SSD mini PCI-E

[airsky98]

anyone manage to insert a SSD into the mini PCI-e slot and make it working as HDD?

[aau007]

Does anyone even make a SSD with mini PCI-e interface?

Never mind, found one, at least.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820609352

[hofan41]

which laptop has a mini pci-e slot?

[visionviper]

Does anyone even make a SSD with mini PCI-e interface?

There are a couple - not exactly a high volume item though.

which laptop has a mini pci-e slot?

A lot of new laptops do. I think most, if not all, of the new Thinkpads have one.

[airsky98]

most of not all newer laptop have it

looks like x200 have 3 mini pci-e slot
1 used for wlan, 1 used for wwan

1 more quite hidden.. on top near the power on button... very small slot, duno can put any SSD in or not :s34:

[Radioguy]

It's looks essentially like non-configured turbo memory except in higher capacities.

[Radioguy]

Slightly OT, and I have no idea if works, but today I saw this:

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.17790

It essentially combines several SDHC cards into a SATA SSD. There are others there that claim to do the same via CF and IDE as well. Perhaps someone will try the same for mini-pci or mini-pci-e as well.

[xyz]

From akihabaranews

Last week we introduced the latest DIY (Do It Yourself) SSD drive from Photofast, the CR-9000. Well, we got it hands on… but, unfortunately, we don’t have enough SD cards to fully test it (sorry...).

What we can tell you is, the CR-9000 with its red color is quite a stylish SSD drive, . Contrary to the other DIY SSD drive we tested here, at Akihabranews.com, this one seems to be stronger thanks to its metallic enclosure, and is also cheaper.

Notice that an IDE version is also available. However, the Photofast logo was written on the wrong side. If you plug it into your laptop, you won’t see the logo (OK, it's a minor detail…)

In case you forgot, this SSD Drive accepts up to six 32GB SDHC cards in RAID 0, providing a maximum of 192GB.
And According to the manufacturer, you can get a reading speed of 130MB/s, and a writing speed of 85MB/s

[raiaken]

As an FYI in case anyone finds this thread (like I did) using a search engine. As it turns out, all the existing mini PCIe SSDs (as of 6/7/2009) only work in netbooks. The reason for this is that they don't use the PCIe lane but rather dedicated SATA/PATA lanes built into the boards/chipsets of the netbooks. The eeePC, for instance, has a mini PCIe (or minicard) shaped slot which has SATA rx/tx instead of PCIe rx/tx. The slot itself is vendor specific and is called 'Flash_Con'. The Dells and the eeePCs both use some of the 'reserved' pins on the PCIe connector to provide connectivity for PATA.

So in short, there exist no mini PCIe SSDs which will work with existing Thinkpads. There's also, of course, the whitelist problem but there are various ways to circumvent that.

[martin255]

I am confused. The info given by raiaken seems to indicate that a mini-PCIe SSD should not work at all. Yet Radioguy says that it looks "like a non-configured Turbo Memory" - what does that mean exactly? Does it only show up in the Device Manager or can it be used as a drive?
I thought mini-PCIe devices could be configured either as USB or as PCIe. Is it possible, at least, that some of these mini-PCIe SSDs can be used in USB mode?

[raiaken]

I think he's talking about the actual architecture and physical appearance of the thing. Trust me, it won't work. the PCI-E RX/TX or the reserved pins from the minicard form factor are repurposed in netbooks.

In other news, there's also no existing way to get Turbo Memory to work as a block device. My solution at the moment is to use a 48GB ExpressCard SSD (using PCI-E lane) by FileMate, and a 32GB SDHC Class 6 card attached internally using the adapter from hwtools.net for low write stuff (music/video). Including my 160GB X25-M that brings me up to 240GB of solid state storage. Working like a charm so far.

[bcherry]

Sorry a bit OT:
I have the Intel X25 80gb and was thinking of getting the Filemate 48gb Expresscard but read some reports that this device runs hot. Do you find that to be the case?

[martin255]

Thanks raiaken, you just saved me a few dozen euros and a big disappointment. I guess I'll just go for the ExpressCard, then.

[raiaken]

Sorry a bit OT:
I have the Intel X25 80gb and was thinking of getting the Filemate 48gb Expresscard but read some reports that this device runs hot. Do you find that to be the case?

It does run hot when using applications that have high I/O - e.g. multiple torrents. I've had a single bluescreen which was solved by removing the drive and letting it cool. However, in everyday usage, it's usually fine. One solution I use is to use a 1GB ramdrive (I have 8GB in this machine) to serve as a write cache and then copy things to the FileMate only when larger chunks are done. Haven't had a bluescreen since.

[martin255]

We still have to wait, but Samsung just announced they were manufacturing mini-PCIe SDDs that use the SATA interface:
http://www.slashgear.com/samsung-mini-p ... e-2347726/
I am afraid it will be pricey, but at least we will be able to use those empty slots.

[raiaken]

We still have to wait, but Samsung just announced they were manufacturing mini-PCIe SDDs that use the SATA interface:
http://www.slashgear.com/samsung-mini-p ... e-2347726/
I am afraid it will be pricey, but at least we will be able to use those empty slots.

There are existing mPCIe 'form factor' SSD's that present a SATA interface, but none that use the mPCIe pinout (i.e. mPCIe tx/rx pins). This is no different - if you read the actual press release it says that Samsung has submitted the pinout to the JEDEC - which basically means that it doesn't comply with the existing pin layout of mPCIe slots, which means that we with existing hardware are SOL. Will probably work with future revisions of some non-netbook notebooks though.

The bottom line is that any SSD that uses the mPCIe interface will have to contain not only the memory and its associated ICs but also a drive controller, and a SATA<->mPCIe interface. Fitting all of that onto one 50mm card that doesn't melt inside a laptop case is going to be quite a chore.