Help me fit Corsair F60 SATA SSD into T42p

[stirliz]

Hi guys,

I have an issue here. My T42p, which I like a lot, and which is with me since 2005, is a rather slow at the moment, and the bottleneck is the HDD. I have considered changing it to SSD for quite a long time, but as I have another fast notebook to do my daily stuff, it did not make much sense spending many $$$ for upgrading an outdated notebook.

It was so until yesterday, when I got the above mentioned SSD as a Christmas present. As we all know there is no SATA support for the T42p, so I need an adapter to be quite small enough to fit it.

Any ideas for that?

10x in advance.

[Raceboy]

You can use Ultrabay SATA HDD adapter. You can use it as your primary HDD but lose the optical drive. Adapters itselves are not expensive, I picked up a 3rd party one for 25 usd.

[Tasurinchi]

An easy way would be to get a SATA ultrabay adapter and stick it with the SSD in the place where the optical drive is. But you loose the optical drive... There are some users here that report having succeeded with such an adapter.

That would be the easy mod.

I'm not aware of such a tiny adapter for the normal HDD bay. Other users with more experience may confirm it or not.

@Edit: Ups! Raceboy was faster...

[stirliz]

Thanks guys, I forgot there is an Ultrabay option.

I do not use the Optical drive that often....I guess only few times, but it will be still unpleasant to realize you do not have it...

Has anyone tried with an IDE/SATA controllers for internal mount?

[Tasurinchi]

I don't think T42p's have a SATA controller. To my knowledge only the T43/T43p models have the SATA-IDE Bridge. I might be wrong thou...

[stirliz]

I don't think T42p's have a SATA controller. To my knowledge only the T43/T43p models have the SATA-IDE Bridge. I might be wrong thou...

It does not have the SATA bridge, but there are some adapters on DealExtereme, for instance, that are enabling IDE-SATA and back transfer - the question is if they work with T42p and if they will fit in the HDD slot.

[stirliz]

regarding Ultrabay SATA HDD adapter - were can I get this? Any ideas?

[frankiepankie]

I was in the same situation, and bought a "IBM Thinkpad T40 Ultrabay Slim SATA 2nd HDD Caddy DV04" from http://myworld.ebay.com/nypc-tech/

And for the DVD drive: "USB EXTERNAL CASE THINKPAD slim T40 T41 T42 T43 HDD DVD" from http://myworld.ebay.com/cityeliter/


eBay for the win

[lukee]

regarding Ultrabay SATA HDD adapter - were can I get this? Any ideas?

Don't forget you'll be limited with ATA transfer rate = ~80 MB/s practically. So the SSD with ~150 MB/s will work only on 80MB/s. Last high capacity ATA HDDs are near of these speeds too (60 - 70 MB/s). I've seen an eshop with ATA to SATA small-sized converters but the seller wasn't sure if it can be fitted into T4x main HDD slot, never has tested it.

[stirliz]

I was in the same situation, and bought a "IBM Thinkpad T40 Ultrabay Slim SATA 2nd HDD Caddy DV04" from http://myworld.ebay.com/nypc-tech/

And for the DVD drive: "USB EXTERNAL CASE THINKPAD slim T40 T41 T42 T43 HDD DVD" from http://myworld.ebay.com/cityeliter/


eBay for the win

Yeah, I have bothered to searhc the ebay and found a bunch of those from different sellers. If you say this works with no issue for you, I think I`ll get the same.

Don't forget you'll be limited with ATA transfer rate = ~80 MB/s practically. So the SSD with ~150 MB/s will work only on 80MB/s. Last high capacity ATA HDDs are near of these speeds too (60 - 70 MB/s). I've seen an eshop with ATA to SATA small-sized converters but the seller wasn't sure if it can be fitted into T4x main HDD slot, never has tested it.

Which ATA HDD has a write speed of 60Mb/s?

Actually, if one believes the specs, the F60 SSD I got has up to 286Mb/S Read and something like that write I know I won't be able to feel the hole gorgeousness of my SSD, but I am sure it will be a giant leap forward in comparison to my very slow HDD. I guess I get ~15Mb/s at the moment, never checked it though, but it is really slow.

I have an powerful Sony FW series notebook, with an .7200 RPM Hitachi drive, which is more than enough for me - it loads Win7 in some 30 seconds. On the Thinkpad I have to wait about 5 minutes to get the XP loaded (with few start ups, but I have minimized them to reasonable minimum)...it loads in some 3 minutes, but you have to wait another so to get the hdd settled down. Pain in the [censored], and even Linux, which is much faster is still slow.

[lukee]

I've wrote max. read speeds. You can be sure you will feel the difference between old HDD and new SSD altough the performance potential will be unused. Another aspect would be longer battery life when using SSD.

[stirliz]

I've wrote max. read speeds.

I got it, I was just *itching

You can be sure you will feel the difference between old HDD and new SSD altough the performance potential will be unused. Another aspect would be longer battery life when using SSD.

I hope a longer battery life as well - My battery is half dead, and I wont be getting a new one for this old notebook - does not worth it. *unless one shipped from china for 25$

[stirliz]

Hi,

I just got my Ultrabay adapter, and I can confirm that it works like a charm.

I do not have a bios password, so I cannot make the drive loading first on start up, but F12 works like a charm.

All in one its a giant step forward in terms of performance - now my system starts in 10 to 15 seconds with some apps in start-up on windows XP SP3.

The only this that worries me a bit is the 4 kbyte performance.

[qcrz_]

I was in the same situation, and bought a "IBM Thinkpad T40 Ultrabay Slim SATA 2nd HDD Caddy DV04" from http://myworld.ebay.com/nypc-tech/

And for the DVD drive: "USB EXTERNAL CASE THINKPAD slim T40 T41 T42 T43 HDD DVD" from http://myworld.ebay.com/cityeliter/


eBay for the win

These look like great products.

Only I wonder if with this SATA ultrabay hdd caddy I can use directly SATA-SATA on my T43, or it'll somehow go again through the PATA-2-SATA bridge which the native hdd slot has?

[RealBlackStuff]

You can remove the SATA-PATA bridge chip in a T43/R52, and use direct SATA.
DO SO AT YOUR OWN RISK.
Search the forum, several posts about this.

[qcrz_]

So, you basically say that via the HDD ultrabay caddy it'll again use the SATA-PATA bridge, right ?

[lukee]

So, you basically say that via the HDD ultrabay caddy it'll again use the SATA-PATA bridge, right ?

Yes, that's true. The HDD Ultrabay caddy contain the converter chip inside.

[qcrz_]

Yes, that's true. The HDD Ultrabay caddy contain the converter chip inside.

Probably because this caddy is for all T4x ultrabays. Otherwise is really stupid a "SATA" caddy and SATA native chip on the notebook to have some intermediate PATA stuff :>. And i'm kind of sad about it..