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

Message

sjthinkpader · #751 Post by **sjthinkpader** » Wed Sep 23, 2009 10:21 pm

hawkvc wrote:Will the 32 GB CF card be as fast as the 4200 RPM drive? It probably not worth it (to me) if it is a lateral move.

Thanks.

Hawk.

There are many benchmarks in that thread I linked.

hawkvc · #752 Post by **hawkvc** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 10:36 am

I take it that's a yes (without going back and finding the benchmark results).

Hawk.

sjthinkpader · #753 Post by **sjthinkpader** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 1:14 am

SSD read is faster and write is mostly longer than HDD. Some have large write buffers which will give fast writes until the buffer gets over run with many writes.

I found another adapter solution for our X40/X41/X41t, sold with a smallish Sandisk 8GB SSD board at a very reasonable price:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0337455508

This 8GB Sandisk SSD board was reported in my benchmark thread:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 1&start=30

re404 · #754 Post by **re404** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 6:01 am

Hi all!

Thanks for this very comprehensive thread. The idea of an affordable, fast, silent, low-power-consumption solid state solution to give my loved X41 a second life sounds great!

I'm really tempted to give it a try but I'm kinda worried about the endless speed and compatibility issues discussed in the thread (that I haven't read completely yet, but I guess I will because it reads almost like a thrilling adventure novel

). I already see myself endlessly running back and forth stores with different brands and types of CF, and spending nights and nights messing with installers of different OS'es and boot cd's with obscure DOS disk-tools. Ugh!

So I'm trying to draw my conclusion from this thread and comparing costs of different products. It's all still kind of fuzzy...

In the meantime: Is there any recent news, or definitive working super-hardware-combinations and/or developments on the price/performance-ratio's?

'Real SSD' boards like the Sandisk 8GB SSD board mentioned might be affordable and work best but I can't bear to think about downgrading from 60GB (even though it's oldskool spinning annoyingly) to a poor 8GB, so I'm hoping for creative other solutions.

Cheers!
Re.

p.s. So where are the Pretec 100GB CF's http://www.mobilemag.com/2008/09/23/pre ... ig-impact/ ? These would definitely make the price of lower capacity CF's drop, right? And how cool would that be; 200 GB of solid state in your Dual CF-IDE equipped X41!

p.s.2. This guy even managed to install OSX on a CF in a X41 ! http://www.newtale.com/pp/article480.html What a hero!

p.s.3. In this thread I've read some people's remarks about not being able to use SDHC cards in their SD reader. I managed to solve this a long while ago (with a 3rd party driver for the internal SD slot I believe). My 8GB Kingston SD4/8GB works fine in my X41 tablet! I can try to look it up / figure that out again if people are interested.

bananaman · #755 Post by **bananaman** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 9:27 am

If your worried about issues, why not just buy the Lenovo SSD 41W0736, currently selling on eBay for $170? It's plug and play, no boot beeps, behaves just like the stock HDD, no issues.

re404 wrote:The idea of an affordable, fast, silent, low-power-consumption solid state solution to give my loved X41 a second life sounds great!

I'm really tempted to give it a try but I'm kinda worried about the endless speed and compatibility issues discussed in the thread

sjthinkpader · #756 Post by **sjthinkpader** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 9:48 am

Nearly all my X41t/X41/X40/X32/X30 are now running on some form of CF/SSD. If you don't need a lot of space such as a web access computer, they work fine and pretty economical.

re404 · #757 Post by **re404** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 9:59 am

thanks bananaman, I came across that option on ebay too. It doesn't seem that of a bad deal considering that the IDE to dual CF adapter (around 20 euro) plus two fast, compatible and reliable 32GIG CompactFlash cards (that would bring you upto the 'same' capacity) would probably cost you the same if not way more, right?

But don't we all hope for that cheap-[censored]-geek-hack that saves 100$?

- Plus: a little bit of risk and fiddlin' is a lot of fun once you get it working

So keep up the good work ThinkHackers !

Hi sjthinkpader! Could you be so kind to share the combination(s) of components that worked best so far? (type / capacity / price ?)

Thanks so far ... I'll keep reading this thread and researching a bit anyway!

Re.

p.s. I assume that that Lenovo SSD 41W0736 would come formatted right, so plug and play, or does anyone know of any humps on the road using it in a X41 (tablet)?

sjthinkpader · #758 Post by **sjthinkpader** » Fri Sep 25, 2009 12:00 pm

All of those CF, SSD I am using are in the "benchmark" thread and none cost over $110 (32GB). The lowest cost 32GB was acquired at $40

. Formatting are not particularly more difficult than HDDs.

So far the best IDE-ZIF adapter is that Lenovo clone mentioned above. Other IDE-ZIF adapters took a bit more work to install but none had failed in use. Most of these aftermarket adapters were made for 5V slots and require the 3.3V regulator bypass to be used in X40/X41/X41t. Cloning is a bit tricky as the Ultrabay trays are 5V and do require the 3.3V regulator on the adapter. I found an USB-ZIF adapter with 3.3V regulator that is very handy for this purpose.

As for CF, most adapters work and the best value-performance are the RiDATA 233x CF cards. They are somewhat more costly than 133x cards but will give acceptable performance. It seems Centon has a 200x series out at reasonable price but I haven't tried them yet. Most CF will work at both 3.3V and 5V so cloning is pretty easy.

Next to try are the IDE-SD adapter and Class 6, Class 10 SD cards.

bananaman · #759 Post by **bananaman** » Sat Sep 26, 2009 11:57 pm

I think your objectives are conflicting a little bit!

If you want no worries, get the Lenovo SSD, if you want fun and risk (and probably more satisfaction when it works), build your own!

re404 wrote:I'm really tempted to give it a try but I'm kinda worried about the endless speed and compatibility issues discussed in the thread

re404 wrote:But don't we all hope for that cheap-*****Expletives removed by Moderator*****-geek-hack that saves 100$? - Plus: a little bit of risk and fiddlin' is a lot of fun once you get it working

bananaman · #760 Post by **bananaman** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 12:01 am

I booted up my X41 with a Windows 7 RC disc, and it installed on the virgin 41W0736 with no special participation on my part.

re404 wrote:p.s. I assume that that Lenovo SSD 41W0736 would come formatted right, so plug and play, or does anyone know of any humps on the road using it in a X41 (tablet)?

re404 · #761 Post by **re404** » Tue Sep 29, 2009 6:46 pm

bananaman wrote:I think your objectives are conflicting a little bit!

the story of my life

... the problem is that I rely on my x41 for daily use ...

But I found out that the only way to get the 41W0736 is shipping from the US (I live in the Netherlands) which is kind of a "financial risk" in case I have to return it ... I look forward to spend a weekend playing around with a CF to IDE converter and a CompactFlash card that I can pick up locally...

And to sjthinkpader:

sjthinkpader wrote:Next to try are the IDE-SD adapter and Class 6, Class 10 SD cards.

That sounds interesting too. Is that really possible? Anyone experimented already? Links to experiences / products?

Keep posting!
//R

Mitchell · #762 Post by **Mitchell** » Fri Oct 02, 2009 10:58 am

I'm a believer - I just added the Lenovo SSD (41W0736) to an X41 and finished a generic Windows XP SP2 install in under half an hour!

The speed gain is impressive with a boot-up from pressing the power-on button to the Windows screen in about 17 seconds.

Mitchell

nrk · #763 Post by **nrk** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 2:27 pm

Hi,
Great forum , I tried to install RunCore RCP-1-Z5064-C a 64GB SSD with a ZIF adapter, but could not boot from the disk, maybe due to wrong doing with Ghost.

I ordered the RunCore Pro IV PATA SSD drive ( RCP-IV-P1864-C) also not able to boot.
But after reading a thread on this forum I found out that the new drive should be mounted in the X41 and the old one in the usb-PATA interface that was included with the SSD, and booted with a multiboot CD with ghost on it, and run one clone sesssion, it worked!

Got Error 2010 but my BIOS can continue.
My X41 is tablet, type 1866

Here is some CrystalMark info, is there anyone that can say if the numbers are good performance?
5 test, 100mb, seq read 65.74 seq write 88.25, 512k read 61.15 512k write 85.50, 4k read 18.31, 4k write 7.043.
Regards
nils

sjthinkpader · #764 Post by **sjthinkpader** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 8:31 pm

Welcome to the forum.

These are great numbers. No NAND flash can write that fast so that's write buffer working. The computer must be flying.

You can see my Sandisk SSD performance here.

bgx · #765 Post by **bgx** » Wed Oct 07, 2009 3:36 pm

you are wrong sjthinkpader, the indilinx controller in the Runcore SSD is that fast (several channel plus write combining in action).

the intel controller is even faster (but unavailable in PATA).

Sadly, i got my runcore SSD monday, but it blue screen on me everytime i try to copy a huge file (or everytime i run a benchmark involving sequential write).

nrk, did you get any blue screen?

It seems the drives work well in X41(t or not), but not in X40 cause of some power consumption. The SSD seems to take a lot of power when writing, and as it is pluged in 3V instead of 5V, may be that makes it go mad... At least, it happens to someone else on an X40. I dont know if the drive is faulty (but it works perectly in USB, with awsome score even in USB), or whether it is an incompatibility betwen the X40 and the drive itself

.... I am trying to contact the runcore guy this far. I was not that impress by the use i did from it though.

btw nrk, could you use the disk tray on the SSD, or you didn't use it? i couldnt screw the disktray on the SSD and push the SSD in the hole, it woldnt connect then.

power consumption wise, it seems that the samsung SSD is better. And cheaper to, at 180$ instead of 220 $ ....

sjthinkpader · #766 Post by **sjthinkpader** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 12:14 pm

Yes, if it indeed is a 4 channel/8 channel design running at 3.3V, current draw must be pretty big.

2.5 inch designs are 5V then should be better.

bgx · #767 Post by **bgx** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 1:00 pm

well, they rate it as 240 mA @ worse, at 5V i guess, so that s 1+W, seems to be better than the HDD @.5A.. well at least it is what they write, my own testing seems to indicate it is more than that...

sjthinkpader · #768 Post by **sjthinkpader** » Thu Oct 08, 2009 3:38 pm

bgx wrote:well, they rate it as 240 mA @ worse, at 5V i guess, so that s 1+W, seems to be better than the HDD @.5A.. well at least it is what they write, my own testing seems to indicate it is more than that...

HDD and SSD are very different animals. HDD's maximum occurs during head moving, which are pulses. SSD maximum occurs during write, if not DC are very wide pulses. 240mA at 5V would at least translate to 363mA at 3.3V even with 100% efficient DC-DC converter.

nrk · #769 Post by **nrk** » Sun Oct 11, 2009 2:51 pm

>btw nrk, could you use the disk tray on the SSD, or you didn't use it? i couldnt screw the disktray on the SSD >and push the SSD in the hole, it woldnt connect then.

Hi I had the same problem, I could not connect the disc until i removed the small black plastic jumper for master slave configuration. There is still some problem with the pen to go in and out, but it works.

The speed is very good now I can reboot the computer in 2minutes before the disc change I had to wait up 10-20minutes for the 120 running processes to close down and restart, I guess some of the time consuming work before was memory swapping to a very small free disc space.

sjthinkpader · #770 Post by **sjthinkpader** » Sun Oct 11, 2009 4:10 pm

On those IDE-ZIF adapter board with jumpers, I removed the jumpers all together, LEDs too. The cheap white flex cables also need to be spaced away from the drive housing with a thin piece of foam to eliminate errors.

The Lenovo tray clone adapters worked much better in fit and likely signal quality too.

rikardo+ · #771 Post by **rikardo+** » Wed Oct 14, 2009 7:24 am

Hello nice people of TP forum.

I am planning to buy a "NEW KingSpec 1.8 IDE PATA SSD 32GB For IBM X40 X41 X41T" from ebay and istall it
to my ibm x41 1.5gbram laptop.

reasons for doing this are
Now it takes 10 minutes to boot to xp so propaply something is wrong. plus the fan is working almost all the time so the hdd is probably dead anyway in the near future + i hate to buy new electronics!

I planning to format the computer with thinkvantage rescue recovery to FACTORY Settings. Then take the hdd out and replace it with king spec and do a completely new xp pro installation from a cd .

I am complete beginner on these magig computer matters so should this work????

Iam worried will the laptop recognice the cd player on my ultra base and all the other drivers needed???

What else should i do ? and what kind of settings are needed with sdd???

Hope someone will have time and heart to help me out .

With best regards Riku

sjthinkpader · #772 Post by **sjthinkpader** » Wed Oct 14, 2009 10:17 am

Welcome to the forum.

There is a website in Ireland with pretty good pricing on the Kingspec. To do a Recovery installation on the new drive, you may need to remove any partition already on the new drive. The new drive should be in the HDD slot.

#773 Post by **Tasurinchi** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 3:04 am

I also have a X41 with similar specs to yours. I'm not in a hurry but I also would like to put a Kingspec SSD (is the cheaper option so far here in Europe). Please keep us posted of your results...

Cheers

rikardo+ · #774 Post by **rikardo+** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 4:41 am

sjthinkpader wrote:Welcome to the forum.

There is a website in Ireland with pretty good pricing on the Kingspec. To do a Recovery installation on the new drive, you may need to remove any partition already on the new drive. The new drive should be in the HDD slot.

Hello and thank you for your reply.

I was planning to install completely new xp pro from cd and just format thee hdd with rescue and recovery format to a factory settings = just as it left the factory.
Probably the formatting is not necessary because it affects only the hdd wich will be remowed anyway????

But how can the computer have the drivers needed to understand the ultrabase and its dvd/CD ?? Without the hdd??
I am afraid that i cant install fresh xp from CD beacause of this.
so is there a problem and if - is there a solution??

sorry for dumb question!

Memsyc is currently out of stock of kingspec so i will have to wait.
Theres also a lenovo sdd for x41 but i have not found it with reasonable price in europe.

I have also understood that i should disable the defrag function is there any other setup necessary with the SDD??

Hope some expert finds the time to answer

Thank you
regards Riku

sjthinkpader · #775 Post by **sjthinkpader** » Thu Oct 15, 2009 3:54 pm

Some SSD will be shipped with a partition. In that case R&R will not install.

CD, USB storage function had been in BIOS for quite a few years now. They don't need driver or OS to work.

People have different recommendations for SSD settings, by and large the following list are common:

1. no defrag
2. no pre-fetch
3. no indexing
4. no page file (I leave this on)
5. no Superfetch (Windows7 only)
6. no Readyboost (Windows7 only)
7. clean dirty free space once in a while to restore new SSD speed.

sjthinkpader · #776 Post by **sjthinkpader** » Sun Oct 18, 2009 12:07 am

iThinkPad wrote:...Compact Flash Card by Transcend
They get really slow after some time, even slower than the original drive.
...

sjthinkpader wrote: You need to clean the non-one free space on your card. I use a software called Eraser and make a new data pattern with all "1111". Then do a single pass write to free space and directory. This will bring the speed back to new card state. This is because writing "0" to a field of "111.." is fast and writing "1" to any cell that has "0" requires an erase operation first. Erase operation in NAND flash is very slow.

Windows7 has a TRIM function that does this automatically in the background. But your flash memory may not get recognized by Windows7 to trigger the TRIM function and after this kind of erase back to "11111..." operation, un-erase cannot work.

The following are screen shots on how to setup the Eraser program to clean dirty free space in a SSD or CF. TRIM function in Windows7 should do the same thing:
Download this freeware and install it.
http://eraser.heidi.ie/index.php#download

In the Preferences, Erase profiles, they are made for erasering HDDs.

So click the New button to create a new profile.

Click Add, give the new profile a title and enter "1111..." in the pattern field then click Save.

Uncheck Cluster Tip cleaning since these will not be used. Save the profile and select it by highlighting it.

Return to the main screen and enter a new Task, then run the task.

This will return speed to CF flash cards and SSDs that had been used a while. But it will also erase deleted files and render them unrecoverable.

starfox · #777 Post by **starfox** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 12:10 am

janko_wodnik wrote:And something else about "Error 0200".

I spend some time trying to find easier solution than reinstall of XP, and - I think - found something interesting.

My system CF is Verbatim Pro Series 300x 8GB (master) (SLC, UDMA, fixed, "normal" IORDY).

I try other CFs in "slave" slot. The results are quite interesting.

* Transcend 133x 16GB (MLC, UDMA, fixed, "normal" IORDY) -> Work fine

* Kingston Elite Pro 1GB "CF/1024-S" (SLC, PIO-4, removable, "strange" IORDY) -> Work without E. 0200, but with PIO fallback on "master" (this is easy to solve by uninstalling "Primary IDE Channel"). General slownes despite UDMA on Verbatim (UDMA transfer rates was verified with CrystalDiskMark).

* Transcend 133x 8GB (MLC, UDMA, fixed, "normal" IORDY) -> Work with E. 0200 (!), but with no PIO fallback. And this is realy strange.

* Transcend 120x 4GB (SLC, mw-DMA, fixed, "normal" IORDY) -> Work fine

* Silicon Power 200x 8GB (MLC, UDMA, fixed, "normal" IORDY) -> Work fine

And I found something else. After formating Transcend 133x 8GB as super-floppy drive (with no partition table in MBR) "Error 0200" perished! But after adding partition table to MBR "Error 0200" return...
..........

hi janko and other ERROR 0200 brothers,

everything in your post is clear, but did you finally manage to remove the error 0200?

If yes,what was the easiest way to fix it for you?(reading your post I don't get which one works)
Personally, I have an x40 with two transcend CFs:
1x 8GB - 300x (master)
1x 32GB - 133x (slave)
running under windows XP sp3.

Finally, does windows install fix really this error? How come?

I have a last issue that I would like to share. I have randomly and depending on the application or/and action realized with the laptop some freezes. For instance, when I am launching a search sometimes it works instantly others it freezes for a while and rarely I have to shutdown the search function... The same goes for firefox, some times it opens instantly others it freezes for #20sec. Does anyone knows the problem source? Is there any solution?

Thank you for your time and help.

Regards

loyukfai · #778 Post by **loyukfai** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 11:31 am

This is off-topic. I've installed FlashFire on an X41 Tablet with the original 4200RPM 40GB drive as a stop-gap solution. The performance milked from doing this is quite admirable.

System stability so far is fine, CHKDSK and hibernation don't work through.

Cheers.

re404 · #779 Post by **re404** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 5:55 pm

sjthinkpader wrote:There is a website in Ireland with pretty good pricing on the Kingspec.

I haven't found it so far. Can you retrieve it maybe?
Or anyone knows any other (preferably) European resellers of X41 (tablet) compatible SSD's?

Thanks so much!
//R

p78 · #780 Post by **p78** » Mon Oct 19, 2009 5:58 pm

sjthinkpader wrote:There is a website in Ireland with pretty good pricing on the Kingspec.

re404 wrote: Can you retrieve it maybe?

http://www.memoryc.com/storage/solidsta ... PATA%2FIDE

Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

king spec installation help needed

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Cleaning SSD dirty free space to bring back speed Pix

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Re: Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? PICS

Who is online