For general information, see the Microdrive History .
While it was obvious that "regular" CF-II sized Microdrives could be replaced by CompactFlash cards, Microdrives with other interfaces were hard to replace with flash memory. Transcend offers a series of "1.0" SDD" modules with the same 35-pin interface and the same footprint of 40×30mm² as the Hitachi 3K8 Series and the Seagate ST1.3 Series .
The current "SSD" series offers
four different capacities:
Unfortunately, these modules use MLC flash, hence the "-M", but the write performance is still good enough to replace the Microdrives.
The previous "IFD" series
(IDE Flash Disk)
was available with capacities from 2GB to 8GB,
either as SLC or as MLC Flash:
This is the largest available model with 16GB, offering 16,039,018,496 Bytes (14.93GB) available space. I have no adapter from 35-pin to regular ATA available, so I can't give any extra information.
Below you can see the main side of the SSD. At the top is the 35-pin ZIF connector (with open hinge), at the right is the controller, a Silicon Motion SM223TF (actually a CompactFlash card controller), at the left underneath the sticker is one of the four flash modules.
| |
| Transcend 1.0" SSD TS16GSSD10-M | |
Below is the storage side of the SSD, holding three of the four flash modules. The modules are Samsung K9HBG08U1A-PCB0, where the K9 stands for NAND Flash Memory, H the classification letter, BG for 32Gbit, 08 for 8 bit. The rest of the sequence is about voltage range and other characteristics.
 | |
| Transcend 1.0" SSD TS16GSSD10-M | |
The sustained read rate is about 27MB/s, the maximum sustained write rate is about 12MB/s. However, the actual sustained write rate depends on the cluster size, the cluster alignment, and the amount of updates in the filesystem area.
Test results will be added later...