Successful upgrade of T42 with Crucial M4 128 GB mSATA SSD

[Acheron]

Firstly a thank you to all the members on this site.

The other night the venerable T42 booted up with a blue screen, muttering about unable to mount such and such or the like. No great suprise as I was expecting HDD trouble and have keep all files on 32gb CF card for the last 18 months.

So I dug up an old ubuntu live cd to check that everything else was still working, reckon the people who coded the SMART drive status have a good sense of humour, in bold red capital 'HDD failure imminent'

A bit of research led me to this site full of people fond of their old thinkpads.
Lots of reading later think I have a plan:
-Crucial m4 128GB msata with convertor approx $150AUD seems reasonable
-Ultrabay caddy for a 1 TB HDD for bulk storage
- xbuntu installation (can not find the recovery disks and only really used for browsing, also just ordered a clevo haswell i7 with bells and whistles for the lass, so that can do the heavy lifting)
I would have like to use an IDE mSATA adpater from a reliable mob like Addonics but generic seems to be the only option.

Any suggestions appreciated, will updated sig line with more system details.

mSATA over 1.8" SSD as the price is cheaper and cases are for mechanical drives, NAND is cooler than that Seriously just trying to break some of the win lose situations from other peoples experience, the controller on the drive seems to be a major factor. Early versions of Sandforce on kingspec drives seem to have given some problems and slower speeds. Whereas the micron controllers seem to give reliable results.

Will post follow ups as I work on getting things going again.

Moderator edit: Improved thread title slightly to better reflect contents and the final - successful! - outcome of this project.

[Cigarguy]

Just for fun....and for a lovely 15" Flexview screen I did something similar to a T42. But I wanted to go cheap as the GPU and CPU in these machines are getting a little old. I have the following components: 2 GB RAM, 30 GB Samsung SLC SSD in the Ultrabay via an adapter for Win 7 and programs, 80 GB IDE HDD for data and an Intel 2200 wifi card. Including a pristine condition bare bones T42 everything cost me about $120 Cdn. It's a hobby project only worthwhile because of the beautiful screen. Fine for light web surfing and MS Office. Worth it even after knowing about the GPU and SB issue that affects the T4x series.

Without knowing the screen and condition of your T42. If I were to spend that kind of money for hardware upgrade AND if this was my daily machine, I would put the T42 out to pasture and look at a T61 or T500 instead. SATA II, 8 GB RAM, more powerful GPU and much more powerful GPU is a better value proposition for the new hardware you are planning on getting. A nicely equipped T61 or T500 is still a very very capable machine. Around where I live I can get a bare bones T42 for about $30 and bare bones T61 for $60-$80.

[Acheron]

I agree trying to be careful that any of the major items like the SSD are able to be carried over to a later machine. As it is certainly an old machine.
We aren't as fortunate in finding old stuff cheap around here, not enough people

[Acheron]

http://www.addonics.com/products/ad25msd.php
brain ticking through research from the other day remembered this from my favourite adapter supplier addonics.
as cigar guy suggested this needs to be budget as I am sharpening a stone axe with a laser

[Acheron]

hang on brain fade that would suit a think pad with sata not pata

[ajkula66]

My understanding is that this is as good as it gets for a PATA SSD:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/ ... Legacy_Pro

Haven't tried it myself, so YMMV.

Good luck.

[Acheron]

http://www.mfactors.com/ps50-st6-ide-44 ... m-housing/

that could be better than a `sata adapter

[Acheron]

T U ajkula66 I like the spec of the OWC drive just not available around here at a reasonable price,
managed to find the crucial msata 128k for $135 aud
$15 for a generic adapter just looking for something I have more confidence in.

ah ebay:

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/PS50-ST6-IDE ... 4ac4973166

I can buy through ebay around here, also available on amazon and direct from mfactors, seems a neat solution might give it a go. 3 times more than a generic adapter but mfactors website seems to suggest they do solutions that work so would reason they have a say in testing and quality. Those are the factors I normally look for, a vested interest from the supplier.

[Acheron]

All the new toys have arrived:
Pictures here:
https://plus.google.com/photos/11034494 ... 14ignN6idg

Piece of cake , adapter made in Taiwan , exact replacement for 2.5" drive, caddy fits perfectly, just loosened cover in front of keyboard and replacement plugged in easily.

Downloading a non PAE xubuntu kernel will see how it works

[Acheron]

ha scratch that adapter doesn't seat far enough in as the ide plug is not at the edge of the circuit board and the socket on the T42 is quite shallow.
Destroyed it trying to fix the problem.

Back to the drawing board...........

edit as requested..................
all working well check the photo link for update.

UPDATE (of Feb. 19, 2014):
Just been reminded that I never concluded this story.

All working well, running xubuntu with trim enabled. No issues whatsoever. HDD light works.
Hey after ten years the laptop still works ! I like the irony of a 128gb msata, a 1TB hdd in the ultrabay in a laptop that came out with a 30GB HDD. LOL

Think I am become a technology tinkerer as my original 7'' galaxy tab now runs KitKat.

I do have a Haswell i7 but windows 8 ruins a great machine, but education and work are slaves to microsoft and windows.

[RealBlackStuff]

Rather than making new posts one after another, if you are the last poster in a thread, you can EDIT that last post by clicking on the EDIT-button, then adding your new info, and when ready pressing SUBMIT.

[Johan]

UPDATE (of Feb. 19, 2014):

Just been reminded that I never concluded this story: All working well, running xubuntu with TRIM enabled. No issues whatsoever. HDD light works. Hey, after ten years the laptop still works! I like the irony of a 128 GB mSATA, a 1TB HDD in the Ultrabay, in a laptop that came out with a 30 GB HDD!

Thank you very much for updating this thread, David (much appreciated!) - and I am glad to hear that your T42 is running just fine with the 128 GB Crucial M4 mSATA SSD and the mSATA-to-IDE adapter.

Just to clarify for all readers which specific mSATA-to-IDE adapter Acheron successfully ended up using in his T42 (together with the 128 GB Crucial M4 mSATA SSD), I will quote part of a PM, received this morning:

[quote="... a PM with message subject: "Updated experience with mSATA SSD in a T42?", received from Acheron, where he"]
First adapter did not work*), original HDD has a particular profile to the connector end which is not matched by the generic enclosure type adapter. Wasn't pin alignment with mine; it was the protruding edge of the circuit board.

Second adapter was from Sintech PC adapter on eBay (not a useful source as the adapter seems to have gone from $17 AUD to $132 AUD!); same as this adapter**). It was an easy fit; it be nice if someone did a multiple mSATA adapters for RAID - lots of room in there!

The T42 is going well, the HDD light works. Now runs xubuntu with TRIM enabled. Not a single issue, I use the SSD as a system drive, the Ultrabay now has a 1 TB HDD mainly for FLAC files.

Generally I would say that the combination of SSD and xubuntu has optimised the system, fast and stable, better than new.

[- don't know of a Ubuntu alternative to Crystaldisk?***)][/quote]
*) Johan's note: This is the problem described by GACrabill in this post (where a solution to the problem is also devised),

**) Johan's note: This is the same adapter as being discussed in the second part of this post (= the JM20330-based adapter). This adapter is available from e.g. this eBay shop (and from many other!), for approx. USD 15,- as of today, incl. shipping, worldwide.

Notice however that the ("old") Crucial M4 has been replaced by the (newer) Crucial M500, and that a Crucial representative seems not to recommend the M500 for use with this adapter, although the details as of why not are clear; see the thread M500 mSATA with IDE adapter DeLock 62434 (the DeLock 62434 mSATA-to-IDE adapter is seen here). This issue is futher discussed in the thread Crucial M500 mSATA to IDE interface with the DeLock62434 adapter.

***) Johan's note: I had asked David if he was perhaps able to share any benchmarks for his T42 with the 128 GB Crucial M4 mSATA SSD, using e.g. CrystalDiskMark... but this is a Windows-only SW, so no benchmarks at this time... Perhaps some reader of this thread know of a "comparable" free benchmark utility for ubuntu; the results of which can more or less directly be compared against those reported by CrystalDiskMark?

So, the above approach is yet another proven-successful alternative for those who want to greatly speed up their T40/T41/T42's through replacing the old, slow, mechanical harddrive with a blazing fast mSATA SSD!

Johan

[dtwalters]

I have been reading this thread with great interest. Will the above adapter/msata system work with my Thinkpad R-51e?

[RealBlackStuff]

It might work, except the R51e has the same DDR2-RAM and CPUs as the T43/R52.
But it does NOT have a SATA-PATA adapter like T43/R52.
Never seen one in all these years.

[dtwalters]

Please help me with this. The SATA-PATA adapter is some type of hardware device inside the IDE hard drive interface that the R-51e does not have?

I was thinking the described upgrade was for the T40/41/42 series rather than the T43.

Moderator edit: Merged your two (directly successive) posts into one.

(sorry for neglecting to edit rather than start a new post... DTW)

[RealBlackStuff]

R51e is a lower-spec 'b a s t a r d', i.e. a mix of T42/T43 (alias R51/R52).
Its HD function though is identical to the above described T40-T41-T42.

[dtwalters]

Awesome, I think I'll give it a try. I will have better odds of this mod working than of winning the lottery.

[Johan]

@ dtwalters:

My personal recommendation; before you take this path I'd suggest you carefully review the slightly troublesome mounting of this ("the Acheron"-) adapter... the troubles as also pointed out by GACrabill in this post and as shown in the lower, leftmost image pointed to in this post (in other words this image) where you will see that mounting "the Acheron"-adapter will require you to remove the keyboard, palm rest etc... in other words a slightly complicated process, if you want to have easy access to later remove the drive again!

As you may perhaps already have noticed I am also very interested in investigating the performance improvement of e.g. T42/p's through adding a SSD. So far I have mainly been using the 1.8"-SATA-to-2.5"-PATA adapter, in particular discussed in the thread 1.8" SATA to 2.5" IDE converter? Since 1.8" SATA SSD's however seems to be have become more expensive, compared to recent mSATA SSD's (which are today more widely used!), I have therefore recently bought one of the Lycom/Addonics/Aleratec/DeLock adapters discussed in the thread New SSD opt. for T4x: mSATA-to-IDE adapter ST663FD9 *PICS* (if in a hurry, and not being interested in a larger perspective, then I'd suggest you just read from this post and onwards). I suggest you review this thread before making your decision.

The way I see it there are two benefits of the Lycom/Addonics/Aleratec/DeLock adapter, compared to the adapter finally (and successfully!) used by Acheron, and discussed above in this thread:

1) The Lycom/Addonics/Aleratec/DeLock adapter will directly fit in your main HDD bay (without the need to take the laptop fairly much apart), so this is a completely swift, entirely hassle-free upgrade (as opposed to the Acheon-adapter, as explained above),

2) The Lycom/Addonics/Aleratec/DeLock adapter is built around the Marvell 88SA8052-NNC2 SATA/PATA bridge chip. The "Acheron-adapter" is built around the Jmicron JMH330 SATA-to-PATA (converter) bridge/chip. There seems to be a general consensus towards that the Marvell chip is compatible with a wider range of mSATA SSD's, compared to what is believed to be the case for the Jmicron JMH330 SATA-to-PATA chip.

Because of the above two issues, I would recommend that you carefully re-consider which adapter you go for (and, yes, the Jmicron JMH330-based adapter can be bought slightly cheaper, but believe me... it may not be worth the trouble, if you end up having to mess with some incompatibility-issues!).

PS: I have recently been collecting various mSATA SSD compatibility-information from the manufacturers of the Marvell-based adapter (= the Lycom/Addonics/Aleratec/DeLock one), and I will post this in the thread New SSD opt. for T4x: mSATA-to-IDE adapter ST663FD9 *PICS*... so have a look there, if this has your interest!

Good luck whatever path you take, and please be kind to report back here about your experience - thanks in advance!

Johan

[TRS-80]

Yes, Johan (and others) have been leading the charge on trying to figure out good and reliable adapters to get from PATA to SATA SSDs for our beloved old PATA Thinkpads. And bless them for their efforts.

But there is another way, IMO simpler. Kingspec make drop in PATA SSDs which are inexpensive. Some people say they are unreliable, but a closer examination of bad reviews makes me wonder if it is just a couple people (or even, other manufacturers) spreading FUD.

My arguments in favor of going the Kingspec route can be found in this thread: Considering turning to the dark side (Kingspec PATA SSDs).

Caveat emptor however, and full disclosure: I have not ordered any of the Kingspec SSDs yet, but I do plan on doing so soon and will report results when I do. Several other people have reported good results and no problems (IMO, the group with good results is under-represented, i.e., a "silent majority" or perhaps, like Fox Mulder, it's just that I want to believe!). At any rate, more info in that other thread, and it's another option to consider.

[jwjensen356]

I'm getting in here a bit late in the game. I tried getting a mix of the bits together thinking it would all go together neatly (the Tomatenfisch/Shapeways IDE caddy with a Crucial M500 1.8 mSATA). Mine is a T40 (2373) and I would love to put in a SSD HDD equivalent. Reading what I found in this forum and plowing on by myself, I went with the Shapeways caddy and the Micro SATA to 44 pin Adapter recommended by Tomatenfisch (from microsatacables.com). I find that the miniature connector on board the adapter is not compatible with the Crucial connector. What SATA to IDE adapter might be used instead?

I hope that others (especially Johan) can square me to some solution based on the Crucial M500.

By the way, my T40 is running W7 Professional nicely.

[GACrabill]

.... I went with the Shapeways caddy and the Micro SATA to 44 pin Adapter recommended by Tomatenfisch (from microsatacables.com). I find that the miniature connector on board the adapter is not compatible with the Crucial connector. What SATA to IDE adapter might be used instead?
I hope that others (especially Johan) can square me to some solution based on the Crucial M500.

The Crucial M500 that you have is an 'mSata' connector.

The 'Shapeways caddy' and 'microSata-to-IDE adapter' were the original solution that folks used before 'mSata-to-IDE' adapters became available. The Shapeway solution used 1.8" microSata SSDs (not to be confused with mSata SSDs). The most often used 1.8" microSata SSD was the 'Kingston SSDNow V+180' model.

There are fewer and fewer choices available of 1.8" microSata SSDs ... and I haven't seen anyone post about using a newer model in the older Shapeways solution.

The newest solution using mSata SSDs in a PATA adapter / caddy is discussed in this thread :
New SSD opt. for T4x : mSATA-to-IDE adapter ST663FD9 *PICS* ... http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=112081

The two adapter/caddy options are :
- "ST663FD9 mSATA to IDE 44pin converter adapter with 2.5 inch case" ... can be found on eBay
- "ADMS25IDE" ... sometimes found on eBay, can also be found at Addonics ... http://www.shopaddonics.com/itemdesc.as ... DE&eq=&Tp=

[jwjensen356]

The two adapter/caddy options are :
- "ST663FD9 mSATA to IDE 44pin converter adapter with 2.5 inch case" ... can be found on eBay
- "ADMS25IDE" ... sometimes found on eBay, can also be found at Addonics ... http://www.shopaddonics.com/itemdesc.as ... DE&eq=&Tp=[/quote]

Thanks for the quick reply. It looks like my problem was to confuse 'microSATA' with 'mSATA'. I should go with the Addonics adapter to do the job and scratch the Shapeways unit (with its IDE adapter, anyone want to buy that combo real cheap??).

Any other comments would be appreciated.

Thanks again, John

[jwjensen356]

http://www.shopaddonics.com/itemdesc.as ... DE&eq=&Tp=

OK, I ordered it from Addonics. I should have it in a couple of days

Thanks again, John

[jwjensen356]

I got the Addionics hardware and I fitted the mSATA M500 SSD and did all that I expected to do to prepare it. I used my Acronics software for doing a clone (which I have done many times in the past for cloneing onto larger hard drives). and I ran into problems. I cloned what were workable bootable files onto SSD files and they would not boot. I've tried Acronics and most recently using PowerSuite/Spotmau (all legal software) but still no bootable files. What does it take to make a bootable file?

Thanks, John

[GACrabill]

I used my Acronics software for doing a clone (which I have done many times in the past for cloneing onto larger hard drives). and I ran into problems. I cloned what were workable bootable files onto SSD files and they would not boot.

Can you provide a few more details about your cloning process?
(ie. did you boot the T40 with an Acronis CD and then 'clone' the internal HDD to the SSD using a USB-to-PATA adapter cable which was connected to the mSata adapter/caddy?)

There are some folks who insist on doing cloning or image restoring with the receiving device installed within the Thinkpad and the old HDD connected as an external drive (or in the ultrabay).

If you already do image backups to an external drive, then you may wish to try :
- create an image backup of the current T40 HDD on an external drive
- remove the HDD and install the SSD/adapter/caddy
- boot with an Acronis recovery CD
- recover the image backup to the new SSD
- boot once, wait for drivers to install, and then re-boot when Windows tells you to
(a fairly normal process for moving to a new or larger harddrive)

There are other free backup/recovery products if Acronis continues to fail for you :
- Paragon Backup & Recovery 2014 Free Edition
- Macrium Reflect
- AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard Edition 5.5.1
These products have the features of being free and being able to create bootable CDs (choose the WinPE option for CD creation rather than the Linux option).

The PBR 2014 Free does not do direct harddrive-to-harddrive copying (cloning) .... though Macrium Reflect does have that ability.

The advantage of having the new SSD inside the T40 for its operating system creation (whether image restoring or direct cloning) is that the 'mSata SSD / Pata-to-msata adapter' is NOT at the end of a USB-to-Pata adapter. Multiple adapters in the I/O path should be avoided.

[jwjensen356]

Can you provide a few more details about your cloning process?
(ie. did you boot the T40 with an Acronis CD and then 'clone' the internal HDD to the SSD using a USB-to-PATA adapter cable which was connected to the mSata adapter/caddy?)

Sorry to not having got back sooner. I just had to take a break from the frustrations I was having. Basically, yes to your question. I was using an outboard 2.5" HDD connected to the T40 via USB. My basic procedure was to outboard a 60GB drive and using Acronis (booted) to create an image from my T40 HD to the outboarded drive. When I did this several years ago I mounted a new large drive in the T40 and using Acronis created an image on the new drive. The new HD always booted (I've done this several times successfully on laptops).

Using the W7 disk management software, I looked at my drive C and it is identified as an NTFS drive and Healthy (System, Boot, Page File, Active, Crash Dump, Primary Dump). Looking at the mSATA drive, it is identified as NTFS and Healthy (Active, Primary Partition).

Looking at both, using Explorer, I see identical folders, etc. and they occupy the same space on the HD and the mSATA drive.

One question; in your long section, you say "boot with an Acronis recovery CD". Should I make one and use that (booted) instead of the Acronis program CD?

[GACrabill]

Can you provide a few more details about your cloning process?
(ie. did you boot the T40 with an Acronis CD and then 'clone' the internal HDD to the SSD using a USB-to-PATA adapter cable which was connected to the mSata adapter/caddy?)

One question; in your long section, you say "boot with an Acronis recovery CD". Should I make one and use that (booted) instead of the Acronis program CD?

No, ... each product maker uses a slightly different name for their 'bootable' CD. The goal is to use whatever they may call it to boot the CD, and then cause the image created on the external drive to be recreated on the new drive (in this case an msata SSD in an adapter) while the new drive is installed within the PC.

Since Acronis didn't work for you this time, I would try using either 'Paragon Backup & Recovery 2014 Free Edition' or 'Macrium Reflect' to repeat the total backup/restore process using a different (free) product.

Good luck.

[jwjensen356]

Thanks for all your help. I ditched Acronis and went with Macrium Reflect. To some extent I was flying blind but I got it in the end. Macrium has a neat way of sorting out a drive that is unbootable by recovering the MBR, etc. But now I have Microsoft telling me I have an illegal copy of W7. I suppose this is like trying to bootleg my copy onto another PC. I'll work that out.

Do you have any suggestions about tweaks now that I have the SSD working?

Regards.

[RealBlackStuff]

Make sure you have BIOS version 3.23.
Then go to MDL:

Code: Select all

http://forums.mydigitallife.info/threads/5866-LENOVO-(IBM)-Bioses-especially-Thinkpad?p=91617&viewfull=1#post91617

copy/paste the link in your browser and download/install TTAV134's Slic-BIOS.
You can read more about Slic on that MDL-forum and elsewhere.

[GACrabill]

Macrium has a neat way of sorting out a drive that is unbootable by recovering the MBR, etc. But now I have Microsoft telling me I have an illegal copy of W7.

The solution to this 'illegal copy' issue is to repeat the image-backup / image-restore process using Macrium Reflect (and abandon trying to 'fix' the 'bad' Acronis restore) :
- boot Macrium Reflect
- image backup the original HDD to the USB external drive
- remove HDD and replace it with the msata SSD / adapter
- boot Macrium Reflect
- restore the image to the msata SSD
- boot and then re-boot when Windows tells you to

Do you have any suggestions about tweaks now that I have the SSD working?

A number of folks use 'SSD Tweaker' ... it does the normal tweaks with its 'Start Auto Tweak'.