Can I improve the thinkpad's performance with a CF card?

[paulm64]

Hi,
I have a 560Z PII 300MHz, 128MB, 10GB. I was wondering if I could improve the performance by using a CF card in a PCMCIA adapter. I was thinking of putting the Windows swapfile onto the cf card. Would this improve performance at all? Also, is there anyway to install the OS onto a CF card in the PCMCIA slot? or maybe use a CF card for a hard drive? I've seen 12GB CF cards on ebay that would be big enough for win2k on this machine. Would that make it faster? Or perhaps increase the battery life? And how do you hook that up?

Paul

[tomh009]

Given that the CF reader on a X31 is too slow to speed up anything at all, I fear that the same is true for your 560Z. If you want fast access to a CF card, though, you could buy a CardBus CF adapter (Delkin, for example, makes one) that will provide far higher throughput.

If you can make Windows 2000 boot off a CF card on the 560Z (I don't know whether that's possible), that might actually work nicely ...

[paulm64]

Well, If my 560Z can't boot off of a CDROM, I don't think it can boot off of anything connected via pcmcia card.

Maybe I can find a CF to IDE adapter or something.

[paulm64]

I found this on eBay...

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

But I don't know what to do the power connecter? Does that need to be connected on a laptop?

BTW, this is actually an SD to IDE adapter. I looked for a cf to ide adapter, but they all seem to have their ide connectors mounted perpendicular to the circuit board. This would make the circuit board stick out making it not fit into the hard drive compartment. But the sd to ide card has the ide connector coming out of the end of the circuit board. much easer to fit.

If I have some extra money I'm going to try one of these and get like a 10GB SD card and see if this works.

I wonder how the performance would be? It would definately be quieter, use alot less battery, and hopefully, be a bit faster, too.

[rkawakami]

Would this work:

http://www.logicsupply.com/products/cfdisk_2g

[paulm64]

That looks perfect.
I'm going to try that one. I'll have to find a 12gb or so cf card.

[rkawakami]

The difficulty may be in mounting the adapter inside the hard drive bay. Don't know how the 560Z is arranged; don't have the HMM at my fingers. The adapter appears to have the same four mounting holes on the bottom which mirrors the notebook hard drive. I suppose you could mount it to a caddy (?) and then use whatever mounting holes are normally used. Good luck!

[phool@round]

The true bottle neck will be the actual cost versus benefits!

I did a little research since I was thinking of doing this conversion myself in the future. Here's what I came up with in a few minutes.

The 560X has an Intel 82371EB South Bridge and specs out at UDMA 33 which puts the 560X in between two CF+ card types.

CF+ type III card would fit the bill since it specs at UDMA 66 and future proofs you. CF+ type II is only PIO Mode 4 at 16Mb per second.

Here's a handy guide for CF+ type II ratings;

8X = 1.2 MB/sec
12X = 1.8 MB/sec
20X = 3.0 MB/sec
25X = 3.8 MB/sec
30X = 4.5 MB/sec
40X = 6.0 MB/sec
60X = 9.0 MB/sec
66X = 10.0 MB/sec
80X = 12.0 MB/sec
90X = 15.0 MB/sec
133X = 20.0 MB/sec

I was able to quickly find a 16Gb CF card for $133 from Newegg and it is a CF+ type II, 40X card which equals 6Mb per second in throughput in either direction (read, write). The adaptor that Ray found is capable of running a CF+ type II card max and costs $21 dollars. So you need an adapter in the configuration Ray found but at a CF+ type III standard in order to see a possible speed increase as far as I can tell. I wasn't able to find a CF+ type III card at 16Gb but I would guess it's price to be higher.

At the moment $154 dollars minimum it seems costly versus the actual speed boost we'd all hope for. The biggest benefit it seems would be that power draw is far less than a hard drive's and also the latency to access your data would be fewer milliseconds (1ms versus 14ms +/- for a hard drive) depending on what CF card you buy.

The downsides are cost and actual Mb throughput of a CF card is far less than a very decent hard drive upgrade. (I used a Hitachi Travelstar® 7K100 100 GB ATA-100 for comparison @ 45Mb read and write capacities on an appropriate UDMA 100 controller chip that costs $66 dollars at Newegg.)

I still might convert simply for the longer battery life but I'd like to hear what the conversion "feels like" first. Do some homework before you plunk the bucks down. Sounds like a great project.....!

[leoblob]

I was wondering if I could improve the performance by using a CF card in a PCMCIA adapter. I was thinking of putting the Windows swapfile onto the cf card. Would this improve performance at all?

FWIW, I did exactly that on my TP365x (P120). I didn't actually run any benchmarks, but from my "seat of the pants" speed estimate, it seemed to run exactly the same.

[vkim]

It seems like there is a bit of confusion between the CF+ versions and the Compact Flash types.

The Compact Flash type defines the thickness of the card similarly to PCMCIA: Type I is 3.3 mm, Type II is 5 mm. There is no other difference (electrical or physical).

The CF+ version defines the CompactFlash Standard and, as part of it, the interface speed of it.

There are bunch of high-speed CF cards that are UDMA66 and hence connected via the shown above CF-to-IDE adapter should appear as an UDMA66 hard drive. Don't forget that the CF is electrically equivalent to ATA/IDE hence the adapter is just a simple pass-through device.

This is just to clarify the confusion.
Note, that none of the above means that you will actually get 66MB/s. This is just a max interface speed.

Thanks,
Val

[tomh009]

It seems like there is a bit of confusion between the CF+ versions and the Compact Flash types.

The Compact Flash type defines the thickness of the card similarly to PCMCIA: Type I is 3.3 mm, Type II is 5 mm. There is no other difference (electrical or physical).

Correct. And today, Type II is really only used by MicroDrives, which don't necessarily help with the situation the OP's trying to resolve, either.

[paulm64]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... &rd=1&rd=1

I found this on ebay and bought it. Not sure what the specs are but I received it today and it is very small. Not much wider as the ide connector itself. It should fit nicely. Now I just need to find a large CF card. I only have a 2GB CF. That might be enough to run Win98 but probably not enough for win2K. I may try it with the 2GB and see what happens.

[Temetka]

FWIW I used to have an old Compaq Armada 4131T that had a 1.4GB hard disk in it. I was able successfully install Windows 2000 on it, but after installing office and a few other minor programs I only had about 200MB free.

[T.A.SRINIVAS]

Dear Friends

I have made the modification to my ThinkPad 340CSE by replacing the conventional hard disk drive with compact flash. I have purchase a new CF to IDE adapter from PC Engines.com and a new Transcend compact flash which exactly fits in to the hard disk tray of any laptop. I have purchased the new such accessories for better quality and compatibility.

After installing compact flash the laptop is consuming 40% less power than conventional hard disk and there is no noise as in the case of HDD. The speed of applications are also greatly improved but I do not know what will be be life of the compact flash. In total I am happy with replacement of conventional hard disk drive.

Regards,

T.A.Srinivas
Email: t.a.srinivas@vsnl.net

[whizkid]

Continuous throughput may not be faster than a hard drive, but seek time is eliminated and that will help immensely when accessing a number of small files, like say during startup.

[SMurf]

This sounds like good stuff, but be careful which CF card you choose! I went with a SanDisk Extreme IV 2GB for a similar project, given that it was the fastest out there at the time (2nd or 3rd now), but my 560X doesn't like it one bit. Real mode writes always fail, can't FDISK on the laptop...

[gychang]

Hi,
I have a 560Z PII 300MHz, 128MB, 10GB. I was wondering if I could improve the performance by using a CF card in a PCMCIA adapter. I was thinking of putting the Windows swapfile onto the cf card. Would this improve performance at all? Also, is there anyway to install the OS onto a CF card in the PCMCIA slot? or maybe use a CF card for a hard drive? I've seen 12GB CF cards on ebay that would be big enough for win2k on this machine. Would that make it faster? Or perhaps increase the battery life? And how do you hook that up?

Paul

I have the same computer, is there any recent update?, considering CF card...

gychang

[gychang]

Dear Friends

I have purchase a new CF to IDE adapter from PC Engines.com and a new Transcend compact flash which exactly fits in to the hard disk tray of any laptop. I have purchased the new such accessories for better quality and compatibility.

The speed of applications are also greatly improved but I do not know what will be be life of the compact flash. In total I am happy with replacement of conventional hard disk drive.

Regards,

T.A.Srinivas
Email: t.a.srinivas@vsnl.net

could I ask which part will be ideal?, I have TP 560Z and very interested in ridding of my HD. I prefer to buy from newegg but like to get more details.

gychang

[phr]

Look in the X20/X40 forum, there are a lot of threads about replacing the X40 1.8" drive with a CF card and an adapter. It works but there are some issues you have to watch out for.