Super Talent 32GB Mini PCI-E Half Solid State Drive (MLC) FEM32GHDL

Super Talent 32GB Mini PCI-E Half Solid State Drive (MLC) FEM32GHDL
by MA Labs

List Price: ~~$109.99~~
Our Price: $93.00
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Category: CE
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Digital Photo Product Details

Manufacturer: MA Labs
Model: FEM32GHDL
Product features:

Capacity: 32 GB
Warranty: 1 year
Hardware Platform: PC

Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Super Talent 32GB Mini PCI-E Half Solid State Drive (MLC) FEM32GHDL

Customer Review: Not So Easy For Novices
Summary: 3 Stars

It sounds easy, remove a couple screws, swap out drives and viola, your done. The reality for me was different. 1st, the Super Talent Mini PCI-E only offers instructions for swapping out Asus hard drives. Sure the instructions are mostly the same, but I have a Dell Mini 9 and all of the web advice for swapping out a drive warns that you must make a copy of the existing drive before you can attempt the exchange. Sounds simple enough except if you are like me and have an existing 8 GIG SSD. Then finding a place to make a copy drive is problematic. You can't use just any drive without possibly destroying the data already on that drive. There is the suggestion to partition a destination drive but remember, I am a novice at this and try as I might, I could not set the first portable hard drive to partition. I finally remembered that I had an extra 150 GIG HD that didn't store anything I needed so it has become the drive of choice for the ghost drive.

Next I needed to download a 3rd party program to make my SDD copy. I used DriveImage SML because it was free. The program worked but it took an hour to make the transfer, so if you are in a hurry, maybe if you pay for a program to do the work it will go faster, but I wouldn't bet on it. With a copy of the SSD hard drive made, I tested booting the computer from my copy. I thought this worked, but more about that later.

Removing the existing SSD hard drive was just as challenging as making a copy. I could open the cover and expose the inner works, but the two screws that hold the SSD in place would not budge. I tried several screwdrivers but I was starting to strip out the Philips head screws. I turned to the internet and the only thing I could find was a brief mention on a YouTube video of those screws being soldered. Everyone else just described the procedure as remove the screws with no mention of solder. I don't know if Dell only did this to a select few computers, or if people are taking it for granted that the screw will be held tight so they're not mentioning it. Nevertheless, the SDD screws would not loosen even after applying heat from a soldering gun. Turns out they are held tight by a blue lock-tight dab on the threads. I had to use needle nose pliers gripping the sides of the screws to make them budge. So if you are attempting this, give a try first and if the screws do not turn, you'll need to get a firm grip on the screw edges with pliers to get them loose.

With the screws out, swapping drives was as straight forward as it was supposed to be. Then I had to restart the computer with my external hard drive boot copy and use the DriveImage SML program to put the boot drive data onto the new SDD, change the boot drive designation at start-up again and restarted the computer before finding out if all of my effort worked.

Of course it didn't. My computer would not boot from my external hard drive. No matter what, I was getting a "Operating System Not Found" message when I tried booting up. There was no option to reset my SDD drive like the ASUS install instructions suggest (remember this is a Dell). The only way my computer would re-boot was to take out the new SSD and put back in the factory SSD.

I then went on a multi-hour quest to make the computer boot from all manner of sources. First I tried getting it to boot from the original SSD image I made on the external hard drive. But always the error message was "NTDLR missing". I tried creating a boot disk from my original SSD, and nothing worked. Remember, I'm a novice at this so I was probably missing something simple. Finally, I broke down and went to the Brother-in-law for an XP boot disk from one of his older computers. That finally worked, except that I did have to enter his old computer's Window's key because the one for my computer did not work booting and installing from his disk. That worked, but with another computer's boot disk came that computer's drivers and not the ones my Mini 9 needed.

So it was back to download a driver back-up utility, then re-installing the old SSD to sweep up the drivers I needed and then re-install the new SSD and run the restore from the driver utility. Now I have the computer back to near normal. Next I need to re-install programs since I have had no luck grabbing from the SSD image, but I'm O.K. with that. And last I will need to update XP SP2 until it is back to SP3 level. But, the bright side is I do now have a working larger SSD, so there will not be the running out of room issue. So as you can guess, I feel the money for a new drive was worth it, but the learning curve cost me a weekend, which was only marginally worth it.

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