Has anyone tried an SSD in the X41? *PICS*

[aboveliquidice]

If you gents can - Please post a comparison of weight (SSD vs HD) and also of speed - Is the SSD faster if using the Lexar 300X 8gb vs the 4200 1.8" HD???

If I ever see my X41 again - I would like to try this - but only if the speed is worth while

~above~

[DVormann]

I "traded" the SanDisk Extreme IV card for the Lexar 300X 8GB card. When I popped it in the machine, same thing. Still no go.

Summary of tested cards so far:

• - All Sandisk and the Lexar 300x cards are IDE removeable. Not suitable for a windows install. Some can be changed to fixed disk.
  - Transcend 133x writes very slow in true IDE fixed disk mode. Useful for holding data but not as a system disk. Write speeds are acceptable in USB card readers.
  - Transcend 266x works in IDE fixed disk mode with good read and write speeds. 8 GB only.
  - Delkin 305X UDMA cards are available up to 16 GB. No tests so far.

[Tekkaman_Slade]

If you gents can - Please post a comparison of weight (SSD vs HD) and also of speed - Is the SSD faster if using the Lexar 300X 8gb vs the 4200 1.8" HD???

If I ever see my X41 again - I would like to try this - but only if the speed is worth while

~above~

I'm currently using the Addonics dual slot cf-to-ide adapter with an 8gb Lexar 300x UDMA for OS/Apps and a 16gb Sandisk Extreme III for storage. HD Tune 2.54 gives me the following results under WinXP SP2:

HD Tune: LEXAR ATA FLASH CARD Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 3.7 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 39.9 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 38.5 MB/sec
Access Time : 0.5 ms
Burst Rate : 37.0 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 3.5%

HD Tune: SanDisk SDCFX3-16384 Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 5.5 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 14.4 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 13.8 MB/sec
Access Time : 0.6 ms
Burst Rate : 12.4 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 1.7%

The performance is like night and day when compared to the X40's original 4200rpm drive. I'm a little surprised at the test results of the Sandisk Extreme III. I was able to copy 1.5gb of video from a 4gb usb thumb drive to the Extreme III in under 2 minutes, so I think real world performance is greater than what's reported by the benchmark.

The X40 is a little lighter with an SSD, but the differences is barely noticeable since I have the 8-cell extended battery.

-Slade

[sugo]

Looking forward to XP install performance results from Lewster215 on Transcend 266x.

Most flash can write sequential files close to their advertised speed, which is the way pro digital camera write files. With random write of small files, the performance can take a big hit.

I couldn't find the benchmark site anymore but ... Transcend 266x 2GB came out with around 18MB/s for sequential write but 0.7MB/s for random read+write.

[aboveliquidice]

Thanks for those benchmarks!!! now can anyone benchmark the 1.8" HD????

That would be the ultimate test of "should you do this" (having theoretically covered the "can you do it" question)

big congrats to you pioneers - nice work

~above~

[Tekkaman_Slade]

Thanks for those benchmarks!!! now can anyone benchmark the 1.8" HD????

That would be the ultimate test of "should you do this" (having theoretically covered the "can you do it" question)

big congrats to you pioneers - nice work

~above~

Benchmarks for the X40's 1.8'' drive can be found throughout the forums.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... ark#102314

The Lexar 300x UDMA is 2.5X faster than the X40's HD and performs on par with 2.5'' 7200rpm drives.

-Slade

[aboveliquidice]

WOW - just wow - I am very impressed with the average transfer rate - the access time cannot even be compared to the old HD -

I think I will look into pricing out the components...

Nice work

~above~

[Martini82]

I am interested what about power consumption when running on CF? Could you please post wattage consumption for example when running on battery with Maximum battery life profile and lowest brightness, wifi off? Transfer rates that you have post are great. Thanks. Bye

[Lewster215]

Okay everyone ...

I picked up my Transcend 266X 8GB CF card this morning and threw XP Pro on the machine. I think I've probably done at least 10+ XP installs within the past week because of this "project"!

Hard number specs are a good thing (thanks to DVormann and Tekkaman_Slade for some great numbers and other info, which collectively obliged me to not give up, and keep trying different solutions until something worked acceptably or better). At the same time, I also feel that real-world performance is just as important to consider. So here's what I found.

Sugo posted a little too late about the pitfalls of not only the 266X Transcend card, but also CF cards in general:

Most flash can write sequential files close to their advertised speed, which is the way pro digital camera write files. With random write of small files, the performance can take a big hit.

I couldn't find the benchmark site anymore but ... Transcend 266x 2GB came out with around 18MB/s for sequential write but 0.7MB/s for random read+write.

Ouch, on the random read/write blurb. I can see first-hand now how that must be true. The Lexar (and SanDisk) cards seemed better for random writes, but of course they don't work "stock" with Windows. Maybe later I'll tinker and get the Lexar working (I think I'm just going to keep it, if nothing else just to tinker with Linux ... since swapping out my OS drive is now going to be EXTREMELY easy ).

In practice, the XP install did drag a little bit, and operation is still quite sluggish. I think the Windows installation took less than an hour, or maybe about an hour, to install. Now that the system is up, it's not setting any speed records, but it is at least a little more usable than with the 133X card. When I tried copying 65MB worth of data from a USB key to the 266X card, it took about 10 seconds (6656K/sec.), though that performance figure *may* be skewed by the fact I've set the system memory usage to prefer system cache (effectively enlarging the disk cache size); I can further the "that figure is skewed because of the cache" theory, because in larger write operations it still drags its' feet somewhat, and the writing continues (disk light stays lit solid) after the operation supposedly completed.

I'm still going to map my My Documents directory to the really slow 133X card for both performance (or lack of need thereof on a documents directory) and data safety reasons (keeping data on a drive than gets written less often and thus will last longer), as well as space reasons (I'm going to load up the My Music directory with about 12.5GB of music; later when I get another 16GB card in the PCMCIA slot I'll make that into a dedicated My Music directory and thus gain a full 16GB for non-music data). I've also started looking into various tweaks to improve performance in a Windows environment. What I've found so far is as follows (think of this as a "checklist to perform when setting up Windows on a CF-based SSD):

1. Disable the Windows paging file on all CF drives (you should have a MINIMUM of 1GB RAM to even think of doing this with anything Windows 2000 or later).

2. Use NTFS and compress all CF drives you are using (less physical data to write to CF). Some have suggested use FAT32, but I feel the compression ability, plus keeping the security features of NTFS are worth it. Also, when you go to compress the drives, disable indexing service for the drive at the same time.

3. Disable NTFS access time logging with the following registry key:
HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem\NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate = 1

4. Turn off Windows System Restore for all CF drives

5. Set the system "memory usage" under system properties to "system cache" to increase the size of the disk cache.

6. Go to the following URL and follow the directions to force UDMA-6 or "next best" mode:
http://neodon.blogspot.com/2006/07/litt ... drive.html

Interestingly enough, after installing Windows, the 266X card was reported by Windows to be running in PIO mode, until I followed step #6 above, which yielded the card going into UDMA-4 mode. But, it's still pretty slow, if minimally acceptably useable, even with shutting down/restarting, or hibernating. Yes, as bad as it sounds, I may need to enable hibernation, at least on the X40. My system came with the 8-cell battery, but I promptly purchased a 4-cell battery for size and weight reasons (I'm trying to go ULTRA portable here). This weekend while I was away I didn't really use the system much except turning it on to show it off to someone, and it had a full charge. I left it suspended. Then last night, while riding the train home I wanted to go online and look up something, and when I turned the system on, SURPRISE!, I had 9% of battery left. Interestingly enough, it stayed on 9% for a while (maybe 10 minutes), and then started creeping down. I got about 20-25 minutes total out of the remaining battery.

That now brings up Martini82's question about battery life:

I am interested what about power consumption when running on CF?

While I haven't tested full battery runtime yet, I did notice, last week, that while running on battery doing some Internet-based software installs, that battery life wasn't incredibly better than using an actual mechanical hard drive. Of course, this is with the card doing constant read/write operations. A bit surprising, but that was by no means a formal test, just an observation of the "battery time remaining" indicator. I would imagine (but haven't yet tested the theory) that under more normal operation, one would see the real battery savings, because while a mechanical hard drive needs to keep those platters spinning all the time regardless of drive use (gone are the DOS days where the drive would be "idle enough" to actually spin down completely--despite the presence of the spin-down setting in Windows I have yet to ever see a system drive power down, even while "idle"), when a CF card is idle, it's really, genuinely, "idle". On that note, during "idle time" last week using various CF cards, the full battery charge "time remaining" indicator was showing a full hour more than when a mechanical hard drive had been installed. If that holds true in practice it would be a very nice thing indeed.

I just now thought up an idea about getting the Lexar 300X card to work that I think I'll try later on when I'm home and have access to the software CD ... I'm going to try using PartitionMagic 7 to clone the Transcend 266X card onto the Lexar 300X card, INCLUDING setting the partition active and bootable. Perhaps this is the same little tweak that BootPrep for DOS does (overriding any Windows limitations/"safety mechanisms"), and might work to get things running on the Lexar card, which from its' being a name-brand card and the speed ratings I've read might mean far nicer performance. I've historically had pretty good luck using PartitionMagic for various tasks. If that "near last" option fails (other than using DOS/BootPrep), I'm not sure where I'll go from there.

More to come later. If I get this computer to an "acceptably usable" state and actually phase it in as my ultra-mobile travel computer, I've still got a few other things to do including getting the Delkin adapter and another big CF card (speed not as important), and picking up a 4GB SD card and trying that out as well.

[aboveliquidice]

It looks like the going rate for the Lexar 300x 8gb is around 170 (give or take 15) - the same can be said for the Sandisk Extreme IV 8gb.

The CF to IDE 2.5" 44pin converter looks very cheap on ebay - less than 15 shipped.

My question is how much CF is everyone running??? Does all of the CF cards involved need to be of the highest caliber? Or is it only the one card housing the OS?

Right now - it looks like I could afford one fast card (8gb Lexar 300x) & one slow card (16gb generic 150x)

8gb = 170
16gb = 130
CF dual adaptor = 15
2GB High Speed SD = Already have
total = 315 for SSD w/ 26gb???

Does that sound right?

~above~

[jamiphar]

By the way, where have you guys bought the dual adapter from? I saw the website that was posted here, but I couldn't find any way to purchase one.

[aboveliquidice]

I actually posted the info just above yours - but myself being a noob - I figure we can both benefit from good will...

On ebay - you can do a search for "cf ide adaptor 2.5" - which should bring up an entire list of options.

The first one I saw was this :Link

It appears to me that the CF to IDE adaptor makes little difference in the actual setup (as far as I understand at this point, speaking with no real experience)

I am seriously considering trying this though - its a matter of choosing this over just getting a newer tablet... I really do miss my X41 though - and I have a feeling that if this is executed correctly - it could greatly clear up the only real gripe I have with the X41 (slow HD)

~above~[/url]

[DVormann]

But, it's still pretty slow, if minimally acceptably useable, even with shutting down/restarting, or hibernating. Yes, as bad as it sounds, I may need to enable hibernation, at least on the X40.

Just clocked time to boot. For that, I set a user to log in automatically. No passwords, no user interaction required.

The first 30 seconds after hitting the power button are used by BIOS including the non-IBM HDD error. Another 50 seconds later XP is running, a user logged in, everything else loaded (anti-virus etc) and the hourglass gone. Total time: 80 seconds.

[jamiphar]

@ aboveliquidice:

Actually, I was wondering about this one: http://www.lycom.com.tw/ST317p4m.htm which is probably what you'd need for an X4x (1.8").

But I found the post mentioning this one as well: http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_ ... midecf.asp and it looks like the same thing.

If these aren't any larger than a 1.8" drive in the dimensions, I might be able to use a CF card in one of our mp3 recorders instead if the 20GB drive it currently has. I'd be sure to get a much longer battery life like that.

[aboveliquidice]

@ aboveliquidice:

Actually, I was wondering about this one: http://www.lycom.com.tw/ST317p4m.htm which is probably what you'd need for an X4x (1.8").

But I found the post mentioning this one as well: http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_ ... midecf.asp and it looks like the same thing.

If these aren't any larger than a 1.8" drive in the dimensions, I might be able to use a CF card in one of our mp3 recorders instead if the 20GB drive it currently has. I'd be sure to get a much longer battery life like that.

The lycom you linked is a Duo Compact Flash 2.5” IDE HDD Bridge Board - you can read it in the upper left hand corner of the description page. I dont have the actual dimensions - but it has already been posted here that the lycom does indeed fit without issue - despite it being built for 2.5" drives

- I believe Slade chymed in that both the addonics & the lycom will work for our purposes - now, how that relates to your MP3 player is another story - if you are referring to IPODs - people have definitely replaced some the IPOD HD's with CF, but I do not own one - thus I know little about it.

The addonics adaptor looks pretty nice - It may be a winner...

~above~

[Tekkaman_Slade]

Okay everyone ...

I picked up my Transcend 266X 8GB CF card this morning ...

The Transcend cards might work great for digital cameras, but I found out the hard way that they just don't perform well at all when used as an SSD. I haven't run into any lag issues with the Sandisk 16gb Extreme III and am very happy with using it for storage. Of course, a Lexar 300x UDMA or Sandisk Extreme IV is prefered for the OS.

The CF to IDE 2.5" 44pin converter looks very cheap on ebay - less than 15 shipped.

You have to be very careful with your adapter purchase if you want the best performance. Most of the CF-to-IDE adapters on eBay and elsewere don't support UDMA. I have not found any proof so far that the Lycom adapter supports UDMA. If you're trying to go with what's guaranteed to work best, Addonics is the way to go.

-Slade

[aboveliquidice]

Very interesting Slade - I was thinking that the converter was essentially just reconnecting wires - thus the machine has no way of telling that it is there - as long as the adapter had 44 pins, it would match whaterver was supported by the card.

You have to go with what is absolutely known - Thanks slade for correcting me.

~above~

[DVormann]

I was thinking that the converter was essentially just reconnecting wires

That is exactly what the converters do. For UDMA two(?) particular pins must be connected. Some adaptors do not connect the UDMA wires. I am using Sintech STCI4401 which does allow UDMA. It supports only one CF card. Perfect for X41. For X40 you want 2 CF cards and the Addonics adaptor.

[seneca]

You have to be very careful with your adapter purchase if you want the best performance. Most of the CF-to-IDE adapters on eBay and elsewere don't support UDMA. I have not found any proof so far that the Lycom adapter supports UDMA. If you're trying to go with what's guaranteed to work best, Addonics is the way to go.

-Slade

UDMA works with the dual lycom adapter. Here's some info on the Sandisk Extreme IV 8gb:

Code: Select all

CompactFlash ATA device, with removable media
        Model Number:       SanDisk SDCFX4-8192                     
        Serial Number:      003424D1597Q0957
        Firmware Revision:  HDX 4.20
Standards:
        Supported: 4 
        Likely used: 4
Configuration:
        Logical         max     current
        cylinders       15880   15880
        heads           16      16
        sectors/track   63      63
        --
        CHS current addressable sectors:   16007040
        LBA    user addressable sectors:   16007040
        device size with M = 1024*1024:        7815 MBytes
        device size with M = 1000*1000:        8195 MBytes (8 GB)
Capabilities:
        LBA, IORDY(may be)(cannot be disabled)
        Standby timer values: spec'd by Vendor
        R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 4   Current = 0
        DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 *udma2 udma3 udma4 
             Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns
        PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4 
             Cycle time: no flow control=120ns  IORDY flow control=120ns
Commands/features:
        Enabled Supported:
           *    Write cache
           *    CFA feature set
           *    CFA advanced modes: pio5 *pio6

[Sito]

The Transcend 266X is a bit of a rip-off in my opinion.

I tested one in my Addonics CF to IDE adapter and got very impressive read speeds with HD Tune:

HD Tune: TRANSCEND Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 49.0 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 50.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 49.7 MB/sec
Access Time : 1.8 ms
Burst Rate : 44.8 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 1.5%

Transferring files from the card to the HD is lightning fast but writing to the card is terribly slow. It writes at only 18 MB/s (tested with Flash Memory Toolkit).

I've done some research and according to the Transcend website the 266X should be able to read and write at 40MB/s and the 133X should be able to read at 45MB/s and write at 21.5MB/s. So it seems that my 266X performs like the 133X card.

I've also found a review of the 266X which agrees with my results:
http://dcareview.com/CF/CF_2GB_Transcend_266X.html

[seneca]

Did you use a usb CF reader for the testing?

[DVormann]

UDMA works with the dual lycom adapter. Here's some info on the Sandisk Extreme IV 8gb:

According to your info it is running at UDMA2 (16.6 MB/s). The card is capable of UDMA4. Your setup is not perfect.

[Tekkaman_Slade]

UDMA works with the dual lycom adapter. Here's some info on the Sandisk Extreme IV 8gb:

According to your info it is running at UDMA2 (16.6 MB/s). The card is capable of UDMA4. Your setup is not perfect.

I've experienced the "reporting of UDMA2 instead of UMDA4" issue in Ubuntu Feisty. It is due to how the kernel interprets the wiring for the IDE connection and is not related to the card. I didn't find any decrease in performance. I believe the issue has been resolved in the latest linux kernel. A patch is available for the current feisty kernel if you want to guarantee that there isn't a possible performance penalty.

In WinXP SP2, the 8gb Lexar 300x UDMA operates at UDMA5 and the 16gb Extreme III operates at Multi-Word DMA2.

-Slade

[aboveliquidice]

I was thinking that the converter was essentially just reconnecting wires

That is exactly what the converters do. For UDMA two(?) particular pins must be connected. Some adaptors do not connect the UDMA wires. I am using Sintech STCI4401 which does allow UDMA. It supports only one CF card. Perfect for X41. For X40 you want 2 CF cards and the Addonics adaptor.

Do you say this because the dual CF adapter will not fit - or is it because you are going for the least amount of weight - thus using only one CF

For me - I would really like to at least have 24gb (2 in the CF adapter and one in a PCMCIA adapter)

~above~

[Fox5]

Holy [censored] it works!

I got a Sandisk Extreme IV and decided to try with a different CF card on my dual CF adapter just in case the GeeDom card was bad.

And it works! Two CF-cards show up as two separate harddrives!

I've ordered another 8gb Extreme IV card and I'm gonna go RAID 0.
Guess I'm gonna have the first X40 in the world with two striped harddrives huh?

The adapter I'm using is the Lycom ST-317P4M.

http://www.lycom.com.tw/ST317p4m.htm

Er, can you raid IDE without a RAID controller?

[DVormann]

That is exactly what the converters do. For UDMA two(?) particular pins must be connected. Some adaptors do not connect the UDMA wires. I am using Sintech STCI4401 which does allow UDMA. It supports only one CF card. Perfect for X41. For X40 you want 2 CF cards and the Addonics adaptor.

Do you say this because the dual CF adapter will not fit - or is it because you are going for the least amount of weight - thus using only one CF

X41 features SATA chipset, SATA to IDE bridge and IDE drive. In theory the chipset cannot see an IDE slave.

X40 has a normal IDE chipset.

For me - I would really like to at least have 24gb (2 in the CF adapter and one in a PCMCIA adapter)

I have 8 GB in IDE and 16 GB in cardbus.

Er, can you raid IDE without a RAID controller?

Linux software RAID will work.

[Tekkaman_Slade]

Do you say this because the dual CF adapter will not fit - or is it because you are going for the least amount of weight - thus using only one CF

The Addonics dual slot adapter with 2 CF cards takes up less space than the original HD. As suggested by the Addonics manual, I use a very small piece of packing foam cut in half and placed under the front portion of the lower card to guarantee that the adapter is fully secure.

X41 features SATA chipset, SATA to IDE bridge and IDE drive. In theory the chipset cannot see an IDE slave.

X40 has a normal IDE chipset.

The X40 has a SATA controller and uses a SATA-to-IDE bridge just like the X41. This is evident in Linux when viewing the X40's devices and mounts.

It's mostly likely that the X41 is using a different SATA controller and/or bridge that's resulting in no support for a slave drive. The Addonics FAQ states that some notebooks do not support a slave drive.

-Slade

[DVormann]

Talking nonsense. Delete.

[seneca]

Holy [censored] it works!

I got a Sandisk Extreme IV and decided to try with a different CF card on my dual CF adapter just in case the GeeDom card was bad.

And it works! Two CF-cards show up as two separate harddrives!

I've ordered another 8gb Extreme IV card and I'm gonna go RAID 0.
Guess I'm gonna have the first X40 in the world with two striped harddrives huh?

The adapter I'm using is the Lycom ST-317P4M.

http://www.lycom.com.tw/ST317p4m.htm

Er, can you raid IDE without a RAID controller?

In the text mode install (of ubuntu 7.10), you can do a bit more advanced partitioning. Software RAID (0,1,5), it has the same performance as the built in ones on some desktop motherboards.

In my case, I use the following partitions:

150MB /boot ext3
6GB / xfs RAID0 (this is the "windows" partition of Linux, with all the applications and OS)
the rest is /home LVM/xfs Encrypted (couldn't get raid0 to work with encryption)

[DVormann]

The X40 has a SATA controller and uses a SATA-to-IDE bridge just like the X41. This is evident in Linux when viewing the X40's devices and mounts.

Could you post that device and mount information, please?

Accoring to specifications X40 uses Intel 82801DBM. It allows 2 IDE channels with 2 drives each. Maximum UDMA5.

X41 uses Intel 82801FBM/ICH6-M which has 2 SATA channels (150 not 300) and 1 IDE channel. Maximum UDMA5.