Thinkpads Forum

Did anyone ever try to use the half mini pcie as an SSD slot?
I just ordered myself a nice SSD but I was thinking turbo memory out and a nice half mini pcie SSD in for extra storage?

did anybody try this?
edit:
something like this http://www.supertalent.com/products/ssd ... ini%20PCIe

They are usually pretty slow.

i know but as a secondary storage it will do,
i ordered a super fast ssd as my main drive, not sequential speed but random reads and writes
so i'm thinking this secondary storage can't be slower than my 5400 rpm drive i use now

lordt8 wrote:so i'm thinking this secondary storage can't be slower than my 5400 rpm drive i use now

It can. What drive do you use now?

250gb 5400 rpm by Fujitsu
not a great performer

lordt8 wrote:250gb 5400 rpm by Fujitsu
not a great performer

Happen to have a model number?

ASM P/N 42T1505
FRU P/N 42T1481
Lenovo P/N 52T1089 250.0GB

Model: MHZ2250BH G1

I'd say you're probably better with the hard drive you currently have.

you didn't get me right, i already got my self a ssd, this one is proper fast, 200+ mb/s squetial reads etc etc, but i want to use the half mini pice for another extra ssd witch i will use as a dump for movies and stuff that doesn't really need a lot of speed to run properly, the main ssd is for programs and OS

No, I know exactly what you meant. I am saying I think you are better off using your now spare Fujitsu drive for secondary storage than getting a half mini-pcie SSD.

visionviper wrote:No, I know exactly what you meant. I am saying I think you are better off using your now spare Fujitsu drive for secondary storage than getting a half mini-pcie SSD.

Man,

I think what OP is saying, he wanna use a low-cost pci-e ssd card to act as a dumping ground for transient files, like movies...
since there is no place to put his soon-to-be spare Fujitus HDD, he wants to have a ince clean setup, Big fast SSD as primary storage, and el-cheapo pci-e smaller ssd as dumping ground.

Yes yes?

exactly! thats my plan, the new ssd is super fast! boot is like 10 sec from power on to swiping my finger

Tan Mann wrote: Man,

I think what OP is saying, he wanna use a low-cost pci-e ssd card to act as a dumping ground for transient files, like movies...
since there is no place to put his soon-to-be spare Fujitus HDD, he wants to have a ince clean setup, Big fast SSD as primary storage, and el-cheapo pci-e smaller ssd as dumping ground.

Yes yes?

Tan Mann wrote: I think what OP is saying, he wanna use a low-cost pci-e ssd card to act as a dumping ground for transient files, like movies...
since there is no place to put his soon-to-be spare Fujitus HDD, he wants to have a ince clean setup, Big fast SSD as primary storage, and el-cheapo pci-e smaller ssd as dumping ground.

Well I was just thinking about him throwing it into a external enclosure and that way he can not only use it with his laptop but with other computers as well.

I'm interested in this too. Would we need the Zender bios? What about using a CF card which would function more like a hard drive? It is slow, but upgradable and lower cost. I want this for extra storage capacity and/or an internal backup in case the HDD/SSD fails.

visionviper wrote:Well I was just thinking about him throwing it into a external enclosure and that way he can not only use it with his laptop but with other computers as well.

Its a pain in the butt to have to carry around an extrenal HDD, Especially when you arent anticipating needing it (waiting for a bus, flight, class, etc).
I dont want keep changing out movies and TV shows on my SSD that I paid a lot of $ for, I would much rather buy a cheap 16-32gb SSD (or even CF card --> pcie adapter or something) so I can have some TV shows in-case the mood strikes.

Movies dont need a lot of speed (under HD resolution, even 720p can play easily from my SD memory card inserted into the SD card slot on my X41 (which can barely keep up with the 720p res anyway ). So a CF solution may be cheaper/more effective than a PCI-E ssd.

If (*if*) I could find a small mini PCIe SSD with excellent random read-write performance I wouldn't hesitate to pick up one for use as a fast swap disk and/or other 'scratch' usage. Sadly, such drives seem to be very hard if not impossible to find.

Anyone got a line on one?

How about using an ExpressCard SSD. These seem to be readily available and there should be no BIOS issues.

Does anybody know if you can boot from these drives?

I vaguely remember something about those mini pci-e ssd's not working on anything but netbooks since normal pci-e slots don't contain the sata connections... correct me if i'm wrong.

There are models like one from samsung that have integrated SATA controllers so you plug em into a mini pcie and use them as normal drive in a normal laptop. the problem now for me is that i can't find a ssd small enough to fit instead of the intel turbo crap

How about using an ExpressCard SSD. These seem to be readily available and there should be no BIOS issues.

Does anybody know if you can boot from these drives?

Only if you run the Mac OS. No version of Windows can see the ExpressCard SSD until it loads a device driver midway through the boot process. Unlike USB, there is no native support for them in either BIOS or in Windows.

lordt8 wrote:There are models like one from samsung that have integrated SATA controllers so you plug em into a mini pcie and use them as normal drive in a normal laptop. the problem now for me is that i can't find a ssd small enough to fit instead of the intel turbo crap

lordt8 is dead on
http://www.slashgear.com/samsung-mini-p ... e-2347726/
http://www.siliconmadness.com/2009/06/s ... e-ssd.html

after digging through various forums, it's my understanding that the common mini PCIe SSDs for netbooks do not work in standard mini PCIe due to the fact that these cards merely share the form factor of the mini PCIe standard, but the actual pin outs are different. They simply pass through the SATA interface through the PCIe interface, where as standard spec mini PCIe slots in our Thinkpads don't. So regardless of the physical fitting of the card, those SSDs designed for EEE PC will NOT work.

The solution Samsung provided is the same as those expensive full PCIe SSDs that work in desktop machines, with built in SATA controllers, which your BIOS will pick up. In other words, it's similar to adding a PCIe x4 SATA RAID/non-RAID controller to your desktop and booting an SATA drive from the card, except the drive is built into the card itself.

Hope that helps to clear up the confusion.

Does anyone know if I can install this device into my X200s and use it as primary/bootable drive: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820167039

no.   ChugokuOtaku's post above yours explains why.   current systems are missing physical paths on the system planar necessary to drive mPCIe-based SATA cards.   it's physically impossible regardless of OS or BIOS.

if you want an intel 310 SSD then you'll need to purchase one of the upcoming systems.