Thinkpads Forum

I was wondering if anyone knew if this was possible;

I want to put either a large SD card or a CF card (through PCMCIA adapter) and install the OS on that. It would then boot from the flash drive and use the hard drive only for data storage. I've read plenty of threads on if this is possible or not, and it all seems to be hit or miss. Does anyone know if this is possible with the X61t?

Zuke wrote:... possible with the X61t?

No -- X6x BIOSs do not support booting from SD slot or PC Card slot. [For example, X200 series machines do support booting from SD slot.]

However, even if the X61 BIOS supported what you mention, it would be folly to set up your system that way because the I/O activity of the operating system would "destroy" the flash memory in short order. "Standard" flash memory cannot support the duty cycle of typical operating system I/O. Further, "normal" flash memory is too slow to be used as the primary OS medium.

Dang. Good to know I guess. How do SSD's work then?

An SSD's architecture and controller are designed to mitigate the issues I mentioned above. Stated simplistically, the way speed and "wear" issues are handled by the electronics/controller in SSDs vs. "normal" flash memory is what differentiates the two.

EOMtp wrote: [For example, X200 series machines do support booting from SD slot.]

Now that's something that I did not know. What would be a good fast SD card for that purpose?

Harryc wrote:What would be a good fast SD card for that purpose?

Two points:
1) Good SD card -- any SD card large enough to hold the boot files will do. For example, any 256MB SD card can hold the Acronis True Image boot image, which one may use as the boot medium to recover the operating system if the machine refuses to boot into Windows. Any SD card formatted for booting will boot from the SD slots of the machines that support such booting.
.
2) Fast SD card -- the fastest SD cards presently are the Class 10 SanDisk Extreme series:
http://www.sandisk.com/products/imaging ... dhc-cards-
[Note: Not all Class 10 SD cards are the same speed!]
However, using those cards for booting is a "waste", as they are not SSD substitutes and cannot be used as SSDs regardless of their speed.

Booting from an SD card in the SD slot is useful only for purposes of testing, recovery, initial setup and/or partitioning of a new hard drive, etc. ... and for those purposes, what matters is that the SD card boots, not its speed.

For example: It may be prudent to have a $5, 512MB SD card, with bootable Acronis TrueImage on it, stored in the memory compartment of the machine, which can be retrieved and used to recover the operating system from a backup stored on a separate partition than Windows, in the rare event that there is catastrophic Windows corruption and one is away from "home", with no other "path" of recovery.

EOMtp wrote:......For example: It may be prudent to have a $5, 512MB SD card, with bootable Acronis TrueImage on it, stored in the memory compartment of the machine, ........

Hiya EOM*....
Sorry am bit 'confused'...on one hand you say "SD CARD" cannot be used for BOOT DRIVE , and then above quote you saying 'boot for recovery'....

I have used this for long time
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0501/05010 ... sdflip.asp
Successfully boots on all W*& T* series machines - no problems (Windx64+ SUSE-Linux) Both hard drives used to 'data storage in RAID0

For me I am never worried slow boottime ~5min+ boot time - get coffee time for me :LOL:

cheers!

ausmike wrote:...on one hand you say "SD CARD" cannot be used for BOOT DRIVE , and then above quote you saying 'boot for recovery'....
I have used this for long time (picture below)

Let me clarify:
The device you reference above is an SD card which converts to a USB flash drive. An X60 indeed will boot from a USB flash drive, but not from an SD card inserted into the SD slot on the X60. However, an X200 will boot from an SD card inserted into its SD slot.

The issue is one of booting from a card in the SD slot, not one of booting off a USB flash drive.

[Note: Those "convertible" SD cards are wonderful, but are now discontinued, and SanDisk no longer manufactures them. The cards went up to 8GB; 1GB and 2GB versions are still available on eBay.]

As said, sd cards are not ssds. Ssd's have fancy controllers and do things like spreading the load over multiple banks of chips to increase speed and reduce the inherent disadvantages of flash memory. Do something like a random read write on a regular flash card and your performance will turn to sh*t. Stated spec on flash cards is sequential performance, which only applies to things like writing jpegs from your camera or whatever simple task. Booting and computer app use does not apply. Never mind wear leveling and garbage collection. I believe anandtech has primers and articles on ssds. In any case, the only reason to do that cf card o/s thing was for embedded linux type boots, where the system was just turned into something like a firewall and where drive read writes were not an issue after boot.

EOMtp wrote:Two points:
1) Good SD card -- any SD card large enough to hold the boot files will do. For example, any 256MB SD card can hold the Acronis True Image boot image, which one may use as the boot medium to recover the operating system if the machine refuses to boot into Windows. Any SD card formatted for booting will boot from the SD slots of the machines that support such booting.
.
2) Fast SD card -- the fastest SD cards presently are the Class 10 SanDisk Extreme series:
http://www.sandisk.com/products/imaging ... dhc-cards-
[Note: Not all Class 10 SD cards are the same speed!]
However, using those cards for booting is a "waste", as they are not SSD substitutes and cannot be used as SSDs regardless of their speed.

Booting from an SD card in the SD slot is useful only for purposes of testing, recovery, initial setup and/or partitioning of a new hard drive, etc. ... and for those purposes, what matters is that the SD card boots, not its speed.

For example: It may be prudent to have a $5, 512MB SD card, with bootable Acronis TrueImage on it, stored in the memory compartment of the machine, which can be retrieved and used to recover the operating system from a backup stored on a separate partition than Windows, in the rare event that there is catastrophic Windows corruption and one is away from "home", with no other "path" of recovery.

Could you point me to info on how to load the bootable Acronis image on an SD card?? I currently have the CD/DVD version, which, if I remember correctly, is from an ISO image that Acronis creates. Would be quite interesting to have a bootable Acronis on an SD card or maybe on a USB thumb drive. Eleminates any need for a CD/DVD drive, which I normally don't have hooked up to my systems.

AMATX wrote:Could you point me to info on how to load the bootable Acronis image on an SD card??

- Insert the SD card or flash drive, and wait until Windows "sees" the device as a drive,
- Start True Image in Windows,
- Select "Tool & Utilities",
- Then select "Create Bootable Rescue Media",
... and 2 or 3 screens later you will have the option to select the destination device, which will include the SD card and/or the flash drive.

EOMtp wrote:Could you point me to info on how to load the bootable Acronis image on an SD card??- Insert the SD card or flash drive, and wait until Windows "sees" the device as a drive,
- Start True Image in Windows,
- Select "Tool & Utilities",
- Then select "Create Bootable Rescue Media",
... and 2 or 3 screens later you will have the option to select the destination device, which will include the SD card and/or the flash drive.

Thanks