Project: Full Guide: Installing a ZIF HDD into an X40-PICS

[Zuluoz]

Recently I bought a X40 in good condition with a bad HDD. I didn’t pay enough attention to how hard it would be to get another until it arrived so I was left looking for options. I considered replacing the HDD with two CF cards, however they aren’t at a price point I’m happy with to do it, so I went with a ZIF Conversion.

If you’re going to do this one, it really isn’t that bad, IF you take a minute to learn from my mistakes, this guide will walk you through it pretty easily.

What you need is:

A HDD- I used a Toshiba MK3008GAL, these are easy to find on Ebay, mine was refurbished from HK. If you’re going to do it and you want more than the 30Gb this drive has, then when you’re looking at options remember to think about where the ZIF connection is, in relation to the connections on the Laptop, Look at the thickness of the drive, this is single platter and so it’s not that thick. Here's a photo to make the point http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e10/z ... C00336.jpg

An Adaptor- These are Ebay as well, you can find them searching under “ZIF to IDE” I bought two from two different sellers, and you should as well. Why? First off it allows you to modify one for the X40 and keep the other one to use a USB 2.5 inch enclosure to dump data on, and test the drive. Also because if you break one (which is not too hard) you have a spare. The two I had varied in quality and finish so it’s worth hedging your bets on buying two.

ZIF Cables- Your adaptor will most likely come with two ZIF Cables, these are way too short. I ended up ordering a pack of ten 10cm ribbons from Ebay. There are two different types around, one for Hitachi HDD’s (white on one end blue on the other) and for Toshiba (Blue both ends) the difference is that on the Hitachi ribbons, one end is thicker. I looked for ribbons that were blue on both ends and bought those.

A 2.5inc USB enclosure- This is optional, I used one with an adaptor to test it to make sure it would work, I also used it to get Data off it and do some recovery off the old HDD. If you have one you may as well use it. How else are you going to know if you got a Dud ZIF Drive?

External CD-ROM- I installed an OS on the ZIF Drive by putting the drive in another Laptop, then moving it. This worked everywhere except the X40 which would boot it maybe 1 in 5 for Ubuntu and Crash in XP. Save yourself the hassle, go get a USB CD-ROM. I pulled a spare CD-ROM out of my Desktop and stuck it in an External HDD Enclosure and it worked great. You can check if it would work by seeing if it would recognize the External HDD as a boot device, if it’s externally powered it should be ok.

Also a Soldering Iron, Electrical Tape, Pocket Knife, Screwdriver

1. Hook up your ZIF HDD to an external enclosure and test it with the ZIF Cable you are going to use. Make sure it all works ok. If you’re struggling to put the cable in the drive here’s a tip, the ZIF drive has a very small black flap on the top that you need to flip open with your fingernail or something, close it once the cable is in. You can put a bit of force on the cable to get it into the Drive and it’ll be ok.

2. Solder your adaptor. You have to do this because the 1.8 HDD needs 3.3V when standard HDD’s use 5. The adaptor steps down the Voltage so you can use the 1.8 inch drive in another laptop. The X40 already delivers 3.3V so if you use the adaptor unmodified, it doesn’t deliver enough Voltage to power it. The basics of it are contained in this very informative post http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=70255 A couple of tips here, First watch how you try to get the capacitor off, I got impatient and tried pulling it off after making a few cuts, it worked, but it also ripped everything off the board. I got it right by sawing through the connector on the left and the pins on the right with a small knife. I left my LED’s on the adaptor, I wanted to see if 3.3V was being delivered and one of the LED’s tells you that. My HDD fit under the lights, it’s your choice. This photo tells the story of both tries of removing the capacitor, you can see the problems the first try caused. http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e10/z ... C00337.jpg

3. Open your X40. IBM being the champs that they are have a great guide to doing that already so I’m not going to go through it. You need to take off the Keyboard and the Bezel/Palmrest. It gets tricky around the latch for the lid, mine came off with a loud snap which freaked me out, but it’s held together just fine. Why? Because it’s a Thinkpad, that’s why.


4. Put the modified adaptor in the HDD Slot, plug the Battery back in and reconnect the keyboard and turn on the X40. We’re doing this to make sure that it lights up to tell you that it’s getting the Voltage, once this is done, power down, connect up the ZIF HDD and check to see that it comes up as a boot device. If it doesn’t most likely the ZIF cable isn’t in properly, if it is, check you didn’t damage the board or the HDD. DON’T PUT THE MODIFIED BOARD BACK IN THE USB ENCLOSURE AND CONNECT A HDD TO IT! We took away the capacitor remember? It’s going to deliver a full 5V to the HDD, which isn’t a great idea

5. Assuming it’s all ok, plug in your external USB CD-ROM and install your OS. I like to do this now, because if there is an issue which could be hardware, it’s easy to isolate, and I don’t have to dismantle anything. It’s a good test before you start commit to the next parts. After it installs boot it up to check it works ok.

6. On the Right hand Side of the Drive bay is a black plastic strip, which screws onto the motherboard. Under that is a thin metal strip. You have to cut off the black plastic so the new HDD will fit. Sorry, there isn’t much of a choice. I left the metal strip in and screwed it back to the motherboard .My tip is not to snap it off because if you want to go back to a normal HDD later, you can glue it back, I cut about ¾ the way up.

7. I positioned the HDD with the ZIF connector on the right, in between the connector and the motherboard I placed a thin piece of cardboard covered with Electrical tape, I also put a strip of electrical tape on the underside of the palmrest where it would contact the top of the adaptor. Save yourself some grief and do both of these steps as well
http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e10/z ... C00413.jpg

8. The front of the X40 has a black plastic surround that covers the HDD, it usually attaches to the HDD Caddy for the old Drive, so it slots out in one piece. This will fit back in with no cutting or problems, (you can see it in the photo above), but put it in at this step, if you try to do it once everything is reassembled, you risk moving the ZIF Cable which means you have to disassemble everything again to fix it.

9. Test, Test, Test!- Once you have positioned the HDD and are happy, boot up. When you place the Bezel back, Test it again, When the Keyboard goes back, Test again. Trust me. The HDD will shift as you tighten everything, so this way you will know what step you were up to when the problem occurred and you only have to go one step back.

10. That’s it! Let me know if it worked for you, or if you have any comments or issues. Happy Thinkpadding!

Note from Admin: No images without pic warning in subject line. No images >50k at all.

[sjthinkpader]

... Here's a photo to make the point http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e10/z ... C00336.jpg

...
ZIF Cables- Your adaptor will most likely come with two ZIF Cables, these are way too short. I ended up ordering a pack of ten 10cm ribbons from Ebay. There are two different types around, one for Hitachi HDD’s (white on one end blue on the other) and for Toshiba (Blue both ends) the difference is that on the Hitachi ribbons, one end is thicker. I looked for ribbons that were blue on both ends and bought those.
....

Welcome to the forum. Great post, thanks.

I believe it is the other way around. Adapters and Hitachi connectors used the blue ends and Toshiba use the white end. The white end is a little thinner. It kept coming out of the drive side ZIF connector on my Hitachi drives until I changed to the cable with both blue ends.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0285603455

[RealBlackStuff]

Not to criticize your posting, but we recently had all this already explained and well documented by harryc in his posting
Thinkpads.com X41 Project

[Zuluoz]

... Here's a photo to make the point http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e10/z ... C00336.jpg


I believe it is the other way around. Adapters and Hitachi connectors used the blue ends and Toshiba use the white end. The white end is a little thinner. It kept coming out of the drive side ZIF connector on my Hitachi drives until I changed to the cable with both blue ends.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0285603455

I know what you're saying, the descriptions for auctions tend to use the branding interchangably, some say Toshiba, some say Hitachi. I also had the same problem with the white cables coming out, so blue both ends it is

[Zuluoz]

Not to criticize your posting, but we recently had all this already explained and well documented by harryc in his posting
Thinkpads.com X41 Project

I wrote the guide before the X41 project had completed but only checked back into the X41 project after I posted, I had a few signup issues

harryc's guide is great, however I wrote mine to be as simplistic as possible with the issues that I had installing my ZIF drive. My installation process was the same as his and I ran into the problems that I explained in my post, so people can benefit from the issues I had. After all, if you're going to go through a bit of surgery on your X40/X41, then you can use all the guides you can get!

[bananaman]

Yes the sign in is all messed up since they moved to these new forums. It's a PITA. Just unlucky timing for you I guess. Thanks for the great write up! Please add the pics. I don't know why the mods denied them - your title clearly says PICS!

[sjthinkpader]

Just find a pix hosting service and embed the urls.

[tim S]

Thanks for the guide and write up, I do have a question though. You opted for a Toshiba ZIF drive which I believe is a 4200rpm drive. Do you find this drive gives you an appreciable speed/accesss difference over the original drive?
It would be nice to know since the Samsung 5400rpm ZIF drive used by HarryC is difficult to find and quite expensive.
Tim S

[sjthinkpader]

Some Toshibas are 3600RPM. Most Hitachi, Samsungs are 4200RPM. I have two Hitachi 40GB running in X20 and X30 and they are quick enough.

[tim S]

Yes I understand that, but the OP changed the original drive (4200rpm) in his X40 to a Toshiba ZIF (4200rpm?) so my question was if he noticed any speed difference.
The X40 and X41 series are notoriously slow, partially because they use different hard drives from all the other X series, which is why their owners are always looking for ways to increase speed. CF cards, ZIF drives, Linux etc.
Tim S

[sjthinkpader]

X40/X41 owners look for other solutions also due to limited supply of 1.8 inch IDE drives with pin connector and small capacity.

Most 1.8 inch ZIF drives were made for multi-media players so they are mostly 3600/4200RPM low power drives.

A few 1.8 inch 5400RPM ZIF drives were made for computers but again they are relatively rare.

I am using two Hitachi 40GB 4200RPM ZIP drives in my X20, X30 for no good reason. They are much quieter and slightly lighter than the original 2.5 inch 20GB 4200RPM drives. Performance is acceptable. My X40 is running on an 8GB CF at the moment.

I will run some bench mark later between old 2.5 inch, new 2.5 inch, 1.8 inch and CF SSD.

[uux]

I thought maybe some people here would be interested in these.

[tim S]

I checked into the above SSD's but couldn't find the dimensions, I assume they have the standard measurements for 1.8" ZIF drives but I'd like to be sure since it's already very tight inside the X40.
All in all the price is very attractive but these SSD's might have speed and yield issues. They could actually be factory seconds that didn't quite meet the original requirements, just like the first Celerons chips, way back when!
That said, if there is even a marginal increase in read and write speed over an original X40/41 drive, then the price is very good.
Tim S

[uux]

The only difference in dimensions is the thickness. The 16, 32, and 64GB are 5mm thick, while the 128GB is 8mm. You can find more information on them from a Google search or directly from RunCore. They claim 75MB/s read and 40MB/s write. To the best of my knowledge, they are using the cheaper flash cells (SLC vs MLC). I thought it was worth mentioning with this mod as the ZIF adapter and lower cost RunCore SSD actually make this very attractive in comparison to the CF conversion. You need two expensive CF cards to get near the same performance or capacity.

[Zuluoz]

Thanks for the guide and write up, I do have a question though. You opted for a Toshiba ZIF drive which I believe is a 4200rpm drive. Do you find this drive gives you an appreciable speed/accesss difference over the original drive?
It would be nice to know since the Samsung 5400rpm ZIF drive used by HarryC is difficult to find and quite expensive.
Tim S

I got a noticiable speed boost, but the main reason was that the Travelstar that was in there originally had a high amount of read errors. So a clean 4200 drive was going to give an appreciable difference.

I also decided not to re-install windows and installed Ubuntu only this time round to see if I could live with it day to day. So far no issues so I'm probably going to end up keeping it that way.

Personally I would probably go a larger ZIF drive, or have a high capacity SD Card for data than a SSD. There isn't anything that requires that much speed for me to make the cost worth it.

[tim S]

It's a shame that your original drive had problems as I would have loved to have found out if there was any increase with the ZIF.
If there had been a speed increase then I would have put the difference down to cache size since they are both 4200rpm. I think the original X40 drives have a very small built-in cache, maybe a larger cache is physically impossible because of the small form factor, or that they are expensive enough as they are!
Ubuntu is very fast (once it finishes booting). I have Hardy Heron on an original 40G (X40) drive and I have no complaints, pretty much everything worked out of the box except hot swapping the dock which apparently is not supported in Linux.
That said, Windows XP on a San Disk 16GB Extreme III CF Card is blazingly fast, including boot up.
Tim S

[sjthinkpader]

It's a shame that your original drive had problems as I would have loved to have found out if there was any increase with the ZIF.
If there had been a speed increase then I would have put the difference down to cache size since they are both 4200rpm. I think the original X40 drives have a very small built-in cache, maybe a larger cache is physically impossible because of the small form factor, or that they are expensive enough as they are!
......
That said, Windows XP on a San Disk 16GB Extreme III CF Card is blazingly fast, including boot up.
Tim S

Actually the cache chip used in HDDs are very small DRAM. 8MB is only a single 64Mb chip. Current generation mainline PC DDR3 chips are in 1Gb or 2Gb sizes. There are a few DRAM makers with old wafer fabs are targeting these small DRAM chips.

I think that CF cards are fast when they are new. Once the older blocks must be reclaimed (erased) for reuse, erase-write cycles will be much longer than write cycles. I haven't tested a Sandisk Extreme yet but this is the case with a Kingston CF. I would like to hear if any of the IDE-CF users share this experience.

[BobA]

You've done a good job summarizing the process. I have several 60G/4200 ZIF drives (HTC426060G8CE00) I bought by mistake and am trying to get them into some X40s I have. Everything works fine EXCEPT I can't install/boot under XP. I get the blue screen with UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME error. What's odd is that I can install Kubuntu and it boots fine. I've tried several fix MBR solutions (IBM's restore, Windows repair, the hardware maintenance disk clean boot) - nothing works. I can boot off of Windows 98, but installing XP (from an XP install disk) gets me the error "Setup cannot configure your computer for Windows XP." A google search on this error produces nothing as this seems to be a unique error never seen before.

It's been suggested I upgrade/install the firmware to the ZIF drive - I'm a little hesitant to do this. Any ideas from this community would be greatly appreciated.

[sjthinkpader]

If you were able to get the Recovery partition on the drive, use F11 to install the OS.

[BobA]

No, I can't get the recovery partition - that was what I tried first. It put everything out there but blue-screened on the reboot. I've tried about everything but updating the firmware .. which seems like the only solution.

[sjthinkpader]

A few things to watch out for ZIF drive installation:

1. Tape the bare metal drive frame near the cable exposed metal traces. This was shown in Harry's big thread.
2. Shim the cable so that it has a small distance from the drive. I showed this in one of my posts.
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=77507
3. Tape the exposed signal traces and connector on the IDE-ZIF adapter.

[BobA]

Thanks for the suggestions. I found out the hard way on those items. After all of the tape, I was able to get the drive recognized and even can load data onto it. I can install and boot Linux (Kubuntu) fine. I can install and boot Win98 fine. I just can't boot XP ..

I'm thinking there must be something in the firmware .. some special disk routine calls that XP makes that Linux and Win98 don't. I can't think of anything else it could be. The drives work fine as long as you don't try to boot XP.

[sjthinkpader]

I've only used WinXP and Win7, nothing else. Do a cloning or by Recovery CD, then use F11 recovery to build the OS partition.

[BobA]

Just an update to say the problem is resolved. The connector that I was using between the ZIF hard-drive and the laptop just doesn't work right. I bought a different type - much easier to work with - and my problem went away. If anyone is interested, here's a link to the eBay part - a bit pricey at $20 but they work well.
Bob

[sjthinkpader]

Yes, the signal quality of the cheap cable is not very good, especially when it is close to a metal surface.

[dwilsonfl]

So I have been looking at doing this for over a year. Just sold a X41T and have the money to head toward an X60s or just buy the 5400rpm ZIF drive.

Is there such a difference in speed that I would notice? Or would I spend $155 and yawn?

[sjthinkpader]

Somebody reported a new Runcore using a new controller "RUnCore Pro IV (indilinx barefoot inside)". If that indeed is a PATA plug compatible, it may be the newest thing on the block. I am pretty happy with my Sandisk ZIF drives. Now there are several $100 32GB solutions.