Conclusion

The be honest, this is the first real SSD drive I have had a chance to test. Now, I am hooked on the technology. The speed that the FileMate SolidGO ExpressCard 34 Ultra SSD drive offers is ideal. We know that everyday usage of a drive or any type can't be measured using synthetic benchmarks and that is the reason I am not mentioning them in this conclusion. My thoughts are all taken from my daily usage of the drive in my personal laptop using my own personal and important data. I stored and saved all my images that I used for Pro-Clockers on this drive and did all the editing and uploading from it as well. I am telling you this is a great upgrade from a standard disk drive.

Wintec makes the FileMate SolidGO ExpressCard 34 Ultra SSD integration fairly simple and with a good upgrade path. The drive works best when connected internally to a expresscard slot. This were we saw all the performance we also like the fact I did not have anything dangling from my laptop while working. The unit remained flush. But if you have yet to upgrade to a machine that has such a slot or have to use it to transfer data to a machine without any expresscard slot, then USB is a good second substitute. With the short USB to mini-USB cable you have access to any computer or MAC.

This unit can also be used for Vista's ReadyBoost, and because 24 or 48 gigs is more than enough for this function you can split the drive in two. Four gigs can be used towards ready boost and the remaining 44GB can still be used for data storage.
The SolidGO ExpressCard 34 drive has many advantages over the standard USB flash drive, but its cost could be a deal breaker for some. You can find a 64GB flash drive cheaper than the 48GB SolidGO drive. However, if you are a professional or enthusiast that prefers speed and reliability more than anything, look no farther. Though speed and reliability come with a price tag of about $190.

The only fault I find with the FileMate SolidGO ExpressCard 34 Ultra SSD is that it gets pretty hot while in use. I do not know the reason for this. I found it strange as there are no moving parts in the drive, but in the days leading up to the writing of this article the drive did not once crash or cause my system to blue screen. I will update this article in the future once we find out the reason behind this.

Update: After consulting with Wintec over the heat build up of the SolidGo drive we got this response:

"After consulting with my engineering department, the heat that you are experiencing is normal. The ExpressCard Ultra feels hot due to the smaller footprint of the device.  For example, a normal 2.5” hard drive can generate more heat, but is able to dissipate that heat over a proportionately larger area, resulting in what feels like a cooler device.

During our torture tests (extreme environments) the ExpressCard Ultra SSD was verified to work even when the internal temperatures climbed higher than 75 degrees Celsius.  In our reliability testing (normal user environments) we have not found any cases where a laptop could not handle the additional heat from the ExpressCard Ultra SSD. 

However, different laptop models are able to dissipate heat more effectively than others. For this reason, we suggest for users that intend to use the ExpressCard Ultra SSD for very frequent and heavy read/writes operations to more closely monitor their laptop’s temperature."

After another week of usage we did not experience one single blue screen or crash on the system while working with the drive installed.