How to use 2.5" SATA SSD in Ultrabay caddy

[andertrack]

A quick how to for those that want to upgrade to a 2.5" SSD for their main boot drive. I recommend installing a fresh copy of Windows 7 when you install your SSD

Preperation:

1. Search on ebay for "ibm t42 sata caddy" and buy from a top rated seller (I purchased mine from nypc-tech)



2. Buy any 2.5" SATA SSD that is within your budget (try logic buy: http://www.logicbuy.com/categorydeals/c ... drives-ssd)

3. Purchase a copy of Windows 7 (if you have more than two computers to upgrade to 7, get the family 3 pack: http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Windows ... 498&sr=8-1)

4. (optional) Purchase an enclosure for the DVD drive on ebay (search for "usb external case t42 dvd")- You will need an external DVD drive to install Windows 7 from a DVD, but you can download Windows 7 from Microsoft and install from a USB drive

5. (also optional) Search for "IDE 44-Pin 2.5" HDD to Compact Flash CF Adapter Converter" on ebay and install in IDE bay with a blank CF card after you remove your IDE hard drive. This will get rid of the 30 second boot delay. Otherwise, you can just leave the IDE bay empty. Also on amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Syba-SY-IDE2CF-NB ... 602&sr=8-1




Installation:

1. Remove IDE hard drive from computer

2. Remove optical drive from Ultrabay (see manual for instructions)

3. Install SSD into SATA caddy and then install into Ultrabay (where your optical drive was)

4. Boot up the computer and go into the BIOS and change the boot order so that the SSD is first

5. Install a fresh copy of Windows 7 (any version) onto the SSD; using XP is not reccomended because it does not have TRIM support

6. Boot up the computer, and Windows should find most of the drivers. Go to lenovo.com for any additional drivers you may need

7. Enjoy the blazing speed and reliability of SSD! (Note: the read/write speed will not be on par with native SATA because the caddy is working on a PATA bus)

[ausmike]

Since you "cloned" the Hard drive to the SSD (via Acronis).....
am curious ..... what you did with 'virtual memory' files ..ie pagefile.sys and like files on your SSD ?

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Am Also 'curious' as to how the CF (assume u ment 'compact flash' which are most commonly used in Digital Camera)....how do they address UDMA Fixed Disk Mode feature normaly avalible on MOST IDE hard drives?


thanks

[andertrack]

I did not end up cloning the drive (I was thinking of another time), my mistake. I actually did a fresh install of Windows 7 because of the support for TRIM. I have edited the how to guide to recommend a fresh install of Windows 7.

In terms of your second point, yes, it is a Compact Flash card, and I am not sure about UDMA. I formatted the card, put it in the CF to IDE adapter, installed the adapter in the IDE bay, and forgot about it. There is still a slight delay at bootup, but nowhere close to the 30 seconds before I installed the CF card.

[Johan]

Readers of this thread might (also) want to see the thread 1.8" SATA to 2.5" IDE converter? - especially from this post and onwards... it is strongly related to the subject discused in this highly interesting thread!

Thanks very much for posting this!!

Johan

[andertrack]

Your welcome Johan. I did look at the 1.8" SATA to IDE solution as well as a PATA SSD, but I think that in terms of cost, the 2.5" SSD with ultrabay is the cheapest.

[edhkim]

Just wanted to say thanks to the OP. I liked the relative price-effectiveness of this approach, so for under $140 for a 64GB crucial (one day before they released the new model for essentially the same price, dagnabbit) and the two adapters, got this to work by cloning my drive using the trial version of Casper (after DriveXML didn't work - I wonder if Casper did a better job copying over boot stuff). I suppose if I were more patient I could've gotten a better deal on the SSD, but it's not like I need a lot of space, and 64 was a step up, even.. I'll give it a few days to see how much faster it is, but from the first 15 minutes of use, seems pretty snappy. Not that I benchmarked my old stock HDD anyway...

So again, thanks for the idea and how-to!

[Johan]

@ edhkim:

Welcome to the forum, and thanks for sharing!

Would you be able/willing to give an idea of the boot time on your T42 (as I take it that you've got a T42?), and information about what OS you're running... e.g. XP or Windows 7?

Thanks in advance!

Johan

[andertrack]

Your welcome edhkim. I went back to my original post and cleaned stuff up a little bit and split the guide into two sections, which hopefully will make it easier to read.

[edhkim]

Let's see... Actually I have a T43p, and I cloned my WinXP drive. It was actually partitioned into two drives, but Casper cloned both onto the new disk in one go. I then used MiniTool Partition Wizard to expand the two partitions into the rest of the available space (I think the full version of Casper lets you do that at the same time as cloning).

As for bootup time, I've got JoliOS co-installed, so I have to choose that on boot, but if I do everything as fast as I can (choose WinXP, then slide my fingerprint at the right time), it takes about 30 seconds to see the boot menu (even though I have a CF card in the original hard drive bay), finger print login at 1 minute, reactive desktop by about 3 minutes and 30 seconds. I'm guessing that means I have to figure out something about the CF-to-IDE card, since I don't see the card available, either. Just format it so that it's blank, right?

I also have soluto installed, which tells me that by its reckoning that "bootup" has gone from about 4 and a half minutes to 2:15, but I think that's from when soluto starts running just after windows has started.


In any case, I'll also note that the Intel SSD Toolbox does not recognize the drive as an SSD, probably because of the superbay adapter, but that's probably not a surprise. I'm not sure if I'll get a noticeable decline in performance as my lack of TRIM becomes an issue. MyDefrag mentions on its FAQ that it kinda sorta hand-wavey addresses some SSD fragmentation issues indirectly, but I dunno what that will mean for wear-and-tear. Maybe using its USB defragging script would be the best approach? Once a month? Still googling around for answers on best practices.

Also, now I've spent at least a little more time, and yeah, it's faster! Weirdly, especially when I try to pull up the ATI Catalyst Control Center that handles the display and video card settings. Going to hibernate still takes a while, but my RAM is 2GB so I'm guessing that's just gonna take a while. Waking up from hibernation is faster. I'm thinking a big part of the increase in speed I'm seeing may lie in the fact that my hard drive was near capacity, so a lot of files were fragmented now matter how much I tried to defrag. Not the whole thing, of course, but definitely played a part.

[andertrack]

I think my thinkpad would have been dead by now had I not done this (bump)

[ChugokuOtaku]

I did look at the 1.8" SATA to IDE solution as well as a PATA SSD, but I think that in terms of cost, the 2.5" SSD with ultrabay is the cheapest.

for the 1.8" solution, cost comes out to be about the same really...

Shapeways caddy $17
microSATA to IDE adapter $17
1.8" 64gig SSD bought from forum member $80

And you still get to keep the ultrabay available for an optical drive(which I'm sure few of us still need... lol) or battery.

[jaobedoza]

5. (also optional) Search for "CF to 44 pin 2.5" IDE" on ebay and install in IDE bay with a blank CF card after you remove your IDE hard drive. This will get rid of the 30 second boot delay. Otherwise, you can just leave the IDE bay empty.

Why don't we just leave the old ide drive in and use it to store data? or remove it from the boot order to eliminate the delay.

[andertrack]

why don't we just leave the old ide drive in and use it to store data? or remove it from the boot order to eliminate the delay.

I wanted to remove the IDE drive to get rid of the noise the HD makes as well as the extra power consumption (also getting rid of it reduces system weight)

[jaobedoza]

I wanted to remove the IDE drive to get rid of the noise the HD makes as well as the extra power consumption (also getting rid of it reduces system weight)

OK, but what causes the boot delay? i thought maybe it was related with the removal of the IDE drive? i also like the reduced weight/noise/power consumption without having to buy a CF and IDE adapter.

[bokaal]

I also just installed a SSD a main boot drive in my T42. The renewed experience is very good!

Since I removed the orignal hard drive I also experience the 30s boot delay.

As suggested, I bought as CF to 2.5 IDE 44 pin adapter. But with that I have a question. The adapter is quite small and the 2.5" is quite narrow and thin. How did you guys install this adapter and how do you ensure it stays in place?

[andertrack]

I also just installed a SSD a main boot drive in my T42. The renewed experience is very good!

Since I removed the orignal hard drive I also experience the 30s boot delay.

As suggested, I bought as CF to 2.5 IDE 44 pin adapter. But with that I have a question. The adapter is quite small and the 2.5" is quite narrow and thin. How did you guys install this adapter and how do you ensure it stays in place?

The adapter I got was the size of a 2.5" HD, so I just attached it to the metal bracket and slid it in. It is like this one: http://www.ebay.com/itm/Syba-Ultra-IDE- ... 5890f15b47

You can try to mount the smaller adapter to the metal bracket and do it that way.

[605]

I tried to install a Intel 330-series SSD in a newly purchased SATA caddy, but could not get this to work properly:
I already had Win7 running on the IDE HD, so I Ghost'ed it over to the SSD.
The PC starts up fine, but about every 10-15 sec, it seems like it gets "stuck" for about 5 sec with the harddrive light on the caddy on. There are no error messages displayed, and none in the event log. I installed Intels SSD software, and ran the optimizer, TRIM etc (many times!), but nothing improved. The Intel Diagnostic program says all is fine.

I gave up in the end, and put a Samsung HM250HI (250 gb SATA) in the caddy, and this is my current configuration.

I am not sure how much I would gain by working on the SSD installation, as I feel the Samsung in the caddy is giving me good performance, at least a lot better than the old 40 GB Htachi IDE HD, but if anybody has a hint, I am more than willing to test it!

Here are some results for the 3 different disks.
(The Intel results is taken when booting from IDE, could not get meaningful results when booting from it.)

The original Hitachi 40 GB IDE


The Intel 330 60 GB in Caddy (Not booted from):


The Samsung 250 GB SATA in Caddy (when booted from):


The PC is a T42, 2.0GHz, 2 GB ram, SXGA+, ATI 9600/9700 (Not much more to upgrade here

[andertrack]

Weird, only thing I can think of is that the caddy doesn't like that SSD. Did you try to update the firmware on the SSD. Might want to try another SSD like this one from crucial:

http://www.amazon.com/Crucial-64-2-5-In ... ywords=ssd

Clean install of Windows 7 couldn't hurt either.

With my SSD I am getting something like 80MB/s reads, which is terrible compared to a SATA SSD, but its the best I can hope for on a SATA to PATA bridge. If you don't need the shock resistance of an SSD (I treat my T42 even more like the tank it is now), I would stay with the mechanical drive.

[605]

Thanks for the hints, but as my T42 never moves an inch, and I am happy with the performance of the new mechanical SATA disk in the caddy, I decided to put the Intel SSD in my wifes X61, where it seems to work fine. I Ghost'ed over her Win8 install, and was up and running in 30 min
The write performance is a bit dissapointing, but read rates are probably as good as can be expected from a SATA 1-laptop. Really good upgrade from her old 64 GB Hitachi which were around 25 GB/sec.

[Raceboy]

Is the partition aligned? This could easily affect the write performance and lifetime of SSD as well. On my X60 Tablet, I get ~100+ MB/s writes on all but 4K random writes (those are ~40 MB/s).

[abhiutd]

How do i Install Windows 7 on SSD (that is in the UltraBay caddy as shown in this post) since now there is now no DVD drive? Thanks.

[twistero]

How do i Install Windows 7 on SSD since now there is no DVD drive. Thanks.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=install+windows+7+from+usb+drive