Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? *PICS*

[edwardoneale]

how do i make it so i do not have to hit escape to get rid of the 2010?

Update the bios and you will find an option to continue to boot after the error 2010 message. It still shows the message, and beeps, but then continues to boot after ~2 seconds.

[pmreimer]

Updating the bios worked, so now i don't have to hit escape. Also, my logo in the upper right corner is prettier now. I just wish there was a way to trick the bios into thinking it's still an ibm drive. Still, the 2 second wait for that error message to go away is well worth the speed increase that this compact flash has over the 4200 rpm drives. Oh, and if you mute your system with the hardware keys before you turn it off, the 2010 beep doesn't sound. in case anyone wondered.

[p5ycho]

i've noticed that the beep isn't always heard, this explains why. This probably also means there is no separate pc speaker.

[edwardoneale]

The beep certainly sounds like it comes from the main speaker, and I don't remember seeing any additional speaker when i've had the case open. Also can't see anything in the Hardware Maintenance Manual. Remembering to mute before switching off seems to be the way to go....

[weepy]

just a thought: if external headphone is connected, internal speaker goes off, right? How about creating a little jack with little resistor, would that trick the rig into thinking that the headphone is present? Well, if it worked, it is still not worth the effort since the press-button trick .

[DaddyLongLegs]

I am trying to install this on an X24 but figured I can ask for help here because I'm having a hard time.

I know my CF adapter and CF cards are fine because when I put the XP CD in, XP sees the drive fine and tries to format it. No problem. Copies the files over. However, when the PC reboots, it boots back to the beginning blue setup screen rather than the continuation of the XP install, making me believe the card cannot be booted from for some reason.

I read this thread and tried bootprep. I made a Windows 98 floppy disk and put bootprep.exe on it. I booted the laptop, typed "bootprep /dc" and rebooted. Tried again to do XP, again on reboot it goes into the original XP setup screen rather than continuing (meaning the card won't boot).

I'd really appreciate some help

[weepy]

Hi. Did you hear about this STEC Mach4 CF card? 90MB/s read, 55MB/s write, 16GB type I SLC/ 32GB type I MLC.
http://www.stec-inc.com/interface/cf.php
I thought i'll try the pretec 333x 16GB card, but this baby is worth waiting for. Maybe i'll be disappointed if there is some speed limit in the X41 SATA-PATA bridge...

[Shadowlinx]

Hello all.

I have been following this thread for a long time, and have decided to try the CF SSD in my Thinkpad X41t. I am using a Lexar 300x 4GB CF, and the addonics dual CF -> IDE adaptor, as recommended by a number of people in this thread.

However, I am unable to proceed past the second part of the XP install - once files have copied and it reboots, I am presented with an NTLDR error. I have tried everything I can think of to fix this, but to no avail.

The main steps I take are as follows:

1. Boot from a USB stick formatted as a Win98 boot disk.
2. format /s the D:/ (the CF disk). Use fdisk to check the partition is primary and active. Copy bootprep to D:/.
3. Restart, without the usb boot drive. Run bootprep from the CF.
4. Restart again from USB drive, navigate to i386 and start winnt.
5. Point the XP installation to the Lexar, and begin copying files.

It is after step 5 that the installation calls for a restart and gives me the "NTLDR is missing" error. This suggests to me that the bootprep step didn't work, but I can't see where I have gone wrong.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[t20user]

If you re-read back in this thread a few pages I had the same error. It seemed to go away after the third format and OS load so I can't definitively say what the problem was. I do remember I changed the Format to NTFS the last time, but from what I have read that should not have mattered.

Maybe someone else can tell you exactly what is wrong, but try reformatting and reloading the OS a couple more times.

[Shadowlinx]

Hello again.

I have managed to remedy the NTLDR error. I believe it stemmed from bootprep not liking my Lexar 300x in FAT32, as it works when partitioned and formatted as FAT16. (I still cannot get it to work under FAT32 for some reason).

Having successfully installed XP, I am now presented with another problem. I have followed the instructions on Page 5 of this thread, which detail how to install the Hitachi Microdrive drivers. I am now unable to login to XP (even in Safe Mode). XP loads to the blue "Welcome" screen, with the XP logo but no text. There is an infinite loop of hard drive activity once every 5-10 seconds or so, coupled with the screen flashing black at similar intervals.

Has anyone else experienced this / know a solution to it?

I wonder if this has something to do with there being two FAT16 partitions on the card?

I have tried this on several installs to the same effect.

Thank you in advance,

-S

[Lewster215]

I've been away from this forum for quite some time. Just checked back, and skimmed through the posts.

My X40 has been working great these past few months, and has now become my primary travel system. I even managed to find a miniature Bluetooth USB adapter (small enough to leave in the left USB port at all times) in lieu of doing a somewhat complex upgrade to built-in BT (I didn't feel like cracking open the screen to run antenna wires since my X40 didn't come stock with BT), so I'd say my X40 is now very "complete". I totally love it!

Just to recap, here's my current setup:

X40, 1.5GHz P-M, 1.5GB RAM, XP Pro SP2 (soon to be SP3)
Addonics CD-IDE dual adapter
Lexar 8GB 300X (as C: / OS drive, master on CF-IDE)
SanDisk Extreme III 16GB (attached as "My Documents", slave on CF-IDE)
Delkin CardBus-CF adapter
Transcend 16GB 133X (as D: / data/addl. Program Files, in Delkin CardBus-CF adapter)
Dane-Elec 4GB SD card (as E: / data/CD image drive, says SDHC 4GB on card, but was listed as non-SDHC on site)

I am running all cards as compressed NTFS with the OS optimizations specified on the posts late last year.

It should also be noted ... I mainly use the X40 for Internet (a 3-pound computer with Bluetooth and a 3G HSDPA tether connection through my phone make for a truly go-anywhere solution!), and then some occasional MS Word, iTunes encoding, or Adobe Audition (audio editing), or the occasional game. I have made many optimizations to reduce write cycles to all the cards; however, I do make regular use of the hibernate feature, which in theory writes up to 1.5GB to the OS drive each time I use it (and it does take a long time to hibernate--noticeably longer than it would to a mechanical hard drive, though since the computer is in theory shock-proof, as soon as I see it's starting to hibernate, I just throw it in my bag and forget about it). So far I have not had a single glitch with the system as far as write cycles. Though, I suspect that any of the cards were ever going to "go", they might do so suddenly. I guess we'll see, and I'll just try and keep current with my backups.

Now that 32GB CF cards seem to be becoming affordable I'm thinking of replacing my D: drive (Transcend 16GB), and maybe my "My Documents" drive (SanDisk 16GB) if the speed is good enough. NewEgg lists an A-Data, a Transcend, and a Ridata. Anyone have any suggestions which might be best (my thought is to shy away from the Transcend after everyone's experiences including my own)? Of course, for those who read my earlier posts ... I'm also thinking about a 32GB card (brand and speed regardless) for that iPod Mini I upgraded, which has been working great with the "painfully slow" (for computer use) Transcend 133X 16GB card. If I try a card for computer use and it proves to be too slow, that's where it'll probably end up.

For my C: / OS drive, I'll wait until Lexar comes out with a 16GB or 32GB 300X card, or maybe a SanDisk Extreme IV. But really, 8GB is fine for an XP install, and some of my programs (and for what doesn't fit, I can install to the D: drive or even E: drive).

I noticed someone at some point mentioned worrying about the HDD door breaking off since the CF cards and adapter don't attach to it like the stock HDD ... I haven't had a problem with this (of course, the rubber foot on the drive door is missing in my case). But ... the CF ejector button often gets pressed inadvertantly in my bag, and I end up having to eject and re-insert the CardBus-CF adapter. A minor annoyance at most (it's become second-nature to me to check before I turn on the machine).

I was skimming BB posts and Google, and seemed to find information pointing to the fact that if you have all BIOS updates installed, the SD slot is actually SDHC compatible. This is somewhat proven by the fact that I can read my 4GB Dane-Elec card in the X40, but when I insert it in the media slot on my HP Pavilion dv2415us (less than a year old) running XP MCE SP3 (yes, I got rid of the bundled Vista and "downgraded" to XP within a week or two of getting that machine, which incidentally I've just sold in favor of a new 2.4GHz T8300 Penryn-based Dell D630 I just ordered that will be my main home computer going forward (I almost ordered a T61p 14.1" but the battery life, and the strange look of the extended battery, didn't suit my taste), or maybe what I take with me if I need more processing or graphics power--since I'm so happy with the X40 that it now sees the outside world far more than my HP!), it sees no data, and prompts me to format the card. Given that, I'm thinking of trying out a PNY 16GB SDHC Class 6 card, which I can now get for around $85 including shipping from NewEgg. I'll keep everyone posted on that one, i.e. if it works at all, and the speed.

[nop]

but when I insert it in the media slot on my HP Pavilion dv2415us [...] it sees no data, and prompts me to format the card

First off, you didn't forget MS KB934428? Get it at http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb%3 ... &x=16&y=14

So good day now.

After living with Thinkpads for years now (owned about 20, the German speaking members might know me from www.onderka.com blogging about Thinkpad and other hardware tweaks and fixes, Linux and Windows ), I have an X41 tablet for two weeks now.

As any X4* owner will - sooner or later - I came to the point I wanted to test a compact flash card instead of my 1.8" harddisk, so I read various forums and googled for days to see what's possible and what's not.

As of now I ordered a "normal" 44pin to cf adapter ( http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vie ... :IT&ih=019 ), a "PA-CF18H" 1.8" 44pin to cf-adapter from Ably ( http://www.ably.com.tw/pdt/viewpdt.asp? ... SSIS_PARTS ) and a 16GB 300x UDMA compact flash from Silicon Power ( http://www.silicon-power.com/eng/produc ... d=9&sid=14 ).

while I'm now waiting for the stuff to arrive, maybe I can help someone with the information I gathered:

1) "Micro-SDHC-in-compactflash-adapter-in-1.8"-adapter-in-X40" (wow, great...) will work - although slow, using a class 6 SDHC card:

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/nyanonon/20080313/p2

--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.1 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
--------------------------------------------------

Sequential Read : 9.802 MB/s
Sequential Write : 3.224 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 9.797 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 1.702 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 4.227 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 0.026 MB/s

Test Size : 50 MB
Date : 2008/03/18 13:36:41

2) The Ably adaptor is not only a very pretty piece of hardware, but also UDMA-capable, for pictures and teasers see

http://d.hatena.ne.jp/tessy/20080309/1205074486

--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.1 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
--------------------------------------------------

Sequential Read : 48.262 MB/s
Sequential Write : 16.487 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 43.194 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 4.778 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 2.657 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 0.056 MB/s

Test Size : 50 MB
Date : 2008/03/10 0:06:44

(Note: Again a Transcend CF-card with slow write speed...)

I'm so eager to get my hands on the hardware... I will use 8 gig for Windows XP and 8GB for Linux, Data will move to another compact flash card in a cardbus-adapter or onto an SDHC card, I'll see.

Using the search function, I did find some topics about the cardbus slot, but not really any benchmarks.

What speeds do you guys get using a cf-to-cardbus adaptor using a somewhat current (133x and up) card? I only have an aged 1GB card that reads about 2.5MB/s in a "Sandisk Ultra" adapter.

Cheers,

Stefan

Edit(h) says:

I have not yet any data for the Silicon Power CF-card, besides a link (the site is down atm, try google cache): http://pixca.net/2008/02/03/limited-to- ... ire-cable/

[ 24.913279] ata5.00: ATA-0: SILICON POWER, 20070831, max UDMA/133
[...]
[ 24.929322] ata5.00: configured for UDMA/133
[...]
[ 25.120147] scsi 4:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA SILICON POWER 2007 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
[...]
Timing buffered disk reads: 124 MB in 3.01 seconds = 41.24 MB/sec

I just selected that card because of the best "price at our company's reseller's shop/advertised speed" ratio...

[ntrl]

Maybe somebody to be interestingly.

In my X40 builtin sd-card reader ubuntu 8.04 reading big file from SDHC card 16GB Silicon class 6 fat32 70$ -- speed ~7.5MB, write
same.

Code: Select all

root@tpx40:~# hdparm -tT /dev/mmcblk0p1

/dev/mmcblk0p1:
 Timing cached reads:   1088 MB in  2.00 seconds = 544.20 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:   22 MB in  3.06 seconds =   7.20 MB/sec
root@tpx40:~# time cat /media/DATA/Особенности\ национальной\ охоты.avi > /dev/null

real	1m35.517s
user	0m0.040s
sys	0m1.224s
root@tpx40:~# ls -la /media/DATA/
total 716844
drwx------ 2 serge root      8192 1970-01-01 03:00 .
drwxr-xr-x 4 root  root      4096 2008-05-21 17:32 ..
-rwx------ 1 serge root 734035968 2006-11-13 19:49 Особенности национальной охоты.avi
root@tpx40:~# bc
bc 1.06.94
Copyright 1991-1994, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2004, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
For details type `warranty'. 
734035968/96/1024/1024
7
quit
root@tpx40:~# time dd if=/dev/zero of=/media/DATA/test_dump bs=1k count=200000
200000+0 records in
200000+0 records out
204800000 bytes (205 MB) copied, 52.8283 s, 3.9 MB/s

real	0m52.857s
user	0m0.060s
sys	0m1.532s

Imho, possible use sdhc cards for big "file-garbage" stuffs in linux.
Il faut create wiki page with table CF SLC cards then possible using on system disk, benchmark. Adaptors and tutorials.
Silicon 300x
A-data 266x
Lexar 300x
etc

2NOP: thanks for information

[Fox5]

Well, I've spent a few months now using my Thinkpad X41T with my Transcend 32GB flash card and I'd have to say...
it's usable performance, but not great.

I applied many of the same tips that can be found online for getting usable performance out of installing Ubuntu (or I suppose Windows) on the eeePC and they help, but they don't make the experience ever feel fast.
I used the XFS file system since it has aggressive caching, which presumably should speed things up a little. However, due to lack of knowledge at the time, I only created the file system with a 4KB block size (the default). Due to how flash memory works, a larger block size should give a speed increase (on any file system, though XFS supports some of the largest). I don't think many operating systems give you the option when installing the OS though, so the format would have to be done using an external utility prior to install.
The downside to using larger block sizes is more wasted space, though apparently XFS is capable of combining multiple smaller files into a single block to avoid this. ReiserFS can do this as well with tail-packing, though with worse performance.

Next step I'll likely take is either reformat with a larger blocksize or just mount everything as a union file system (read only) and write only on log off. Has its issues, but you can't get any faster than storing everything in RAM.

Strangely enough, I have a virtualized copy of Windows 2000 running via the Virtualbox app in Ubuntu that runs faster than Ubuntu. It appears to be a combination of registry tweaks to make windows 2000 run faster (forcing it to prefetch and store basically everything to menu and only flushing when it runs low) and that the abstraction inherit in virtual machines causing them to cache data and then write larger amounts of it at once. Whatever it is, Windows 2000 runs incredibly smoothly, even better than I've seen any normal install of windows run.

[Fox5]

Alright, I just formatted my drive as NTFS with 64KB clusters (used the Vista install disc, recovery mode, format c: /FS:NTFS /A:64KB) then installed Windows 2000 SP4 (basic would blue screen on the install) and here's my performance results for HDTACH with the Transcend 32GB compact flash drive.
Burst speed - 47.3MB/s
Average read speed 42.7MB /s (the graph of sequential read speed is flat pretty much all the way across other than a few major dips at the start).
Random access of 3.1ms
In comparision, a WD Raptor 360GB gets an average read of 49.7MB/s and random access of 8.8ms. Of course, it's probably using 4KB clusters where I'm using 64KB.

HDTune produces the same results (2.6ms access time however), with the same major dips at the start. Perhaps the journal of NTFS is killing performance? Apparently NTFS tries to cache small files in its MFT. Adjusting block size doesn't seem to do anything (well, it affects performance, but the major dips at the start still happen).

Using a program called diskspeed, writes are only a couple MB/s.
Shame that the write performance is still so low. Also, really weird initial read performance.
I'll try with FAT32 64KB clusters next to see how it goes.
Both FAT32 and NTFS support up to 256KB clusters (at this point, sector size doubles), but perhaps I'll try those afterwards if FAT32 still yields miserable performance.

[Fox5]

Alright, using the Vista recovery console I decided to use the diskspeed test (fits on a floppy and easier than reinstalling windows over and over) and here's the results:



FAT32 64KB:
4.22MB/s uncached new file write
8.59 uncached write speed (sequential write?)
41.81 uncached read
2.3 cached write
820.52 cached read

FAT32 default cluster size (16KB or 32KB, not sure):
3.61
8.58
41.38
2.2
820.52

NTFS default cluster size (4KB):
3.19
7.94
41.38
2.15
820.52

and same results no matter what the cluster size actually (that, or quick format ignores adjusting cluster size)...
For whatever reason, even with 64KB clusters, performance is about the same, and a bit higher for writes than from within Windows 2000. That could just be Vista being more efficient at I/O than NTFS is though. The diskspeed program tests writes and reads using a 64MB file, so it may not be truly indicative of file system performance. (doesn't test small files) It does appear that write performance will never be stellar no matter what though, but 2-8MB write speeds is better than a few hundred kilobytes/s. Also, the format utility won't allow formats with cluster sizes greater than 64KB, despite saying the file systems are capable of it.

Installing windows 2000 on FAT32 64KB caused endless reboots, but 32KB clusters worked:
Diskspeed results
4.03
9.58
42.22
1.28
820.52

...
Pretty much the same performance results. (big drop on initial access, then 40MB/s afterwards in hdtach and hdtune)
Oh well, I'll test the default fat32 and NTFS partition sizes, but I'm probably just going to end up tweaking registry settings in windows until it doesn't hit the disk until its out of ram, and set up a ramdisk loop for ubuntu that can be unmounted when I want to make upgrades.

I'll post instructions for those shortly if anyone's interested.

[Lewster215]

I thought everyone might like to know ...

I just tried out someone's Transcend SDHC Class 6 16GB SD card in my X40. The system would not recognize it, and I had to use a flash reader to access the card. I think that slightly curbs my enthusiasm for trying out one myself ...

Now I really wonder if the Dane-Elec card I have is truly SDHC or an incorrectly-labeled 4GB non-SDHC card. And at some point I want to try an 8GB SDHC card and see if at least that would work.

I was so hoping for it to work (and perhaps to see a performance increase to make me no longer scared of using Transcend cards, since I now notice they have 16GB 300X UDMA cards).

BTW, Fox5, what Transcend 32GB card are you using to get those results? The only 32GB card I could find was a CF card rated for 133X (which is nowhere close to 40MB/sec.). And the fastest card I could find was the 16GB 300X UDMA CF card. Just curious. I was actually thinking of trying the Ridata 32GB 266X CF card, though now the Transcend 300X UDMA seems like a possible contender for replacing my OS drive ... if I can get over that fear of the Transcend brand ... I need a compelling reason at this point!

Anyway I'm heading out of the office early today (like now), so everyone on this forum in the US have a great Memorial Day weekend.

[Fox5]

The X40/X41 series, afaik, does not support SDHC. There are some non-SDHC 4GB sd cards, I have one, made by Transcend. Currently, it's formatted at FAT16 w/ max cluster size and in my Dell Axim x51v (FAT32 has horrible performance on the axim for some reason)

I would stay away from Ridata, I had a Ridata 16GB card a while back and it was incredibly slow and died very fast. I think there's a couple other 32GB cards as well. They likely all use the same memory chips.
The Ridata I had was also 233x, but it didn't meet that speed. Ridata rates its cards according to read speed (233x), while transcend rates its cards according to write speed (133x). Something like that anyway, I've yet to see my transcend compact flash go above 66x write, but it's definitely getting 233x reads. Perhaps they averaged and rounded down?

Otherwise, they're likely the same card but different packaging, but the Ridata card I had performed worse for me on writes and died fast, whereas I've used transcend memory products for a while and never had an insurmountable problem. (sometimes I've had cards that refuse to read properly, but a couple formats tends to sort them out)

The transcend I'm using is that 133x compact flash card.
NTFS with default allocation size (4KB) seems to get horrible
performance, but FAT32 (which starts at 16KB) and NTFS at higher cluster sizes is OK.

Read performance is fantastic...for sequential reads. Write performance seems to be ok at 2MB to 8MB. However, in the benchmarks I've run, performance initially starts out about 40MB read, then drops to 0 momentarily, goes back up to 40MB, drops again, and then stays flat at 40MB. I'm not sure why this happens on initial access of the card, but it seems to kill performance. I'd imagine the same thing is happening for writes. It appears that the card is dropping down to PIO speeds before shooting back up to DMA speeds.

That said, not all hope is lost. Vista with 4KB cluster size NTFS gave horrible performance in benchmarks, but after enabling all its write caching/delayed transaction stuff it performed pretty much ok. (vista won't install to anything other than NTFS with 4KB cluster size)
The same delayed transaction settings are pretty much available in 2000 and XP (maybe not as refined), but have to be enabled through registry settings. Caching reads and writes should help get around the initial access speed bump in the transcend card.

I don't think there's anything similar available for Linux, not to the same extent anyway. Linux can just mount everything in a RAM drive though, which is in some ways better (faster) at the loss of permanent writes. The way to get around this is to make a separate partition for home, mount everything as normal, get all your software updates, then reboot and mount root ( / ) as a ram disk. Just mount as normal whenever you need to make software updates, and your home partition is always open to save documents and settings.

[K0LO]

...(vista won't install to anything other than NTFS with 4KB cluster size)

It's only the new bootmgr that wants 4kB clusters. You can circumvent this problem by installing as follows:

1. Create a small (100 MB) NTFS partition with a 4kB cluster size. Set the active flag on this partition.
2. Create and format your Vista partition with the desired cluster size
3. Run the installer. Direct it to install to the desired partition.

The installer will put the boot files (bootmgr and the /Boot folder) on the active partition and the rest will go to the partition you directed the installer to use. Vista will happily run from larger cluster sizes. The only thing you give up (that I'm aware of) is the ability to use NTFS compression, which requires 4kB clusters.

[Fox5]

Not bad k0lo. Vista, even with the hampered disk speeds, was already performing better in use than 2000 did (without the altered registry settings at least), so that wouldn't be a bad way to make use of Vista's better responsiveness without having crippling speeds on compact flash cards.
Still, installing vista on these systems may be asking a bit much given the rest of the hardware.

BTW, the write cache on the transcend drive is reported as 1KB. Don't know if this is just the software reading 0 incorrectly or if it really has a 1KB write cache, but that's probably part of the reason for poor write performance. (then again, I think most flash drives don't have any write cache)

[Fox5]

Ok, some registry settings to make windows 2000 perform better (should be the same in XP)

NtfsDisable8dot3NameCreation = 1
NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate = 1
DisablePagingExecutive=1
LargeSystemCache = 1

And XP/Vista have a few different prefetcher options which should be useful if you have enough ram. You should be able to google to find more information.

Enable conservative swap file usage
1. Go to Start then Run
2. Type “msconfig.exe” then ok
3. Click on the System.ini tab
4. Expand the 386enh tab by clicking on the plus sign
5. Click on new then in the blank box type”ConservativeSwapfileUsage=1″
6. Click OK
7. Restart PC

Heh, I suppose these are general tweaks that could have helped with the stock hdd as well.

Performance seems ok, but it still has that weird problem on short reads (in benchmarks anyway) where performance drops to just about nothing.

[Fox5]

Ok, more stuff:
Using Windows 2000 and FAT32
Disksped.exe returns its maximum cached write performance with 8KB clusters. Perhaps the card has some optimization for this cluster size as its the default formatting the card ships with.

Sisoft Sandra returns the maximum write performance using 32KB clusters. Small writes still suffer, but performance ramps up much faster with write size. Performance overall is still sluggish, but for larger writes the card gets up to 60x performance. Perhaps 64KB clusters (not supported for FAT32 apparently, only NTFS) may yield better overall performance, however diskspeed always reported NTFS results as much slower than FAT32 once data was on the drive (empty NTFS partitions beat FAT32 in speed, so there's some sort of weird performance regression once windows is installed). Install seemed slower as well, but it could just be a placebo.
Usable, but I can't say it's overall better than using the stock drive. Read speeds blow away the stock drive and even beat my desktop 7200RPM in a lot of tests (~40MB/s sustained read speeds regardless of the test), but write speeds are mid 90s level.

If there's some way to force windows to write to a ram disk or to make a read only file system (I think that was covered some were on this board), then this drive should be blazingly fast.

Now for ubuntu:
I've heard of people suggesting ext2,3,jfs, jffs, and xfs for the eeepc, but no tutorial online seems to install anything but ext2 or ext3. People say it's quite speedy, but that may be suggestive.
I tried XFS first and the performance was almost unbarable. Mounting tmp files and a few other things to ram file systems improved performance, but it still sucked.
On a whim, I decided to try ReiserFS. Ext2 might provide better results, I didn't try it, but I read comments from a developer for an embedded system online about their results. Using compact flash in their system, reiserfs gave performance results many times faster than ext2 for the small continuous writes they were doing.

While I normally avoid Reiserfs as other file systems have surpassed its performance on the desktop, it was made for and excels at small writes, the precise area where compact flash drives fail. (reiser4 is supposed to be even better for this) I wasn't disappointed, without any additional configuration, the system is usable right out of the box. It's not desktop class performance, but it puts the windows 2000 performance to shame and, from memory, is above the performance ubuntu on the stock hard drive gave. (there's a reiserfs driver for windows as well, won't work for system files of course, but might be worthwhile to install apps on it if it works well)

I was going to try FAT32 64KB clusters for ubuntu, but Ubuntu refuses to install to non-unix filesystems.

Anyhow, my install is:
16GB FAT32 32KB clusters for Windows
And the rest is a ReiserFS partition for Ubuntu.

There's also the option to create a UnionFS under Ubuntu, mount the drive as read only, and then just commit the changes when shutting down, but I don't really like how it works.
ReiserFS gives pretty good performance in Ubuntu. Faster than the stock 4200RPM drive.
The write performance of this drive really kills it though.

[nop]

Good morning.

All my adapters arrived the past few days and I'm in the middle of "adapter world" now.

Just some information I stumbled upon during initializing my CF-Card:

I have a Sandisk Extreme III 16GB card by now (MWDMA2 only), as the Silicon Power (16GB UDMA) is not yet shipped. I found out that making the card "fixed" instead of "removable" using Sandisk's ATCFWCHG.COM does not work when the card is connected to the native SATA-PATA-converted drive bay in the X41 tablet.

Using a IDE-CF-adapter in my desktop-PC it worked like a charm.

The card is a SDCFX3-16384.

More to come...

edit:

OK, the Silicon Power 300X compact flash card arrived today.

WOW, what a difference to the Sandisk Extreme III! HD-Tune says 41.xMB/s reading at 0.3ms access. Runs as "fixed disk" automatically when detecting True IDE mode .

Restoring my partitions with Acronis right now, stay tuned...

[Bruno]

Hello,

Im new here, I was reading all forums with SSD's but I didn't found any solution for my problem

I have SSD FHD32GC18M (Super talent) but it dont wants to work in my X41 (2525).

Please give me some ideas what to do... I am already despared.. THX

[nop]

the search function in a forum usually is not just decoration....

searching for "FHD32GC18M", first hit, same problem & explanation:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=54036

or a jumper-issue? hit #2:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 154#385154

Stefan

an edit as usual:

an interesting note from the transcend "300x cf-card" spec sheet:

• True IDE Mode supports:
* Ultra DMA Mode 0 to Ultra DMA Mode 5 (Ultra DMA mode 5 must use Power supply: 3.3V)
* MultiWord DMA Mode 0 to MultiWord DMA Mode 4
* PIO Mode 0 to PIO Mode 6

so no UDMA5 @ 5v?

[jimmy.zou]

[quote="Fox5"]The X40/X41 series, afaik, does not support SDHC. There are some non-SDHC 4GB sd cards, I have one, made by Transcend. Currently, it's formatted at FAT16 w/ max cluster size and in my Dell Axim x51v (FAT32 has horrible performance on the axim for some reason)
....
quote]

X41's SD card reader does read SDHC, I have a 8G SDHC card has being used for a while.
You have to update the SD reader' driver with a Ricoh SDHC card reader driver( the hardware is actually made by Ricoh), then it will work.

[JeePea]

The X40/X41 series, afaik, does not support SDHC. There are some non-SDHC 4GB sd cards, I have one, made by Transcend. Currently, it's formatted at FAT16 w/ max cluster size and in my Dell Axim x51v (FAT32 has horrible performance on the axim for some reason)
....
quote]

X41's SD card reader does read SDHC, I have a 8G SDHC card has being used for a while.
You have to update the SD reader' driver with a Ricoh SDHC card reader driver( the hardware is actually made by Ricoh), then it will work.

I won an x-41 on Ebay that should be arriving any day, but in the meantime I've been doing some research on the forums. I found another method for allowing SDHC cards to be used on the X-40 series. It is an XP Hotfix that allows SD compatible readers, apparently including the x-40/41, to use SDHC cards. Here is the link:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/946629

So, I haven't tried this yet, but will when I get my X-41.

[nop]

So, benchmark time.

As I said I have 2 compact flash cards - a Sandisk Extreme III (16GB, MWDMA2) and a Silicon Power (16GB, UDMA4).

Concerning read speed both cards are quite a bit apart, concerning write speed they're quite similar: too slow, I think. The Silicon power is running at UDMA4 according to XP device manager.

Booting is quite fast, but during usage there is looooooong disk activity every 5 to 10 seconds, and my X41t is unresponsive during that.

I already searched the forum and googled, disabled the swapfile and set NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate to 1. I disabled the HDAPS software and filesystem indexing and tweaked a little here and there - but although those tweaks improved frequency and duration of those absolutely blocking writes this is still not a harddisk replacement for me. I have, btw, a fresh, light and custom XP TPC installation, not a bloated IBM image / recovery.

Crystal Diskmark shows what's causing this:

500MB test:

--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.1 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
--------------------------------------------------

Sequential Read : 44.469 MB/s
Sequential Write : 14.689 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 44.272 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 1.487 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 13.421 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 0.013 MB/s

Test Size : 500 MB
Date : 2008/05/31 15:23:52

50MB test:

--------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 2.1 (C) 2007-2008 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
--------------------------------------------------

Sequential Read : 44.696 MB/s
Sequential Write : 14.971 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 44.628 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 1.821 MB/s
Random Read 4KB : 13.166 MB/s
Random Write 4KB : 0.014 MB/s

Test Size : 50 MB
Date : 2008/05/31 15:35:26

With a 4k random write value of 0,0xxMB/s and a not much higher value for 512k one cannot speak of "fluent work".

Am I missing something crucial here?

Could the other "Compact Flash people" here please please post a test reuslt of their Crystal Disk mark?

http://crystalmark.info/

Thanks!

[Fox5]

Similar results for 32GB 133x Transcend here.
50MB test, FAT32 32K
Seq: 45.7 13.92
512K: 45.65 1.547
4K 16.07 0.013

[nop]

Do you also have those frequent "Disk icon is lit and I almost cannot do anything" experiences?

Thank,

Stefan

Edit - as usual:

I am an IT guy, so I call myself experienced. I also have gentoo Linux installed on this X41, and the problem is more or les the same there. Disk activity and unresposiveness. It "feels" a littele better with Linux, but it's exactly the same.