Im in the market to get more media for my sony pmw ex1r. I was gonna buy the Sony PHu 120R hard drive until I found out about MxM Express SSD recorder. I understand you can buy it with different size solid state HD's Has anybody heard anything about the unit, and does anybody have an opinion on the unit.

Im in the market to get more media for my sony pmw ex1r. I was gonna buy the Sony PHu 120R hard drive until I found out about MxM Express SSD recorder. I understand you can buy it with different size solid state HD's Has anybody heard anything about the unit, and does anybody have an opinion on the unit.

Not seen it in person as yet but it looks very promising. Ideal for conferences, and of course it's SSD so no moving parts. The MxM unit also looks like it is powered from the camera rather than battery, so no having to spend even more money on batteries.

The HD recorders of all varieties are really only suited to fixed position recording (i.e on a tripod). For mobile recording you really are best sticking with cards.

But the choice of an SSD over a platter based device is a no brainer.

One slight operational hitch: "Full camera recognition of the SSD recorder upon rebooting the camera."

Not sure but it sounds like you have to reboot the camera whenever you plug in the SxS connector.

I have a feeling this is the same for all HD based units. In anycase, given the potential length of recording time, why would you be removing it? You'd set it up for the day and would leave it.

I don't see it being a show stopper. You basically have a few disadvantages for the advantage of super long recording times. It's really of use for the conference guys.

I've had the chance to test this unit briefly over a couple of days.
It simply works as advertised so there isn't much more I can say about it. That it is powered from the camera via the USB cable from the adaptor is very good, less cables hanging around the camera is a plus. The supplied USB cables are very solid unlike many. Because they are right angle the risk of one being unplugged by snagging is reduced as far as possible. A readily available velcro cable tie to secure the USB cable to the camera handle might be an option some users would consider.

To download the files one externally powers the disk housing. I didn't try using the USB interface for downloading, instead opting to switch the interface to eSATA. As I'm only running WinXP I did this with the PC powered down to avoid any possible issues with hot swapping SATA drives. As advertised the download was VERY fast. I don't know if hot swapping will work or not however for a fullish SSD the time lost restarting the computer is very minor compared to the saving in download time using USB. I understand from Marek that hot swapping is possible but I didn't have the opportunity to test this.

I also had the optional mounting kit fitted to the camera. It doesn't get in the way of anything although using it with the Hoodman Loupe might be an issue. For those with Olaf's camera plate the optional wing does seem to me a better path to go down. A small piece of industrial Velcro would hold the SSD and its housing more than securely enough or else a male / female cold shoe combo could be used.

I got mine two days ago ad have been running tests - it works.

I actually got the empty shell kit as I wanted to see if the hard drives that I have been using with my SI-2K would work with the SSD recorder - they do.
These are 200gb, 7200rpm units that had been recording 2K footage so I was confident about the data rate but didn't know about power consumption. So far no issues.
I screwed the disc into the unit, plugged it into the camera (PMW-350) and fired up. A message came up saying media not supported so I formatted the disc in camera and it came up with 677 mins of recording time.

As I'm only planning to use this recorder when I do conference head on shoots the fact that it is a spinning hard drive doesn't worry me - and I've got three of these discs hanging around doing nothing. If I was running around I'd feel a lot better with a solid state drive.

If you need to record a lot of footage, non stop - get one.

for info the drives that can be used in the enclosure are 2.5" drives (laptop style hard drives - or old ipod).
Also recording in the EX1 is limited to 80GB but you can go bigger in the EX1R.

This is an interesting device. I take it that it's powered via the SxS slot? With a 500GB drive, it could greatly reduce the power and space footprint for a poor man's device to offload cards at the end of the day by using the camera to transfer cards to this device.

Does anyone know if you can offload multiple cards from the other slot onto this device using the Camera's copy function?

Have just done a quick test copying from a small card to the MxM recorder - no problem.

So, yes, you could use this as a copy & back up unit in the field.

Thank you Rohan. I am curious what happens when you copy multiple cards to the MxM recorder. Does it maintain separate folders for each card or do they end up all in one BPAV folder as if you'd shot them all directly to the MxM?

Transferred four cards, shot over the last couple of weeks - all footage ended up in one BPAV folder. So not the ideal solution for back ups - I'll stick to my Nexto for that.

In clip browser, all the shot info of the original - timecode, date & time shot etc - is retained.

Here is what I ended up doing:

I bought two Expresscard to USB adapters:

DealExtreme: $11.65 USB 2.0 ExpressCard/34mm Extension Card for Laptops (http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.28900)

Two SATA/ESATA/USB Laptop hard drive enclosures:

DealExtreme: $16.33 2.5" SATA/eSATA USB 2.0 HDD Enclosure with USB and eSATA Cables (http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.18850)

I used a 160 GB SATA Laptop Hard Drive I had removed from my laptop a year ago to replace with a larger one. So that was free.

Purchased a second one that was cheap:

Newegg.com - Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD1600BEVT 160GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136391)

I insert the two Expresscard to USB adapters into the EX1. Then I plug USB cables from the cards to each hard drive enclosure. Turn the camera on and it asks you to format each. When that is done it says you have 298 minutes each in slot A and slot B. That's nearly ten hours of recording for around $100 (for me because I already had one spare SATA laptop drive). Otherwise around $140-$150 (including the hard drives). The cameras will only format up to 84GB per slot so you lose some space on each drive, but smaller drives aren't necessarily cheaper. Transfer to laptop or computer using eSATA is faster. The eSATA cables are supplied with the Kingwin enclosures. The AKE expresscard adapters fit very smoothly into the camera's slots (they also go in all the way) and have the advantage over the MxM Express SSD recorder of accepting a full size USB male plug instead of their mini-USB plug which is not as secure. That in addition to the entire thing being a fraction of the cost.

The Kingwin enclosures do not come with a power supply. I used a spare USB Hub I had that has four ports. It puts out 5 Volts per port. If you have a laptop with you you can plug one of the USB cables into that for 5 volts. Dolgin has a battery adapter that takes a Sony BP battery. Lots of ways to get power.

By the way, expect to wait a few weeks for deliveries to the US from Deal Extreme. They are cheap and make good on their products, but they are in China so it takes awhile. I wasn't in a rush to try this experiment so it wasn't a problem for me to wait.

John

EDIT: Sony. If you are listening, how about a firmware update that allows more than 84GB per slot to be formatted?

Now why didn't I think of that? Have you seen any issues arise?

Great solution.

How do you power the USB drives?

Now why didn't I think of that? Have you seen any issues arise?

Great solution.

You might want to use a separate mini-USB male to Full USB male cable if you use a separate power supply. Otherwise - no. Click on the Kingwin enclosure link to see what I mean regarding their split cable.

John

Been playing with my MxM recorder which arrived yesterday and am very pleased with it so far. The SSD option works very well and seems far more robust than a platter based device.

Seems well built and I can't seem to make it fall over when recording. Overcranking isn't a problem and battery drain didn't seem heavy (on first impression it seems to knock about 10% off the battery life). The unit is powered directly via the USB cable from the camera so there's only a single cable and no complicated power arrangements to worry about.

Because it is solid state you can mount it anywhere you like. The MxM mount works well when the camera is on sticks (it's quite a novel design that is different from the normal hot shoe), but I have had to remove the mount for normal work because it interfered with the way I hold the camera. But I do have small hands, and the mount is easily fixed again with cable ties (remember you'd really only use this device when on a tripod for long form recording, it's certainly not for run and gun). I am looking to see if there are any other methods of mounting that suit my shooting style as an SSD has no restrictions with its orientation.

I've spoken for my dislike of placing a traditional platter based HD on top of a camera and have been met with mild bemusement by many. Originally coming from an IT background, I'm all too familiar with hard disks and their inner workings. When I worked in IT support I lost count of how many HD's we replaced in laptops because they were killed for various reasons, and nearly all of them through user abuse rather than what I would consider natural failure.

For my money SSD is the only way forward. Platter based hard disks like to be totally flat or at 90 degrees. So running a disk on top of a camera where it won't be totally flat is just asking for trouble.

I'm yet to see the speed of the transfer via the ESATA connector but a PCI card for the Mac has been ordered. In theory it should be blindingly fast,

I'll do a proper write up in due course (I need to test it further) but have already dissected an 80gb HD to try and demonstrate my point about fragility.

Certainly first impressions are very good.

How do you power the USB drives?

The split cable (click on the link in my post to see it) has a mini-USB male and DC power jack on one end (that goes to the hard drive enclosure) and a split full size dual USB male on the other (one goes to the camera and the other to something to give it 5 volts of power). That something can be a slot on a laptop or one slot on a USB hub. If you are using a USB hub for power or a battery adapter like Alex Dolgin sells or a 5v AC power supply, I would recommend that you buy a separate mini-USB male to Full USB male cable to go from the AKE expresscard adapter on the camera to the mini-USB port on the Kingwin enclosure. Then use the split cable for power only. Or, if you take the split cable to a store like Radio Shack you can get a 5 volt AC adapter with the same size center positive plug as the Kingwin split cable has and use that, but Radio Shack will charge you around $20 for each adapter. Then you don't need the split cable at all.

Of course, I am using two setups so I use the split cables plugged into two slots of a four-port USB hub that I had (It has it's own power supply) for power to both units and two separate mini-USB to Full USB cables to go from the two express cards to the two enclosures for data transfer. You can use USB extension cables for any of this to suit your needs. The split cables will work for everything, but it makes me a little nervous in terms of the 5 volts so that is why I used the two extra cables.

John

The SSD option works very well and seems far more robust than a platter based device.



.." more robust" ??

How? You mean less easily damaged as you explained. Because in terms of recording, they both work the same, but at a really disproportionate cost especially since you can only get 84GB worth out of either.

John

.." more robust" ??

How? You mean less easily damaged as you explained. Because in terms of recording, they both work the same, but at a really disproportionate cost especially since you can only get 84GB worth out of either.

John

In terms of recording they work the same. Except one of them has a load of moving parts inside with tolerances so fine that the head that reads the data is less than the width of a human hair from the surface of the recording surface. The head is kept there by a tiny cushion of air generated by the platters spinning. Should something go wrong the head has to return to the park position in a fraction of a second. These mechanisms are seriously quick.

These are devices that were intrinsically designed to be kept stationary but have been engineered so they can tolerate being moved around. However as discussed, even with all that engineering they still don't care for it.

Standard hard disks are a marvel of engineering. Go and open one up as I did yesterday and have a look (although do this with a dead drive as a speck of dust is enough to foul the heads). But even if your camera is on sticks and not moving, it's still not where I'd want a drive with moving parts.

Yes SSD's are expensive, but prices are falling and you get a unit that is totally solid state. It's ironic that we only just got away from having mechanical parts in the recording part of our cameras and suddenly people are taking a step back again. I thought we had embraced solid state?

I am coming at this from a different angle from most people I suspect. People have got used to these portable HD units you can take anywhere and modern units are infinitely more robust than they used to be. But the killer is that the SSD has no moving parts, they haven't had to engineer around a problem of some rather delicate mechanisms as its a totally different technology.

Do platter based devices still have a place in the workflow? Well if you have to hand over the footage at the end of the day then yes. There is an increased risk of problems but they are now dirt cheap.

But if you are looking for a unit that you are going to be keeping for a few years, a SSD unit is the wise investment.

And this is before I've tested the speed of which an SSD can offload its footage. I'm hoping (and expecting) it to be very quick. If you've had a play with an SSD in a computer, you'll know just how quick!

.." more robust" ??

How? You mean less easily damaged as you explained. Because in terms of recording, they both work the same, but at a really disproportionate cost especially since you can only get 84GB worth out of either.

John

They work the same? Camera powered over one cable MxM Recorder vs Kingwin split cables, straight connectors and 5v battery or laptop?

Read the DealExtreme reviews. I wouldn't touch the cheap Chinese Kingwin stuff with a ten foot pole.

From a review on the Deal Extreme site:
-The build quality is really poor. I know it's cheap and you don't have to expect a lot of it. But everything can be dismantled just by touching it. The rear (plastic) keeps coming of so I had to use tape to fix it. And the circuitbord keeps falling out when you want to put the cables in the connectors.
-And second, my eSata connection doesn't work...
Other Thoughts: It is a fine enclosure if you tape and glue it all together. The eSata doesn't work for me but the usb-connector works just fine.
Bottomline: Buy another one!
The build quality is just too poor.

They work the same? Camera powered over one cable MxM Recorder vs Kingwin split cables, straight connectors and 5v battery or laptop?

Read the DealExtreme reviews. I wouldn't touch the cheap Chinese Kingwin stuff with a ten foot pole.


As a DX customer I can echo the fact I wouldn't want any card they sell in my workflow. DX are great for lots of things but alot of their kit is of questionable quality for a professional environment.

Although if anyone does end up putting a DX order in, get some of the rare earth magnets. They are enormous fun! So strong you can put them either side of your hand and they stick. Keep them well away from your kit though.... or anything metal.... and your magnetic media.

Hi Rohan,

"These are 200gb, 7200rpm units that had been recording 2K footage so I was confident about the data rate but didn't know about power consumption."

What brand is the HDD you removed from your SI-2K system?

They work the same? Camera powered over one cable MxM Recorder vs Kingwin split cables, straight connectors and 5v battery or laptop?

Read the DealExtreme reviews. I wouldn't touch the cheap Chinese Kingwin stuff with a ten foot pole.

From a review on the Deal Extreme site:
-The build quality is really poor. I know it's cheap and you don't have to expect a lot of it. But everything can be dismantled just by touching it. The rear (plastic) keeps coming of so I had to use tape to fix it. And the circuitbord keeps falling out when you want to put the cables in the connectors.
-And second, my eSata connection doesn't work...
Other Thoughts: It is a fine enclosure if you tape and glue it all together. The eSata doesn't work for me but the usb-connector works just fine.
Bottomline: Buy another one!
The build quality is just too poor.

I have two of them. They don't seem poorly made to me although I am not rough with my equipment. At those prices one can pick up several for spares. They certainly work well enough. The eSATA does in fact work so I am not sure what that User who stated that was doing with his interface.

Moreover you said that you "wouldn't touch the cheap Chinese Kingwin stuff with a ten foot pole"

Can you post a link here to similar equipment here that is in fact not made in China?

Thanks,

John

Can you post a link here to similar equipment here that is in fact not made in China?


John

This is a total red herring. Many factories build stuff to spec for a number of clients. So one day they might be building cheap rubbish to be sold on websites for next to nothing, the next day they might be building similar cards for Sony at a much higher spec to be sold at 10 times the price.

This is a total red herring. Many factories build stuff to spec for a number of clients.
---------------------------------------------------
So why agree with the comment cheap Chinese Kingwin stuff instead of cheap Kingwin stuff?

Let's not get sidetracked so let's try another approach Marcus and Les. I don't remove the hard drives from the enclosures at all. There is no need to. They haven't come out once. All I can say is that the entire setup is reliable, not that flimsy, and a bargain approach that simply works. If someone else want's to buy something they think is better that's fine. I just thought I would share what I did for any fellow forum member who might want to try it that is on a budget as I am.

John

This is a total red herring. Many factories build stuff to spec for a number of clients.
---------------------------------------------------
So why agree with the comment cheap Chinese Kingwin stuff instead of cheap Kingwin stuff?


I didn't explicitly agree regarding that manufacturer. What I said, having purchased alot of stuff from DX, is that I wouldn't let the kit they sell into my acquisition workflow. Now I think of it, a few years back I was using an IDE to USB converter from them that inexplicably started smoking when I hooked it up one day. The HD and computer were fine but the convertor board was fried (there is nothing quite like the magic smoke that escapes from failing electrical components).

Not removing the hard disks from the enclosures doesn't make a blind bit of difference. When the drive isn't in use the heads are parked up and its actually quite hard to do damage (although the drives are still comparatively fragile compared to something like an SD card). The real risk comes when the drive is in use.

A platter based device powered from a separate power source using the cheapest components possible makes me wince.

Hi Ross,

The hard drives that I had been using with my SI-2K (I have now switched to SSDs) were Seagate Momentus 7200.2. They weren't all that cheap when I bought them two years ago but I guess the price will have dropped quite a bit lately.

Since installing them in the MxM recorder I have filled them up three times during tests with no sign of issues, even when the drive is nearly full. Although these were mostly static tests, they might not perform so well if they were being bumped around - but if you are running & gunning, why do you need over 11 hours of record time? I'll stick to my MxM's with 32gb cards in them for that.

If I didn't already own these drives I would have gone with the solid state ones - one less thing to worry about

A platter based device powered from a separate power source using the cheapest components possible makes me wince.
====================================

Of course these enclosures will take an SSD as well as a hard drive if you want to spend the extra money.

Now in terms of the power supplies I agree 100% that is why I test every one of them I get with a VOM regardless of whether they were purchased separately or came with something like a laptop or any other device - even a cell phone charger. In my experience they are quite often off by a LOT. If they are I replace them or use a regulated power supply. For example, here are the measured values to rated values of a universal power supply I bought from Parts Express here in the US.:

Rated................Actual

1.5v...................4.5v
3v......................6.5v
4.5v...................8.7v
6v......................11.2v
7.5v...................13.6v
9v......................16.2v
12v.....................22.8v

These two Kingwin external hard drive enclosures (that don't come with a power supply) are powered by a USB hub with four ports that each measure 4.956 volts per port. That's very accurate. In contrast my dell laptop measures 5.447 volts from two USB ports and 5.345 volts from the other two. Less accurate than my USB hub, but still safe.

John

A platter based device powered from a separate power source using the cheapest components possible makes me wince.
====================================

Of course these enclosures will take an SSD as well as a hard drive if you want to spend the extra money.


But the power is available over the USB connection, so it seems like madness to plug into an external source. An extra cable, not to mention you are tied to a wall wart.

My ESATA card arrived this morning. Went into the Mac Pro without fuss and was delighted to find I could add and remove drives without rebooting (unlike the card I had demonstrated to me on a PC the other week).

Transfer speeds initially seem around the same as an SxS card. The limiting factor seems to be the speed of the media you are copying to.

But just shuttling around footage directly on the SSD, blimey it feels snappy! If you are one of the people who are looking to edit directly from disk at conferences (using the Sony mp4 plugin) then this might be what you are looking for. By the time you have several streams going in the timeline you will really start to notice the difference.

Can't wait for the day these things are cheap enough to slap into the edit suite.

But the power is available over the USB connection, so it seems like madness to plug into an external source. An extra cable, not to mention you are tied to a wall wart.

You might be right about that Marcus, however I can't remember ever shooting for 5 plus hours without AC power off a cord reel. For portable shooting I use the cards and batteries.

John

In the beginning there was no "light", but now we have enough "light", so why bother with external harddrives?
Iam pointing to the fact that a class-10 32gb SD-card is available and relative cheap now. For about 75US$ available at Amazon????
I bought the Sony harddrive 2 years ago for about us$ 1000,- totally waist of money. Used it twice and that was it. It gives so many restore errors that it makes one wonder. I even opened it to see if I could replace the harddrive with a SSD. It is possible, but by the time I found a suitable drive on the internet, it was not on stock and I cancelled the whole order and the whole replacement project.

But the power is available over the USB connection, so it seems like madness to plug into an external source. An extra cable, not to mention you are tied to a wall wart.

You might be right about that Marcus, however I can't remember ever shooting for 5 plus hours without AC power off a cord reel. For portable shooting I use the cards and batteries.

John

If an EX1 totally loses power at any stage, chances are you are going to have a problem with a corrupted clip.

Personally if I am running on the mains, I leave a battery in the camera. The camera will fallback onto the battery if it loses mains power. No great shakes.

But if the recording device is powered externally, there is no belt and braces. Powering directly from the camera you avoid this as the camera will just switch to its backup.

But if the recording device is powered externally, there is no belt and braces. Powering directly from the camera you avoid this as the camera will just switch to its backup.
===========================================
That's a good point Marcus.
Thanks.

John

EDIT: I will be using two of these setups at once sometimes (one in each slot), so I probably would have to go external in those rare instances where I need more than 5 hours at a time.

Here is an example of how cheap it is to set one of these Deal Extreme rigs with a laptop drive if you look around and sign up for e-mail promos.

For today, Newegg has a promo code (EMCZZYR25) for 10% off.

You can get a Western Digital Laptop Drive:

Newegg.com - Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD1600BEVT 160GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136391)

For $34.99 - 10% = $31.49 with Free Shipping and no tax. The User Reviews indicate that the drive is very reliable as well. It ships out of PA for me (I live in NY). I'll have the drive tomorrow.

John

"Transfer speeds initially seem around the same as an SxS card."

Hi Marcus,

In your testing can you confirm that the enclosure is a SATA II interface, or the older and slower SATA I. You can easily tell by the chipset used as there are relatively few on the market. If it is Initio or Satalink then it will be SATA I.

"Transfer speeds initially seem around the same as an SxS card."

Hi Marcus,

In your testing can you confirm that the enclosure is a SATA II interface, or the older and slower SATA I. You can easily tell by the chipset used as there are relatively few on the market. If it is Initio or Satalink then it will be SATA I.

I can't at the moment I'm afraid as its back at the office and I'm not back until next week.

Also remembering that the card I put into the Mac today was a cheap and cheerful model. Although the ability to insert and eject disks with the machine on wasn't something I was expecting. Suddenly I wish I'd got a better model with more ports as I have a load of archive disks in enclosures that have ESATA. I'd never considered using it because everytime I've seen it demonstrated it required the PC to be turned off before a drive could be connected.

I've done a little write up at: this URL (http://www.media2u.co.uk/index.php/about-media2u/blog/ssd)

It doesn't go into a lot of technical detail but hopefully people will be able to judge for themselves if the device is of use to them Certainly from a personal perspective the choice of SSD is a no brainer if you require a long continuous recording times on location.

Hi Marcus,

I couldn't see in your write-up which chipset is used in the enclosure, can you please confirm what it is?

Will this unit allow the door to be closed on the EX3?

Hi Marcus,

I couldn't see in your write-up which chipset is used in the enclosure, can you please confirm what it is?

Will this unit allow the door to be closed on the EX3?

As I mentioned before, the unit is at my office so I'm not in a position to comment until I am next in and can take the device apart (I took the photos and resized them last week).

I don't have an EX3 so can only comment on the EX1's doors.

I've just got my own kit from Marek at MxM, and so far all I can say is:

- wonderfully designed and engineered piece of equipment: a must for those long-time recordings!

- the eSATA connection to my PC allows for off-loading the SSD drive at a speed at least 3x higher than using the USB connection (sustained transfer at 90-100 MB/sec).

Will be reporting after some more testing.

Piotr

"Transfer speeds initially seem around the same as an SxS card."

Hi Marcus,

In your testing can you confirm that the enclosure is a SATA II interface, or the older and slower SATA I. You can easily tell by the chipset used as there are relatively few on the market. If it is Initio or Satalink then it will be SATA I.

The chip is marked Initio and according to some documents I've found deals with the transfer between USB and SATA. The specs say it can transfer the USB data at 60 MB/S which should give plenty of headroom for the camera.

The specs say it can transfer the USB data at 60 MB/S which should give plenty of headroom for the camera.

I don't know about the chip, but the hard fact is my MxM SSD drive happily records overcranked 25p/60 fps, as do my MxM SDHC adapters with ATP Pro 32GB cards - after I finally upgraded my EX1 firmware from the 1.11 version (I went straight to the 1.25).

I don't know about the chip, but the hard fact is my MxM SSD drive happily records overcranked 25p/60 fps, as do my MxM SDHC adapters with ATP Pro 32GB cards - after I finally upgraded my EX1 firmware (I went straight to the 1.25).

60 meg is plenty for over cranking and it works flawlessly. Although the only situation I could imagine using the SSD for overcranking is perhaps for fixed situations for industrial videos where you need to record slow-mo for an extended period.

I don't know about the chip, but the hard fact is my MxM SSD drive happily records overcranked 25p/60 fps, as do my MxM SDHC adapters with ATP Pro 32GB cards - after I finally upgraded my EX1 firmware from the 1.11 version (I went straight to the 1.25).

Any chance the new firmware allows an EX1 to see more than 84GB per slot?

John

60 meg is plenty for over cranking and it works flawlessly. Although the only situation I could imagine using the SSD for overcranking is perhaps for fixed situations for industrial videos where you need to record slow-mo for an extended period.

Hi Marcus,

I was actually asking about the SATA transfer to computer not the USB connection to the camera. If it is Initio then it is the old SATA I, so I am surprised to hear that is SATA I was faster than your RAID.

But thanks for the info.

If it is Initio then it is the old SATA I, so I am surprised to hear that is SATA I was faster than your RAID.

Hi Ross,

As I said, I don't know about the chip used - my Vista doesn't report on it. However, even if it's the SATA I indeed, I guess it'd be a bottleneck only if used connected to a fast, multi-lane, SATA 3G controller. I've yet to see a single lane, eSATA (as opposed to SATA) controller that is capable of sustained transfer rate above 100 MBps which I'm getting from my MxM SSD, connected to the JMicron controller on my Asus mobo...

The JMicron has two SATA ports: internal SATA II (3G) and external eSATA, and imposes this 100 MBps cap on whatever I connect to it (be it internal SATA II HDD, or external eSATA device such as my WD MyBook Studio II enclosure, configured as a RAID 0 array).

Of course I'm talking sustained, practical datarates here; the MxM SSD is reported as capable of much higher than that by utilities like HD Tune...

Hi Piotr,

Thanks for the info on your system.

It's a pity that you are only able to get SATA I speeds out of your system, as SATA II will get you double the speed of SATA I, which would make any SSD fly.

BTW Marcus has already stated the chipset used in the enclosure, so no need to worry about it.Thanks anyway.

Just to get it straight, Ross:

- I was talking specifically about the JMicron SATA controller, which - even though it is described as SATA II in my Asus mobo specs - creates the 100-115 MBps bottleneck for anything connected to it (be it eSATA, or internal SATA II device).

My mobo's main SATA controller is of course the Intel Matrix (ICH7/R it was 4 years ago when the motherboard was designed), and it allows for 320 MBps transfers using my internal, 3-disk RAID 0.

Next time I have some spare time and my PC opened, I'll try to connect the MxM SSD case straight to the Intel controller, and will be able to tell what its datarate capabilities really are.

I need a low power solution to wrangle cards at the end of the day and since this is powered off the EX1 and the EX1 will do the copy, this MxM SSD recorder is a good solution for me.

Is anyone using this SSD recorder with hard drives? If so, what model(s)?

Also, the MxM site seems to only sell 80GB SSD yet the Intel spec they have indicates a 160GB SSD. Does anyone know what SSD model(s) are compatible?

Epilog:
I ordered this MxM recorder for $169 and a Western Digital WD3200BUDT 5200rpm 32mb cache disk for $55. I chose this one as it reportedly was specifically designed for "streaming digital audio or video that is always active or ON on like DVR / PVR, video display digital also requires supervision and other multimedia applications"

There was plenty of friendly support from MxM on selecting an SSD or spinning drive.

The unit is assembled in Australia from Chinese parts. The EX1R recognized the device but complained the format wasn't supported. After using the camera to format the drive, it functioned flawlessly both recording and playing back.

My purpose was use the SSD Recorder as a storage device for wrangling SxS cards in the field. Using only the power it got from the SxS slot, the device copied 32GB from two 16GB SxS Pro card in 16 minutes. All in all, it's a fine device with nice right angle mini usb connectors on the "right sized" cable. There are no sharp edges nor straight connectors sticking out.

Speaking of cables, it comes with two for use with the camera (one slightly longer than the other) as well as a USB power, USB cable, and eSata cable.

MXM support recommended 2mm rubber on the bottom of the drive for a bit of shock absorption.