T42 SSD Conversion Success (1.8" SATA drive + bridge board)

[Johan]

Fellow ThinkPad'ers following this (very interesting!) thread:

I just wish to share a bit of BREAKING NEWS received today from TioFrancotirador, and with relation to his prior post in this thread:

First of all thanks guys for your posts. They were inspiration for me to put SSD into my T42. I did it the way described in first post. However instead of Intel I used:

Kingston SSDNow V+180 64GB Micro SATA II 3GB/S 1.8 Inch Solid State Drive SVP180S2/64G

Here are the results from CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1:
Test No: 5 with 1000MB
Name/Read/Write
Seq: 84.49 / 64.24
512k: 80.49 / 32.45
4k: 14.73 / 6.664
4kQD32: 12.85 / 6.898

Today, I had the great pleasure of receiving from TioFrancotirador a very friendly PM (in response to my question about his past experience with this specific SSD in the T42, with the eBay SATA-to-PATA adapter). I hereby take the liberty of sharing this PM (I'm confident you won't mind me spreading this good report, Mirek?):

Hi,

I am writing this post using my T42 with that 1.8" SSD Kingston SATA drive. I have Windows XP installed on it. I did not try Windows 7 yet. I have not had any problem since its installation which was 6 months ago.

Great news, Mirek!!! Thanks very much for sharing! I guess I'm gonna try get me a SVP180S2/64G - it has received quite good feedback at Newegg and at Amazon, and it comes with a three-year warranty and even support TRIM!

Again, thanks very much for sharing this very interesting and highly helpful piece of information, Mirek!

Johan

[GACrabill]

"6.3.0.1007" is from 2004 and is for XP and not Windows 7 :
(and should get an install failure on Win 7)
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_ ... nloadType=

"9.3.0.1019" is from 2011 and is for XP and Windows 7 and Vista :
http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_ ... nloadType=

This thread is complicated to follow since some of the initial posts were for an mSATA-to-IDE adapter with a 1.8" SSD .... and other posts were for a SATA-to-IDE adapter with a 2.5" SSD.

And, after combing thru the posts in this thread and the adapter thread (http://www.thinkpads.com/forum/viewtopi ... =2&t=85862), it seems that all of the success stories have been with XP ... and most of those were with not-capable-of-trim SSD models.

I could not find any Win7, 1.8", IDE-to-mSATA adapter, trim-capable success stories.

Add to that my lack of understanding of Intel Chipset drivers, the inability to find the Chipset driver version in Device Manager, .... and the fact that using Device Manager to list all "Intel 82801..." items and choosing "Update Driver" and "Search for driver automatically" results in updates being found even though one has already applied all Microsoft, Lenovo, and Intel updates .... I now feel totally confused.

And, when I had an 80GB Intel Gen.2 X18-M to test for a weekend, I had no trouble getting it to freeze when running multiple concurrent I/O tasks. In fact, booting from a Win7 DVD and using either "Format" (SSD froze 5 out of 6 attempts) or using "Diskpart Clean All" (SSD froze every time) convinced me (possibly incorrectly) that the Operating System has nothing to do with this BSOD or Freeze problem.

So, my conclusions have been :
- it must be the brand/model of the SSD, -or-
- it must be the mSATA-to-IDE adapter, -or-
- it must be the IDE controller on these older Intel motherboards

The only other knowledge that I stumbled upon was someone who posted somewhere on the internet that they got the SATA-to-IDE adapter and 2.5" SSD combo to work in their older HP by forcibly updating their IDE controller to newer drivers from Nvidia .... which doesn't seem to do us any good with Intel chipsets. (Both the SATA-to-IDE adapter and the mSATA-to-IDE adapter use the same JM20330 chip)

I live for the day that someone successfully stress tests a Win7, 1.8", trim-capable SSD configuration in a T40-T42.

[lordvalumart]

LoPhi wrote that:

Just for the records, on my T42p with WinXP SP3 and Intel 320 80GB

IDE ATAPI Controller:
82801DBM Ultra ATA Storage Controller 24CA: Intel, 14.11.2003, v5.1.1.1001

Drive:
INTEL SSDSA1NW080G3: Microsoft, 1.7.2001, v5.1.2535.0

My configuration, which seems to be 100% stable now, matches his exactly, with the exception that my drive is SSDSA1M080G2HP, i.e. a 80Gb gen2 X-18M.

GACrabill wrote that:

n fact, booting from a Win7 DVD and using either "Format" (SSD froze 5 out of 6 attempts) or using "Diskpart Clean All" (SSD froze every time) convinced me (possibly incorrectly) that the Operating System has nothing to do with this BSOD or Freeze problem.
So, my conclusions have been :
- it must be the brand/model of the SSD, -or-
- it must be the mSATA-to-IDE adapter, -or-
- it must be the IDE controller on these older Intel motherboards

I don't think it's correct to conclude that the OS has nothing to do with the BSOD problems. When you boot from a win7 DVD, you are still using a driver of some sort to access the Intel IDE disk controller; probably a default driver supplied by Microsoft.

My guess is that there is a bug in the microSata adapter's firmware, which is only exposed as a result of certain behavour in the IDE controller driver. Some drivers cause this bug to appear, others don't.

It seems that the winXP driver which LoPhi and I are successfully using avoids triggering the adapter's firmware bug. You guys on win7 may not be so lucky: the Intel IDE controller in question is rather old now, and Intel may not have a suitable win7 driver.

@Johan: I'll be interested to hear how you get on with a different drive, but I must say I'm not expecting good news if you're running win7

[Johan]

Good news to the followers of this thread (incl. all those who have posted and shared their experience, and who will therefore automatically receive an e-mail notification about this new post)...

I live for the day that someone successfully stress tests a Win7, 1.8", trim-capable SSD configuration in a T40-T42.

I am very happy to report that there seems to be quite a bit of "evidence" which clearly points to that we have now finally identified a FAST and STABLE solution to a 1.8" SATA SSD proved to work very well in both a T40 and in T42/p's; a solution which will support both Windows XP and Windows 7 (with TRIM supported/enabled in the latter case!), as discussed in this post.



Please share your experience if you take the same route as described in the above-mentioned post - thanks in advance.

Johan

[TioFrancotirador]

Hi all,

I recently wrote a post about conversion success with use of Kingoston 1.8" V+180 64GB mSATA SSD drive with PATA/mSATA converter.

I think I found better and more economic solution that this.

As I hardly ever used my Ultrabay Slim CD-ROM drive I replaced it with Caddy for 2.5" SATA drive. I put Samsung 830 128GB SSD into it.

Right now this is my main boot drive running on Windows 7 (installed from USB). So far so good and if you look at test results it is even faster!!!

This solution is more economic also since 2.5" SSD drives are almost twice cheaper than their 1.8" equivalent of same capacity!!!

Take look at results below:


Samsung 2.5" SSD 830 128GB + Ultraybay Slim Caddy for SATA drive
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 87.542 MB/s
Sequential Write : 73.538 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 73.254 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 73.244 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 16.302 MB/s [ 3980.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 27.733 MB/s [ 6770.7 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 17.932 MB/s [ 4378.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 33.106 MB/s [ 8082.5 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 26.7% (6.3/23.4 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2012/08/25 19:50:16
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x86)


Kingston 1.8" SSD V+180 64GB + PATA/mSATA adapter
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 82.164 MB/s
Sequential Write : 74.478 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 79.634 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 33.547 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 14.157 MB/s [ 3456.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 8.365 MB/s [ 2042.2 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 13.745 MB/s [ 3355.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 6.706 MB/s [ 1637.2 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [S: 69.6% (41.5/59.6 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2012/08/25 19:58:16
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x86)

Cheers,

[bbq]

A new adapter just came out recently:

http://www.shopsintech.com/product_info ... cts_id=760

http://www.pc-adapter.net/products/658.html

Really nice option since affordable mSATA drives are widely available and they only cost a bit more than 2.5" SATA ones:

http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs. ... T256M4SSD3

http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs. ... T256M4SSD2

[GACrabill]

.... if you look at test results it is even faster!!!

Samsung 2.5" SSD 830 128GB + Ultraybay Slim Caddy for SATA drive (no lag at boot!)
Sequential Read : 87.542 MB/s
Sequential Write : 73.538 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 73.254 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 73.244 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 16.302 MB/s [ 3980.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 27.733 MB/s [ 6770.7 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 17.932 MB/s [ 4378.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 33.106 MB/s [ 8082.5 IOPS]

Kingston 1.8" SSD V+180 64GB + PATA/mSATA adapter
Sequential Read : 82.164 MB/s
Sequential Write : 74.478 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 79.634 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 33.547 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 14.157 MB/s [ 3456.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 8.365 MB/s [ 2042.2 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 13.745 MB/s [ 3355.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 6.706 MB/s [ 1637.2 IOPS]

Thanks for the very interesting update using a new technology SSD and the Ultrabay Slim Caddy.

It is fairly well known that smaller SSDs (64GB) have fewer internal paths than the larger SSDs (128GB) and therefore are slower. A better comparison of the 128GB Samsung 2.5" SSD results would be with the 128GB Kingston 1.8" SSD.

T40 Win7 (2.0GHz) with Kingston 1.8" SSD V+180 128GB + PATA/mSATA adapter
Sequential Read : 82.63 MB/s
Sequential Write : 77.68 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 80.15 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 77.18 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 15.83 MB/s
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 30.86 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 17.31 MB/s
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 34.91 MB/s

These 128GB Kingston 1.8" results are comparable to your 128GB Samsung 830 2.5" results.

I am sure that your SSD implementation will appeal to many folks since you are correct that 2.5" SATA SSDs are easier to find and their prices are dropping.

Please keep us informed if you have any freezes or BSODs with the newer technology Samsung SSD since it hasn't been easy to find a really stable SSD solution for older PATA Thinkpads.

[GACrabill]

A new adapter just came out recently:
http://www.shopsintech.com/product_info ... cts_id=760
http://www.pc-adapter.net/products/658.html

Really nice option since affordable mSATA drives are widely available and they only cost a bit more than 2.5" SATA ones ...

Looks like someone will have to design a new Shapeways caddy to get one of those adapters into a T40-T42 !

And then someone will have to test the stability of that adapter with a really small mSATA SSD .... sounds like a new saga in this long story.

[lordvalumart]

A new adapter just came out recently:

http://www.shopsintech.com/product_info ... cts_id=760

http://www.pc-adapter.net/products/658.html

If you take a close look at the picture of this new adapter you can see it still uses the same JMicron JM20330 chip as the other well-known microsata-to-ide adapter. So I'd guess that we would still see the same stability problems... but I'd like it if someone proved me wrong on that.

[Johan]

I recently wrote a post about conversion success with use of Kingston 1.8" V+180 64GB mSATA SSD drive with PATA/mSATA converter. I think I found better and more economic solution that this. As I hardly ever used my Ultrabay Slim CD-ROM drive I replaced it with Caddy for 2.5" SATA drive. I put Samsung 830 128GB SSD into it....

This option - to use a (relatively cheaper) 2.5" SATA SSD in the UltraBay of e.g. a T42/p - has been discussed e.g. in the thread How to use 2.5" SATA SSD as main boot drive for T42 and SATA hard drive caddy in ultrabay and Slow boot when using only ultrabay SATA HD in T42 and Empty primary bay causes boot timeout from SATA ultrabay (and in a related thread [R51]How to avoid boot delay if no main HDD is installed?) but personally I'd rather like to get the 1.8" SATA SSD to work in the main HDD-bay for two reasons:

1) I would like to retain the internal CV/DVD (as I use my T42p to play moves from time to time... since I happen to be one of the few people who do not own neither a television nor a DVD-player etc), and in particular because of...:

2) There is significant extra boot delay (on the order of 30 secs?!) if you boot from a HDD or a SDD in the Ultrabay! As far as I know, there is no way to circumvent/avoid this delay. Therefore, if you invest in a more or less expensive and very fast 2.5" SATA SSD, and put it in the UltraBay, then you will have to live with the 30 sec. delay first (= before the booting actually starts!) in addition to the normal boot-time. As I have reported in this post, the use of the through using the eBay 1.8" microSATA to 44-pin 2.5” IDE adapter will allow you to boot e.g. a T42p (under Windows 7) from power-on to browsing on the internet in as little as 33 sec!.

A new adapter just came out recently:

http://www.shopsintech.com/product_info ... cts_id=760 ...

I can't see how this adapter can be used in any T4x/p thinkPad as it has the SATA and PATA connectors mounted orthogonal to each other, and not in-line as with the above-mentioned eBay 1.8"-SATA-to-2.5"-PATA adapter. If you see the images for the Shapeways caddy with the 1.8" eBay SATA-to-PATA adapter it is easily recognized that the new adapter you (bbq) are mentioning cannot be used!

Johan

[mick01]

with the 1.8" eBay SATA-to-PATA adapter it is easily recognized that the new adapter you (bbq) are mentioning cannot be used!

Johan

Hi Johan,

Wading in here after trawling through this forum and getting excited at the prospect of having a SSD in my old ThinkPad.

The adaptor that bbq has linked to (ie http://www.pc-adapter.net/products/658.html) has dimensions listed of 50.95 mm (L) x 30 mm (W) x 3.8 mm (H). So I think it will fit in place of a 2.5" PATA drive. This is because mSATA drives are a lot smaller than MicroSATA drives. The picture at the bottom of the linked page shows the adaptor with drive attached, and it's very small. Only issue I can see is that it states in the description it may not work with 'some IBM laptops'. Quite tempted to try one of these to give my faithful T42 a new lease on life.

[RealBlackStuff]

Just how do you think the [bbq]adapter/SSD is going to fit in your T42, huh?

[mick01]

Just how do you think the [bbq]adapter/SSD is going to fit in your T42, huh?

Can you elaborate on why you think it won't. The dimensions of the drive with adaptor are smaller than a 2.5" PATA drive.

Not sure if you've seen an mSATA drive, but they really are quite small... e.g. http://akiba-pc.watch.impress.co.jp/hot ... ms7012.jpg

[RealBlackStuff]

The 44-pin connector points UP (in that picture).
The SATA connector points to the LEFT (in that picture).
Attach the SSD to the SATA connector, going even further left!
How are you getting all that in the space of one 2.5" hard disk and connect it to the HD connector on the motherboard?
Are you really that (not thin)?

[mick01]

The SATA connector points to the LEFT (in that picture).

No, it points to the RIGHT. If you look at the photo at the very bottom of the page => mSATA adaptor, you can see what it looks like with the drive installed to the adaptor.

[RealBlackStuff]

I think I owe an apology

[TaffyBoy]

Great thread!
So it seems that one of these; http://www.crucial.com/store/listmodule/SSD/list.html
Would attach to one of these; http://www.shopsintech.com/product_info ... cts_id=760 (same thing from eBay; http://www.ebay.com/itm/mini-pci-e-Msat ... 337baa3300 )

Has anyone tried this yet?

Just a thought and It could be a good alternative to the already discussed combination as It seems that the mSATA form factor will be more widely used in future (compared to microSATA) so this SSD will be more readily useable if one decides to upgrade laptop.
Obviously there may well be teething troubles as has been the case with other SSD conversions.

Also, the price of theses SSD's per GB aren't that crazy.

Thoughts/ideas?

[whalepirot]

Samsung 2.5" SSD 830 128GB + Ultraybay Slim Caddy for SATA drive (no lag at boot!).

I have a T42, this Samsung SSD (unused) and see the Slim UltraBay SATA units on Amazon. They claim it is compatibile with the T42, but the primary HD is ATA100.

Does my T42 truly support this SATA unit? Can it be that easy? thanks

[KrypteX]

Great thread!
So it seems that one of these; http://www.crucial.com/store/listmodule/SSD/list.html
Would attach to one of these; http://www.shopsintech.com/product_info ... cts_id=760 (same thing from eBay; http://www.ebay.com/itm/mini-pci-e-Msat ... 337baa3300 )

Has anyone tried this yet?

Just a thought and It could be a good alternative to the already discussed combination as It seems that the mSATA form factor will be more widely used in future (compared to microSATA) so this SSD will be more readily useable if one decides to upgrade laptop.
Obviously there may well be teething troubles as has been the case with other SSD conversions.

Also, the price of theses SSD's per GB aren't that crazy.

Thoughts/ideas?

Indeed, I intend to try this combination (though a slightly different variant of the adapter, mSATA to ZIF) for the Samsung PM810 mSATA SSD (Samsung 470 variant) in an HP 2510p.

I'd really like to know if the Samsung mSATA would be compatible with the JM20330 chipset on the adapter...

[TioFrancotirador]

Does my T42 truly support this SATA unit? Can it be that easy? thanks

Well I actually does. I bought this device from amazon.

[KrypteX]

Great thread!
So it seems that one of these; http://www.crucial.com/store/listmodule/SSD/list.html
Would attach to one of these; http://www.shopsintech.com/product_info ... cts_id=760 (same thing from eBay; http://www.ebay.com/itm/mini-pci-e-Msat ... 337baa3300 )

Has anyone tried this yet?

Just a thought and It could be a good alternative to the already discussed combination as It seems that the mSATA form factor will be more widely used in future (compared to microSATA) so this SSD will be more readily useable if one decides to upgrade laptop.
Obviously there may well be teething troubles as has been the case with other SSD conversions.

Also, the price of theses SSD's per GB aren't that crazy.

Thoughts/ideas?

I've just installed a Samsung PM810 mSATA SSD 64 GB (the mSATA equivalent of Samsung SSD 470), FW AXM18D1Q + mSATA to ZIF adapter into my HP 2510p.

The SATA to PATA bridge of the adapter is JM20330 and is set as master. I left the optical drive inside as slave.

The drive works flawlessly. I can confirm that TRIM works correctly under Win7 or via Anvil's Manual TRIM in WinXP. Also, Secure Erase through the SATA to PATA bridge works well (used PartedMagic).

Sequential reads/writes are 78/65 MB/s.
4K reads/writes are 12/15 MB/s.
Access times 0.2-0.3 ms.

Everything is snappy, many times faster than the mechanical ZIF drive (Toshiba 80 GB).
Even the HDD LED is working properly.

Anyone trying the same, be warned: not any mSATA drives will work with the mSATA to ZIF adapter.
Some of the working, tested variants with the JMicron JM20330 bridge:
Samsung PM810 mSATA
Samsung PM800 1.8
Kingston V+180 1.8" (actually a Toshiba HG3).

[yuji]

Hi all,

I recently wrote a post about conversion success with use of Kingoston 1.8" V+180 64GB mSATA SSD drive with PATA/mSATA converter.

I think I found better and more economic solution that this.

As I hardly ever used my Ultrabay Slim CD-ROM drive I replaced it with Caddy for 2.5" SATA drive. I put Samsung 830 128GB SSD into it.

Right now this is my main boot drive running on Windows 7 (installed from USB). So far so good and if you look at test results it is even faster!!!

This solution is more economic also since 2.5" SSD drives are almost twice cheaper than their 1.8" equivalent of same capacity!!

I have two questions about this:

1. Does TRIM work through this setup?

2. In my understanding if I leave my original pata drive in the main slot, I don't get the 33sec delay. Is this correct?

I'd appreciate any feedback, thanks in advance.

[KrypteX]

1. TRIM working or not depends on several factors:
a) the PATA to SATA bridge. Marvell and JMicron's JM20330 pass TRIM to the SSD *if* the bridge is connected to a native PATA port on the motherboard.
Sunplus bridges do NOT pass TRIM. You will have problems with them if used under Win7.

b) the SSD. In my experience Samsung and Toshiba (including Kingston V+180, which is Toshiba) are OK. SandForce-based and Marvell based SSDs might work. Intel does not work properly.

You might give a read to the HP 2510p Lounge forum, the latest posts I've written there.

2. If you are talking about the T42, I really have no clue, since it depends on the BIOS. In case of HP 2510p, yes there are several issues with 30 second delays.

I recommend buying a caddy with a Marvell chipset, not Sunplus.
It will work well.

[TioFrancotirador]

I have two questions about this:

1. Does TRIM work through this setup?

2. In my understanding if I leave my original pata drive in the main slot, I don't get the 33sec delay. Is this correct?

I'd appreciate any feedback, thanks in advance.

1. Yes it does in Win 7. Modern drives has also garbage collector mechnizm, which allows to use SSD in systems with no trim option (Win XP). Before I swopped into Win 7 I was running Win XP (no trim) on my SSD for one year and did not noticed any drop in performance of my drive. (I did random checks with tools like CrystalDyskInfo).

2. Yes. Your oryginal PATA drive or any other PATA 2.5" device e.g.: PATA SD card reader if you want your laptop to be quiet. It just cannot be empty.

[Johan]

1. Does TRIM work through this setup?

2. In my understanding if I leave my original PATA drive in the main slot, I don't get the 33 sec delay. Is this correct?

1. Yes it does in Win 7. Modern drives has also garbage collector mechnizm, which allows to use SSD in systems with no trim option (Win XP). Before I swopped into Win 7 I was running Win XP (no trim) on my SSD for one year and did not noticed any drop in performance of my drive. (I did random checks with tools like CrystalDyskInfo).

2. Yes. Your original PATA drive or any other PATA 2.5" device e.g. PATA SD card reader if you want your laptop to be quiet. It just cannot be empty.

Mirek: Thanks very much for sharing; absolutely interesting!

In relation to your second comment ("2"): As reported by many T4x/p users, who have mounted a bootable SATA drive (a HDD or SSD) in the UltraBay, in this case there will be an approx. 30 sec. delay in boot (there's a couple of links to/about this problem e.g. in the sticky GUIDE: Make your T4x *FAST* by replacing the HDD with a SSD!)

Question: Can this approx. 30 sec. boot-delay be completely avoided/circumvented if, as mentioned above, a (non-bootable) PATA HDD or SSD, or a "PATA SD card"? (any links to the latter??), is mounted in the main HDD drive bay?

Thanks very much for enlightening me about this!

Johan

[TioFrancotirador]

Question: Can this approx. 30 sec. boot-delay be completely avoided/circumvented if, as mentioned above, a (non-bootable) PATA HDD or SSD, or a "PATA SD card"? (any links to the latter??), is mounted in the main HDD drive bay?

Yes. I do not have 30s dealy in boot. I have SSD in ultrabay with Win 7 as main boot. In main IDE drive, where previously I had regular PATA HDD drive, now I have small PATA SD Card reader with an old 1GB card inserted into it. Works great.

[popsmoke]

Background: Retired several years, laptops have mysteriously become my "hobby" I have 14 of them all purchased used, networked only via Dropbox. 13 are PCs, of the 13, 11 are XP based, 2 are Win7. 5 of the laptops are T42s. I love T42s. I believe they are the original "tablet" in terms of size and weight, I love the workmanship, I love that you can spill coffee on them because the IBM boffins provided drainholes, and I love that parts are plentiful.

The machine: Since the SSD upgrade was mainly for curiosity, I picked my most beat-up T42. All my T42s have max ram; new CMOS batteries; upgraded DVD drives. All run ULTRA-LEAN XP3, that is, all unnecessary servies removed; no system restore; no indexing; most animation effects diasbled; all the tweaks from TUNEXP implemented. I repair the registry and defrag it every few days. I defrag the drive every few days. I use MICROSOFT BOOTVIS to keep the boot time lean. All this makes a huge difference. Fan noise is controlled with the amazing TPF freeware module; firewall is the free OnlineArmor version; virus checker is the ultra-light PANDA CLOUD. My T42s are very fast compared even to newer machines with faster processors but un-maintained by their owners running out-of-the-box (bloated) Windows.

SSD Upgrade path: I intended to stick with XP and please don't send me angry emails. I know XP really well, I can fix things that go wrong, and I am not worried about MSFT support because I rarely accept the updates anyway (mainly the time/date fixes) and when I do I use WUD even though my XPs are properly registered, it is less intrusive and you can pick what you want from the WUD menu. Yes, I know this meant issues with the IDE interface (speed, mainly). Also I went with the Kingspec 64g PATA purchased from a Chinese vendor via Ebay ($75). I found a vendor with a 100% track record, which on Ebay is almost as good as a written guarantee. And yes, I knew all about the Kingspec issues, if there was a problem I intended to simply forgo the project and use the drive as an ashtray. The 64g, on paper, is a nice upgrade from the Hitachi 40 which was 10 years old but with no SMART errors, no bad sectors, no diskchk errors, and working perfectly.

The Install: I dont know about the other makers, but the form factor on the Kingspec is a joke. It is larger than the actual drive and the only way to get it into the T42 without surgery is to scrap the caddy, which I did. Actually lining up the pins was 5 minutes of fiddling that felt like 2 hours, since I was working blind and fully convinced I had a purchaed a $75 paperweight. But it did line up.

The SYSTEM TRANSPLANT. Yes, I know you are "supposed" to do a clean install but (see above) I have 5 of these all nicely tuned and all with Acronis images. So I went to the Acronis boot loader which loads after the bios (I LOVE ACRONIS 10!) and was delighted to see that the Kingspec was not only recognized but that it was aleady NTFS formatted.

THE NEAR-MISS. The image transplant from Acronis seemed to work well. I used Disk Director to reclaim the extra space for my main drive. But the drive was stuttering and I soon realized that, while the newfound speed was a kick, the stuttering meant the machine was not really usable day to day.

THE DISASTEROUS TWEAKS: Thinking that the problem may be the need to tweak, I visited a bunch of web pages and made a list of the 10 most recommended tweaks, including registry tweaks for XP, and implemented them all at once (because by now I was getting cranky). The machine still stuttered but the tweaks had created all kinds of new problems. It would not even boot properly.

The "Hail Mary Re-Do": after a few hours of this, I was giving up. Even though there was no logical reason to try it, and even though the original process did not show errors, I figured I would once more restore the original Acronis image. I did this from the post-Bios Acronis boot loader (did I mention that I LOVE ACRONIS 10 -- which BTW is useless for Win 7 but a jewel for XP!).

SECOND TIME'S A CHARM: For no reason I can explain the second re-imaging of the SSD worked perfectly. I mean perfectly. No stuttering. And boy is this machine fast. I disabled System Restore (which I dont use anyway -- did I mention I LOVE ACRONIS 10?) and here I am playing with my ultra fast T42 SSD and writing to you. Happy happy joy joy.

[gehageh]

I have very good opinion for the Kingspec SSD drives. I have bought the same PATA 64Gb drive and installed it successfully in my X41. Now it is running the XP much faster than the old Hitachi 40Gb. My next project is to install the same drive in my T43 although the PATA controller is a bit more complicated.

[TRS-80]

Also I went with the Kingspec 64g PATA purchased from a Chinese vendor via Ebay ($75). I found a vendor with a 100% track record, which on Ebay is almost as good as a written guarantee. And yes, I knew all about the Kingspec issues, if there was a problem I intended to simply forgo the project and use the drive as an ashtray.

I must say I agree with you, especially wrt eBay feedback, they tend to take working things out with people very seriously, they don't want you to leave a bad feedback. I think that results in the system working very well.

I have very good opinion for the Kingspec SSD drives. I have bought the same PATA 64Gb drive and installed it successfully in my X41. Now it is running the XP much faster than the old Hitachi 40Gb. My next project is to install the same drive in my T43 although the PATA controller is a bit more complicated.

I have an R51 with a hard drive going out (although that thread went off in a completely different direction, more about current best bang for buck in Thinkpads in general, so much so that I ended up changing the title of the thread).

But just like the two of you, I cannot help but keep looking at those Kingspec drives. They are just so cheap. Especially in my case, I am only using about half of a 40 GB HDD right now (I run very lean XP, like you popsmoke). So I could easily get by with the 32GB Kingspec even, which are less than $50 right now on eBay! And that seller's feedback is 99.8% positive, with 4,254 reviews!

I mean, at that price, does it really matter if it fails? If you Google "pata 2.5 ssd" those drives come up as 2 of the top 4 results, I am thinking there has to be a reason for that. I hear there have been some bad reports, but how many happy users might be out there that just never reported a problem? I dunno, at that price I might be willing to take a chance... I would of course, report back results, in the interest of science (or at least, anecdotal evidence).

Question is, am I being wise or foolish?

Specs state "8years @100GBytes write and erase per day at 32GB" (not that I always believe Mfr. specs). But in the listing it also says 2 year Warranty. For $50 I think I can live with that, by that time, SSDs will be that much cheaper and more reliable (even 1 year from now)...

[petter5]

I upgraded an old T42, removed the old 2.5" PATA disc and added a PATA-to-mSATA SSD adapter with a mSATA SSD; price USD $ 3.18. Has tested under Ubuntu 14.04 and 16.06 + Win 7 - all works fast and without problems. Also, I did run a Asssd disc test under win7 - see attached photo.

For extra security I fastened the adapter with thick packing tape, but mostly this is not required since it seems that the 44 pin adapter fit’s tight to the 44 pins.

Had to flash to latest BIOS 3.23 to detect the mSATA disc, using a USB 3.5" floppy adapter to flash the BIOS from a floppy.

URL to the adapter, bought on ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/261687059689

Link(s) to images of the T42 installation:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/905 ... /T42-3.jpg

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/905 ... /T42-2.jpg

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/905 ... /T42-1.jpg

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/905 ... sd-T42.png

Moderator edit: Broke img-tabs; images way too large (please read forum rules before posting --> http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=14339).