are bundled together with a kit meant to ease the upgrade process.
Along the usual accessories, the kit also includes a specially designed cloning device that can be used for quickly cloning the existing ZIF drive onto the new ZIF SSD through a USB port.
What this means is that users will no longer have to reinstall the operating system and move all their data on the new drive, as the cloning adapter will build a identical replica of their original HDD on the new drive.
"Our cloning adapter will help customers get up and running that much faster because now they don't need to reinstall the OS and all their applications,” said Active Media Products VP of Sales, Jerry Thomson.
We included a detailed installation guide and a mini screwdriver in the box to simplify the upgrade process," concluded the company's rep.
As far as the performance of AMP's ZIF solid state drives is concerned, the company states these can deliver transfer speeds (most probably sequential reads) of up to 130MB/s, but doesn't provide us with any information regarding their IOPS performance.
The three AMP SSD upgrade kits should be available right now with prices ranging from $169 for the 64GB drive to $289 and $739 for the 128GB and 256GB, respectively.
ZIF tape connections have been in use for quite a while in ultra-portable notebooks and other space confined devices, but were replaced by the SATA interface which sports a relatively small-form-factor connector by default.