Apacer recently launched two new SSDs aimed at commercial and industrial applications. The drives will offer up either SLC or MLC NAND flash, but with a twist. The two drives feature the IDE / PATA interface instead of the newer SATA interface seen in today’s systems. Apacer is hoping its PATA SSDs will be used as an upgrade path when the hard drives currently used in industrial systems need replaced. The new Solid State Drives fall under the Apacer AFD 257 and AFD 187 series. The Apacer AFD-257 Premium is a 2.5" drive, and the AFD-187 Premium is a 1.8" drive.

 

To accommodate the greater need to data protection in such systems, Apacer has built several security features into the drives. The new PATA SSDs include Full Erase, Destroy, and Write Protection features. Interestingly, those security features can be activated using software or via hardware connected to a small port on the drives via a cable that can be routed to a control panel on the external IO of a chassis.

The drives have up to 256 GB capacities and have standard features such as SMART, wear leveling, and ECC (72-bit). The IDE interface is rather antiquated, but Apacer at least supports the faster transfer modes including: DIO Mode-4, MWDMA Mode-2, and Ultra DMA-6. PATA SSDs were somewhat-rare when IDE was still the dominant consumer standard, so it is nice to see there are alternatives for replacement parts still available.

Unfortunately, there is no word on pricing or availability. Transfer speeds are also unknown, but you can expect it to be bottle-necked by the IDE interface (though random access speeds should be a huge improvement over a hard drive, even with the slower PATA interface).