IBM Thinkpad X40 no hard drive

[Hoosier97]

I need help trying to find a hard drive replacement for my X40 (acquired for $26 at a thrift store). What is the best option to go about this? I have read about the SSD replacement but I see this requires hardware modding? Also what is the compact flash method? Thanks for the help.

[ajkula66]

Welcome to the forum!

I suggest reading up on the subject matter which has been discussed thoroughly within the X4x forum. Personally, I'd stay away from the original 1.8"/4200rpm spinning drives which were slow and noisy when new, let alone a decade later...

My last X40 sported a ZIF SSD and an adapter and it ran pretty well - IMO - given the outdated specs. Obviously, YMMV.

[Hoosier97]

What is the compact flash thing?

[Neil]

I boot my X40 from a 16GB Compact Flash card mounted in an adapter similar to this one:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CF-Card-Compact ... xykmZTMGOg

Been running it this way for years. Works really well in the X40 with Linux, but no so well for Windows.

Oh, compact flash is a form of flash memory card that was mainly used in rather old digital cameras.

There are probably some IDE adapters for mSATA SSD that would fit in the X40 too, but I haven't had any experience with them.

[Hoosier97]

Does using a compact flash card require any special modding? Im wanting to install lubuntu on it.

[Neil]

No, nothing special. Just install like on any other hard drive. After installing Lubuntu you might want to add "noatime" to the CF card in /etc/fstab to reduce unnecessary writes. Also, format the flash drive as ext2, which is a non-journeling format. That is less wear on the drive.