I've been considering the different SSD options for my T43, and came across this older thread about the possibility of having an SATA to IDE converter. If the SATA drive is a 1.8" form factor, then space for the converter chip shouldn't be too much of a problem.

If this is indeed an option, then us T4x users should have plenty of cheaper SSD options available, considering current PATA interface SSDs can cost just as much as the T4x itself. I understand that I could use the ultrabay SATA caddy to install an SATA SSD, but I like the idea of keeping the bay modular if possible.

Does anyone know if such a converter exists?

Well, you'll lose a LOT of speed converting SATA to PATA...then reversing that...not worth it IMHO.

I'm sure it'll be up against a speed penalty with this type of setup, but do you know how slow it actually gets?

I can probably go grab one of these adapters down at Microcenter later this week and perform a speed test. I guess the real test would be how this sort of setup affects the seek times of the SSD.

ChugokuOtaku wrote:


I don't have the actual figures, but let's put it this way: at the current $/GB ratio of the SSDs, I'm not even remotely tempted to try it out.

Personally, I'm still quite pleased with my oh-so-not-trendy-anymore PATA 7200rpm drives in my T43 and T43p...

Believe me, I was like that too, until I put Win7 on my 64gig Kingspec in my x41, and that's not even considered a fast SSD, but that machine flies compared to my T43's 7200rpm PATA now, which is why I'm trying to consider all my SSD options for my T43

Oh, please don't get me wrong, I do understand the sentiment entirely. It's just that I don't see the gain in machine's speed and responsiveness matching the expense, but that's just me.

If you choose to take the SSD route, by all means keep us posted.

Good luck.

After digging around a bit more, it seems like the only readily available option I have (which I'm sure many of you have come across already) is to employ one of those 1.8" ZIF to 2.5" IDE interface adapters like this one here with a 1.8" ZIF SSD. The ones offered by SuperTalent offer good read speeds of 80MB/s with slightly better than 7200rpm write speeds of 40MB/s, same ones employed in those MB Airs I believe. I benchmarked my 60gig 7K60 last night with CrystalMark, and got about 30/30 on read/write sustained. Random read/write speeds were a little too embarrassing to post here. Perhaps the 100gig versions are a bit faster?

I'd much prefer the original setup I had in mind, since I'd like to employ the drive in a modern machine the day my T43 finally gives out, where as with a ZIP SSD, there's little value in reusing it considering modern SSD specs.

I've been looking at SSDs for my T43 too. One of the options that I've read about on these forums is booting off a SATA SSD in the ultrabay using a SATA caddy (either 3rd party or a modified T60 caddy). The caddy has a SATA/PATA bridge and the results are good. I'm kind of put off by this solution because I then lose use of the dvd/cd drive.

The other option I've considered is a native PATA SSD like the Kingspec, but I'm not convinced by their quality. The Runcore Pro IV PATA SSDs as seen on ebay look a bit better because they seem to be indilinx controllers and the SATA versions have really good benchmarks and reviews.

Remember the the benchmarks that make the difference in real world use are small random reads and writes, so the IDE limitations are not going to apply.

Don't know if I could put up with the 2010 error though

For the last several weeks I've been using the 64gb Transcend PATA SSD below in my T42p with absolutely no issues:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208431

This Newegg listing also has a lot of comments in the 'Review' section.

I used Acronis to copy everything over from my old drive, then moved that drive into the CD bay to use as a backup, for my Firefox cache, for misc file storage, daily Acronis system backups, etc.

Performance-wise, I'm very pleased. The machine is much more responsive and I don't have the lag I saw CONTINUOUSLY while waiting for the old drive to finish beating itself to death for even the most basic tasks.

I've had no trouble with the Kingspec in my x41 despite it having a jmicron controller. Win7 runs really fast on it, doesn't hang or experience those 1 to 2 second pauses during IMs. I had trouble with XP on it though, possibly due to alignment issues.

I've looked into all the 2.5" Kingspec PATA options so far, and the 64gig versions are right below $200 on ebay, with the 128gig versions near $400. My gf in China helped me check over there(where Kingspec is based) and she can get a 128gig there locally for right over $300, which is what I'm considering. The 64gig versions over there is only $10-15 cheaper than here. The 64gig ZIF SSDs can be had for under $160 with cashback through Ebay, which is why I was thinking about getting one of those instead of PATA.

I get the 2010 error on my x41, but with the latest BIOS it can just boot past it without pausing. Don't worry about putting up with the error during bootup. Once you're used to how snappy the SSDs are, you'd be more than willing to put up with it.

Can anyone post Crystal DiskMark scores for their Kingspec, Transcend or other PATA SSDs in the T43?

I'm starting to get really tempted, especially by the Runcore Pro IVs as their 4k random read and write scores seem to be really good (http://www.runcorestore.com/ProductDeta ... 1249411929):
Random 4K Read Rate* 21MB/s
Random 4K Write Rate* 18MB/s

I see the above mentioned solution where a 1.8" SSD drive and a converter could be fitted inside the primary drive compartment to be a great idea, if something like that is possible. The condition must be that the cover will still fit, and no part is peeking out. After all, SATA is the area where development is done, and where we will have the greatest variety of sizes and form factors, both SSDs and non-SSDs, in the future.

I see this as a possible backup solution the day PATA drives becomes harder to get and more expensive, because no one is manufacturing them anymore. I don't know if that is likely to happen in many years still, but worth looking into. At that time the only people still using the T4x machines would be people with special interest, like us here on this forum.

After further investigation, I think I've arrived much closer to the answer I was looking for:
Depending on the specific form factor of machines in question, there are two options:

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.19734

http://www.cooldrives.com/2sahadrtoide.html

Obviously, us Thinkpadders are gonna be looking at the 2nd option.
Judging from the pictures, modifications to the chassis may be necessary for installation of the adapter. From what I can see, it appears that the adapter itself can be semi-permanently mounted inside the HDD bay, and then the HDD caddy can be modified for 1.8" SATA drive mounting.

Over at the notebookreview forum, looks like users of the 2510p who are stuck in similar situations as our fellow X4x users, have tested the SATA option using optical bay caddies and posted some very useful benchmarks of their findings. Coincidentally, I'm all too familiar with the 2510p since I work with them at work almost everyday, and those 1.8" ZIF drives are painfully slow.

After reading through all this, I'm beginning to question the benefits of such a setup, and made a quick comparison of benefits and drawbacks of the 3 different SSD setup options.

With the above option:

Advantages:
1. Keep internal optical bay available
2. SSD reusable in future machines.
Disadvantages:
1. Irreversible modification to chassis may be necessary.
2. Judging by the expected lifespan of T4x notebooks, SATA SSD installed might have laughable performance compared to future SSDs by the time these notebooks really reach the end of their cycle.

With native PATA SSD option:

Advantages:
1. Keep internal optical bay available.
2. No adapter/hardware modding necessary.
Disadvantages:
1. Higher cost per gigabyte (SATA SSDs currently dropping close to $2/gig while PATA SSDs are well over $2.50/gig)
2. Almost guaranteed obsolescence of the SSD.

With SATA SSD in SATA Ultrabay caddy:

Advantages:
1. SSD reusable in future machines.
2. No adapter/hardware modding necessary.
3. Lowest projected cost
4. Availability of both 1.8" and 2.5" SSDs for installation
5. No 2010 error (not considered much of an advantage by some)
Disadvantages:
1. Loss of internal optical bay availability
2. (same as 2nd disadvantage of 1st option.)

All that being said, I'm starting to lean towards the SATA SSD caddy option(partially since I already have an SATA T4x caddy). Perhaps X3x user, lacking an ultrabay, would take a greater interest in the 1st option.

I think you are looking for this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0506156393


Look at the table posted on Aug 8, 2009
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=71881&start=30

From the picture, that's exactly what I had in mind.

except... I ran into another problem:
After a quick search for some reasonably priced 1.8" SATA SSDs, I noticed from the pictures that the Intel SSDs don't use the standard SATA connection, but rather the notebook specific slimline/micro SATA interface. Other SSDs like this one by Super Talent uses the same standard. Apparently all current 1.8" SSDs employ this type of interface. It happened that I was tearing through a dead gateway machine the other day, and noticed this connection on the optical drive, but didn't give too much thought to it. A quick google search led me to adapters like this one, but these are designed to allow notebook optical drives to be used in desktop, and modification may be necessary to join this to the above mentioned IDE to standard SATA adapter. A search for slimline/micro SATA to IDE adapter didn't turn up anything, so I'm guessing there's really no readily available option to employ 1.8" SATA SSD in our T4x at this point.

UPDATE:

After digging around a bit more, it looks like there may be light at the end of the tunnel after all. This little adapter, can easily bridge a standard SATA + power connection to the slimline/micro SATA interface. My only concern now is the length of this interface adapter + the SATA to IDE converter... may be an extremely tight fit, if it fits at all.

Your pix1 and pix3 is actually the same connector, pix1 is viewed from the top and pix3 is viewed from the bottom. It is commonly known as Micro-SATA. The PATA to Micro-SATA adapter should work. I don't have one so I don't know if it'll be too long for the 2.5 inch HDD slot.

Yeah, I know they're the same. I was only giving two examples. I only found PATA to standard SATA adapter, not micro. If you look at the description on the one from Ebay, they're specifically 7 + 15 pin SATA interface, which is the standard full SATA + power interface, not the MicroSATA, which doesn't have the full 15 pin contacts for power, which is why I linked another standard 7 + 15 pin SATA interface to MicroSATA interface adapter.

Correction to my earlier post, slimline and micro are actually two separate standards.

I see. There is a small shop in Akihabara near the Suehirocho stn that carry many different adapters. Last time I went then, I didn't look for a IDE-microSATA adapter. But I will take a look next time in Tokyo.

If there is such a converter/adapter readily available, I'm sure many of us here would be very interested in getting some.

I came across that 40gig Kingston SATA SSD deal for $75 at Amazon today, couldn't hold out and pulled the trigger. Guess I'll be losing my ultrabay after all.

Question regarding TRIM: Is it supported if the SATA SSD is going through a converter to PATA?

Got my 40gig Kingston yesterday.
Win7 experience gave my drive a 5.9 out of the box
Crystal benchmarks below:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0 Beta5 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/sec [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 bytes/sec]

Sequential Read : 90.097 MB/s
Sequential Write : 43.972 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 79.964 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 43.705 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 14.796 MB/s [ 3612.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 20.507 MB/s [ 5006.7 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 18.887 MB/s [ 4611.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 30.520 MB/s [ 7451.2 IOPS]

Test : 100 MB [C: 30.4% (11.3/37.2 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2010/04/04 21:13:28
OS : Windows 7 Enterprise Edition [6.1 Build 7600] (x86)

It's apparent that the sequential read is being capped below 100MB/s due to the SATA to IDE bridge.
Sequential write is a bit slower than my 64gig Kingspec, but sequential read and random read/write 4KB is much faster.

Yep - I think you need one of these - http://www.diytrade.com/china/4/product ... apter.html

There should be more than enough space to fit a 1.8" Micro-SATA drive like the Intel X18-M onto the converter.

Has anyone actually tried to fit an adapter like this + a 1.8" drive in a the bay of a T4x? Otherwise I can probably find the size of the X 18-M online and try to calculate the size of the adapter from the picture.

I've never done it no, but the 1.8" drives are much smaller than the regular 2.5" units - I think there will be plenty of room for the adapter

Okay, how many ppl here would be interested in getting one of these things?

I got my gf in China to contact the local office there, and a minimum domestic order is $100USD, while minimum international order is $1000.
I can ask her to place a $100USD order and then get some friends to bring them over to the States.

If these are $5 a pop as the English site had indicated, then I'll need at least 10-15 ppl who are interested.

I'm interested in one, so count me in.

Looking at pictures of the X18, where it's next to the X25, it seems like there should be enough room for the adapter without exceeding the size of the X25. The condition is that the X18 can be plugged directly into the adapter. The electronic component located on the left hand side of the micro-SATA connector seems to maybe prevent that, but.. I don't know. For $5 and even $10, I'm willing to give it a try.

I see this as a getting the chance to use SATA SSD technology in a T4x, as PATA and SATA drives will move in very opposite directions in the future when it comes to price and availability.

I hope that the 1.8" drives are narrow enough to fit alongside the component on the left - otherwise you couldn't actually plug any drive in, and the adapter would be totally useless

I'm also interested in one - if you Google the part, it's available from plenty of sellers - you might be able to find one that can supply a smaller order value ?

My thought was that it *could* be meant for use with a cable or other proprietary connectors. That doesn't make sense, and I believe it works like you describe, that the drive is narrow enough to be plugged in next to it. But I have seen a lot of things that doesn't make sense, so nothing surprises me.

Googled and found about 4 English sites selling that specific item, all from the same source in China. All of them require a minimum of 100 units per order.

Bad news:
My gf called their office in China again today, and it turns out the minimum order over there is 100 units as well, not $100 USD. Straight from the factory they're $4.8 per unit, and then there's shipping, etc...

Ouch. Seems like they are only manufactured on demand, and not kept in stock at all. So you probably won't be able to buy one even if you show up in their office in person.

If someone is willing to buy a 100 unit batch, I would be willing to increase my order to 5, as I see this as an interesting concept. So with one for Nomgle as well, there's only 94 left to sell.

I'll be taking at least 5 myself, so we're down to 89