Very nice! Doesn't work for me (I need the disk space) but it's a great option if you can fit onto 8 GB. And both the X40 and the CF card are quite affordable.

Note that this is X41-specific behavior. The X41 (and R52, T43) uses an internal PATA-SATA bridge, and the BIOS complains (but it will still work) if you use a non-whitelisted PATA drive (which include CF cards). The X40 should have no such issues.

Hello,

Interesting. However I'm not sure I understand : is the CF attached to the mainboard, instead of the hard disk, or is it stuck in the CF-card slot at the side of the computer?

Thank you.

the compactflash card is attached to a CF-IDE converter, which is in turn attached to the 40-PIN IDE connector that the 1.8" Hitachi HDD would normally be connected to.

Thank you, I'll give it a try.

Can you please give us a link with the information about CF-IDE adapter that you're using ?

Thanks !

Yes, some more informations (CF-IDE adapter, BIOS configuration,...) would be great. Someone in a german forum said, that he got an error (2010 --> incompatible hdd http://www.thinkpad-forum.de/thread.php?postid=203435#post203435) after replacing the hdd and starting the system. Were there any problems like that in your case?

this is the CF-IDE adapter that I used:

http://img244.imageshack.us/img244/9044/img6840uo2.jpg

I purchased it off of ebay a while ago and don't remember the specifications. As I recall, since compactflash cards share the same interfaces and connections as IDE hard drives, these CF-IDE adapters are nothing more than a bunch of wiring with no actual "conversion" logic so any CF-IDE adapter with the right connectors will work.

As for BIOS settings, nothing needs to be changed in the BIOS. I do get error 2010, but the latest BIOS has the option of continuing after the warning. So on every cold boot, the BIOS will beep at you saying the hard drive is not authorized, and then after 5-10 seconds will continue booting.

While on subject of rebooting, this system boots FAST. from the thinkpad logo to the welcome screen takes noticeably less time compared to the old 4200RPM drives.

This 32gb should work in X40/X41 if anyone has $800 burning a hole in their pocket.
http://www.king-cart.com/cgi-bin/cart.c ... atch=exact

Also I thought the bios allowed a setting to bypass the warning on the X41.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 59720.html

Interesting, thanks - I had not seen that one before. It will fit at least, it seems. I'm still wondering about the voltages, though. That SSD requires 5V. The original drive in the X4* on the other hand has two operating modes, 3.3V and 5V. If the X4* uses the 3.3V-mode, then it cannot power the SSD. Is there a way to find out what voltage the X4* supplies?

Björn

Just to avoid confusion (hopefully), I believe the necessary ide adapter is 44 pin....not 40.

Can someone please conirm the accuracy of that, or correct me if I'm mistaken.

Thanks

It explicitly lists X40 compatibility on that site, so I don't think it will be a problem. Also, from the C4K40 datasheet it appears that the 40GB version (which works in the X40) also requires 5V.

DV Nation is also selling X40 compatible SSDs (search for PQI Turbo Industrial on that page), but they're even more expensive than the Super Talent drives. They also have a nice overview of the 3 common connector types for 1.8" drives.

I'm currently running a compact flash card as my boot device. I have a ton of information posted over here about it:

http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3424

With screenshots here:

http://www.angelfire.com/rpg2/tweakit/index.html

I couldn't get it to boot windows, though I only tried it once. I run suse.

You're basically correct. IDE in laptops is 44 pin.

http://storagemojo.com/2007/04/06/build ... ash-drive/

The remaining 4 pins are typically for power AFAIK.

At least........ I've never seen a molex in my adventures into laptops.

I just tried a 16gb CF card in an adapter as a HD and it was dog slow. Only thing positive is it made the orginal 40gb drive seem quite speedy.

Not sure what the problem is with the CF card and/or adapter. Its an OEM Samsung 150x card. I got the CF to IDE adapter on eBay. It was running in DMA mode 2.

Not sure if I will try an SSD drive or sell the X40, the SuperTalent 32gb can be found for a little over $500 now.... still pretty pricey.

DMA mode 2 has a max transfer rate of 16.7MB/s, which is about 30% less than your CF card. Still, for sustained transfers, that shouldn't be much slower than the original 4200RPM HD. Have you tried running HDTach to compare?

Until I see benchmarks of the Super Talent 32GB, I'd be a bit suspicious. First-generation SSD performance, particularly write-performance, was pretty patchy in my experience.

I decided not to try the super talent drive. I got a deal on a new x61s ultralight for under $1000.... so will sell the X40 once I get a replacement HD and recovery CDs next week from IBM.... will probably let the IDE/CF adapter go with the X40 and maybe put the 16gb CF card in a pcmcia adapter. I think the problem is the CF card, not the adapter. The adapter looks to be the same one someone here put a fast 8gb CF card in and got good speeds.

Could lay my hands on a 4 GB CF-Card (Transcend TS4GCF266) and a few adaptors to run speed tests. All adaptors look like these.

1) Desktop, adaptor to 40-pin female IDE plugged directly into mainboard: over 40 MB/s sequential read, 33 MB/s write.

2) Desktop, adaptor to 40-pin male IDE on 80-ribbon-cable with or without HDD on same cable: System hangs repeatedly when reading. Does not work.

3) Desktop, same adaptor as in 2) (40-pin male IDE), SATA-PATA converter, connected to SATA on mainboard: over 40 MB/s sequential read, 33 MB/s write. The converter does not slow things down.

4) X41, CF-PCMCIA adaptor Panasonic BN-CFADPP3. Read/write is less than 400 kB/s. Not acceptable. Any suggestions on a good adaptor?

5) X41, ultrabase, ultrabay HDD adaptor, 44 pin CF to mini IDE adaptor (male): Does not work. No device recognized. Strange.

6) X41, same adaptor as in 5) instead of internal HDD. Did anyone else notice the HDD is mounted top down? Be careful connecting to the correct pins.

6a) Boot Linux from CD with CF in X41:



6b) Clean install XP on the CF-card.
Takes about 40 minutes including SP2. Without updates, drivers or virtual memory the OS occupies slightly less than 1 GB.
Time from shutdown command to power off is 12 seconds.

Next: Purchase the 8 GB card from the same series (Transcend TS8GCF266) to migrate for real. I'll keep you updated.

I pciked up a 1.8" 44pin ide to compact flash adapter and I'll try it out soon. It was only like $2 on ebay.

Just FYI, 44 pin is the IDE standard that laptops use (including the x41t), 40 pin is desktops, and I think there's another standard for ipods. Compactflash cards are also 40 pin I believe. My adapter states it supports up to ATA-33 spec, though I think most compact flash cards now support up to ATA-66. No idea if that is its true limit or just outdated marketting material as the device itself is "dumb", it is just some circuit tracings that remap the compact flash pins to the external connection. (compactflash cards apparently include ide controllers on the card) Since there's no logic on the adapter, I'd assume that it will support ATA-66 just fine.
What IS important, however, is that the compactflash support ATA-66. Many will not as there is no requirement to, but the ones that do will explicitly mention TrueIDE or ATA-66 support in their manufactuer's product specs. Still remains to be seen whether or not the x41T can operate these compactflash drives at ATA-66 speeds though.

I figure I'll pick up this compactflash card and try it out.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820183079

Relatively inexpensive for a 16GB card, supports TrueIDE mode (according to RiData's website anyway), has decent performance, only downside I see is it doesn't have very good write endurance. It's only rated for 100,000 cycles, however information I found online indicates that it should be good for a bit over a year of constant writing activity, and since normal computer use is nowhere near that hard disk intensive (the estimates I looked at had them overwriting the entire disk 3 times a day) hopefully it will last a few years.
There's also a 1.8" transcend 8GB SSD available on newegg that is likely to support more write cycles (since SSDs normally do) but it is slower and double the price for half the space.


My 60GB x41t drive only lasted a bit over a year and its replacements go for more than $150, so if I can get even that amount of time out of it with faster performance, it'll be a better deal in the end.

Got an 8 GB (7.5 GiB) Transcend TS8GCF266 (SLC-NAND; better long time data reliability than the MLC-NAND used in all 16 GB cards) and placed it in my X41. Not suprisingly, the adapter does allow UDMA4 (ATA66).

Had to shorten three plastic ribs on the HDD cover by about 1 mm each to fit it back on.

After clean installing XP, hardware drivers, some IBM tools, lots of MS-stuff (updates, divx ...) openoffice, VLC, gimp etc 5 GiB are used up. The remaining 2.5 Gib are for virtual memory (set to 512-2048 MiB) or hibernation (2 GiB). XP recovery points are limited to 200 MB.

Time to boot, shutdown or start programs is great. Reading is at 40 MB/s, writing at 33 MB/s.

Anyone disappointed with X41 HDD performance may consider doing the same.

Regarding data I intend to place another CF card in the cardbus slot. Still looking for a fast adapter, though.

During boot, the 2010 error shows up. If sound was enabled in XP prior to rebooting the system beeps twice. If sound was off it does not.

Most 8GB cards I've seen can stand up to 1,000,000 write cycles, and taking into account they're half the size of 16GB cards, that means they should last 5x as long. Still, I think the 16GB card will last long enough, probably the life of the laptop for me. If using linux, you can also use alternative filesystems that may last longer, and turn off swap on both linux and windows to avoid writes.

Did anybody wanna try the following two:
1. http://www.leaddigi.com/shopping/index. ... ts_id=7485
2. http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?p=FHD32G ... 47ea944922

These two SSDs are made by Super Talent, and the difference is the speed. Since the first one is "much" slower than the first one in theory, so it's also much cheaper. I am thinking of buying the second one, but the price is too high so I am hesitating...

By the way, I am also thinking of replacing my current IBM abg to the following wireless card for better reception:
http://www.oxfordtec.com/us/product_inf ... googlebase
However, this card is bigger in dimension, and there is a famous 1802 error problem, so I don't know if it is worth trying.

Hi all, new here, but thought I'd offer my two cents. I think the compact flash mod is the way to go at this point. It's just so much cheaper, and you can get 16gb for ~$160 and it should be at least as fast as what you currently have, if not faster. Plus you can take advantage of the pcmcia slot and sd slot if you want to squeeze some more space.

Though it looks like most people have been installing xp. When I get my cf-ide adapter, I think I'm gonna try to fit vista on. I used vLite to trim the Vista install down to 3-4gb, so 16gb might be doable.

Actual SSDs from Super Talent or PQI (5,000,000 write cycles?) are very expensive. Therefore I am using CF. If you are worrying about lifetime, there are 8 GB industrial UDMA CF cards with 2,000,000 write cycles. I am using a normal one with 1,000,000.

So which 8gb card did you get, and is it notably faster than the x41t hdd?

Transcend TS8GCF266. See above.

Anybody tried this SSD <http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208063>
Could you please provide feedback? I really want to research more about it before purchasing.
Thanks,

Thanks! I'm waiting for the connector to come in the mail, then I'll probably bite the bullet and get one of these.

That drive does not exceed mwDMA2 (16.6 MB/s). After reading that I decided not to buy one.

According to a Transcend technician TS16GCF133 will work in UDMA IDE fixed disk mode as well. Twice the capacity, half maximum speed, similar seek time, less long time data reliability, similar cost.

HPA should work in theory. There is no guarantee, though. Someone with a 16 GB card and recovery CDs might try and report? Anyway, prepare for a clean install.