How to connect X40 with Samsung SSD 32GB PATA5?

[ssd_thinkpad]

I am looking forward to buy an IBM Thinkpad X40 as both netbook on the road and desktop replacement using dockingstation. This forum is a great help for me and convinced me, that it is possible achieving that with a X40.

Big downtime for X40 seems to be its slow harddrive. For this I want to reuse my old Samsung SSD 32GB PATA5 in this notebook. For what I understand, X40 harddrive connector is on the wrong side for most hdds. Thing is, my Samsung SSD is very small as its only a SSD and I plan to just buy a cable that I put between internal Thinkpad hdd connector and my harddrive. Can this be done? Which cable should I use for it? There are lots of interest articles around web how to connect X40 with a CF-SDD. I also thought of buying just a CF card to do that, but it seems my old Samsung SDD is still a rather speedy harddrive and therefore I want to reuse it.

[tim S]

As far as I know nobody has tried this drive in an X40 and the reasons might be obvious. First the connections are on the edge of your drive rather than on the side, second it is very expensive but you have one already, and finally I can't find the rpm listed anywhere, so it may be only 4200rpm which is the same speed as the original drive.

As far as getting the Samsung connected it looks to be quite difficult and complex.
The only adapters (ZIF to IDE?)I've found are attached to a circuit board which takes up almost all the space you'll need for the drive.
You'll also need extra space for the cable which must make a 180, then a 90 degree turn to mate with the adapter.
A CF card with an adapter is a lot less complicated.
Tim S

[aaa]

What's not clear is whether this drive is 1.8". Only then do you move on to worrying about the connectors.

It's very likely that it does not use the same connector. According to this thread, new style of x40/1 replacement HDD, adapters that fit do exist, although I am not sure if they are available anywhere other than from IBM.

[ssd_thinkpad]

Thanks for your answers. X40 uses a 2.5" 40-pin connector. Here are pictures of samsung 2.5'' ssd.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ShowImage ... ash%20Card

Seems because of its size this hdd does better fit in a x3 series and x6 series, right? Could also be possible, that I just have to put in this harddrive there. I am looking forward to buy an Addonics adapter with Transcend 300x 16GB cf card for my x40:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Compact_Flash_boot_drive

[tim S]

Yes you are correct the drive you have is a replacement for full sized laptop drives. Even though the pins do look correct, they are on the front rather than the side but regardless it's too big to fit into the X40 or X41 series. But it will fit directly into the CD/DVD slot in an adapter but I'm not sure about the voltage 3.3v to 5.0v.
There are some problems with the San Disk III CF cards but speed isn't one of them. They show as removable disks and so far I haven't found the utility that changes them to fixed disks.
As a removable disk you won't get XP updates, system restore, clean disk doesn't work and you have push Alt+Ctrl+Del at the Welcome screen.
This isn't a problem for me and probably speeds everything up because Windows isn't continually looking for "stuff".
I use an 8Gig card which is only 1/2 full, because Windows won't load restore etc, to a removable disk.
With the exception of Windows itself, I recommend all your other programs be installed from the CF card. That is, load the raw files or program from the CD or USB into a temp file and install from there. That way you won't get the infamous install disk 1 error.
Tim S