X24 + addonics IDE-CF adapter

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Doctor Device · #1 Post by **Doctor Device** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 2:27 am

has anyone tried using an addonics IDE-CF adapter (single or dual slot) in a X2x? I'm considering building a SSD on the cheap that way, but I wasn't sure if the dual slot adapter would fit in the X2x drive bay at all.

j-dawg · #2 Post by **j-dawg** » Sun Feb 24, 2008 9:41 pm

There's a whole big thread on this: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=41568

I've got a cheapo generic CF-card adapter in my X24; since it's just a few wires soldered to a few connectors, the brand of adapter shouldn't make a difference. I combined it with an A-DATA 266x 2gb card. It's pretty quick, but I don't know if the performance benefits are worth the hit on storage space. I wasn't willing to spend a lot of money on it, so I went for a pretty low-capacity card; your budget is your own decision, but even at 4 or 8gb, I don't know if I'd consider the project worth it.

TdiGuy · #3 Post by **TdiGuy** » Sat Apr 05, 2008 7:59 pm

Perhaps it would work well to use the CF slot as a OS drive and still have a regular IDE hard drive in it and modify the boot up settings to look for the CF slot first. In theory that would provide a great system boost to have the OS in a solid state drive system processes should run faster and you get the added benefit of haveing the os on a different hard drive then the applications so even the hard drive will seem to perform faster.

Doctor Device · #4 Post by **Doctor Device** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 12:12 am

I don't think it is possible to boot from the CF slot. though I suppose it might be possible to install a very minimal linux install on the HDD to kickstart a full OS on the CF card... an interesting thought.

TdiGuy · #5 Post by **TdiGuy** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 12:21 am

There was a option in the boot screen that i did not recognize that i thought was the CF slot. i have seen CF cards as big as 16 gig plenty of room for a full blown install of XP and updates and a great utilization of the computer resources. Once i find a CF card of 1 gig or so for cheap enough money i think i will go for it myself. I can only imagine that performace would be noticabaly improved.

Doctor Device · #6 Post by **Doctor Device** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 11:27 am

you mean "IBA 4.0.22 slot 0240" or something like that? It has something, I think, to do with booting over a network, which confuses me because there is also the "network boot" option.

everything I remember reading about the X24's CF slot said it was non-bootable, though somebody please correct me if I am mistaken.

TdiGuy · #7 Post by **TdiGuy** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 12:26 pm

ya that is the one. I thought that was a boot option to boot via CF slot. I have been trying to figure out how to make the CF card bootable. So far when i boot via that slot it says media test error or similar so i have just been thinking that i haven't been able to get the drive to be recognized as bootable. Rather annoying thing about windows i cant seem to figure out how to make a removable drive other then a cdrom bootable.

nomo · #8 Post by **nomo** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 1:38 pm

i just tried booting from the cf slot with a bootable cf. It doesn't work. I don't have the IBA slot option in the f12 menu tho. but i do remember having this option on a x22 i got on ebay but returned it 1 week later (it was faulty.)

back on topic,
booting from cf via ide adapter is definitely something great. there are lots of problems tho.

biggest advantage is that it lowers the power consumption by approx. 2-3 watts, so you can get battery lifetimes of nearly 6 hours or more. it also reduces weight.

i am going to switch to cf booting again soon.

j-dawg · #9 Post by **j-dawg** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 5:57 pm

There is no way to boot from the built-in CF slot, but I've wondered if there's anyway to get the system to run the bootloader from the IDE hard drive and, from there, boot from the CF slot.

TdiGuy · #10 Post by **TdiGuy** » Mon Apr 07, 2008 6:02 pm

yea unfortunantly nothing really utilizes the speed of a solid stat hard drive all that well. I hope soon the next generation of capacitors come out to replace batteries. Imagine how light a laptop could be if the power cell was made mostly of carbon.
I have a 2 gig CF card on the way i hope i can figure out how to make it bootable and install xp on it.
I tryed to get a CF to IDE adapter a while back it never made it to me in the mail but it was from ebay. Just glad i was able to get my money back.

TdiGuy · #11 Post by **TdiGuy** » Sun Apr 13, 2008 2:18 am

I just realized something pretty simple. I dont know how to install just GRUB but if you installed GUB boot loader on the IDE drive you could easily point it to load any OS on the CF slot i think. Perhaps it is possable to have the advantages of a fast loading OS from the CF slot and massive storage in the IDE drive. Hope someone trys this out

DaddyLongLegs · #12 Post by **DaddyLongLegs** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 2:55 pm

I just got this adapter in the mail and cannot get the IBM to recognize it at all. I bought the dual CF one. Both cards operate fine. Thanks to anyone who can give me a clue! (I am using an X24).

weepy · #13 Post by **weepy** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 4:33 pm

double check correct insertion, sooo easy to miss...

DaddyLongLegs · #14 Post by **DaddyLongLegs** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 5:42 pm

weepy wrote:double check correct insertion, sooo easy to miss...

It's definitely in right because when I try to setup Windows XP, it sees and formats the CF card in the IDE slot. However, when restarting instead of trying to finish the rest of the Windows installation, it goes back to the original blue Windows XP screen that asks you to format (rather than the color screen that starts installing all the important stuff).

Tearin out my hair here!

weepy · #15 Post by **weepy** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 5:57 pm

well, your description "not recognized by my IBM at all" is not very accurate

. Try the x41 ssd thread, especially tekkaman slades hints. Your cf might be "removable media" type and these need to be bootprepped before installation of windoze.

edit: the symptoms you describe could mean you forgot your boot cd (or boot usb, dunno) inserted and left the boot order preferring the installation disc.

DaddyLongLegs · #16 Post by **DaddyLongLegs** » Tue Apr 22, 2008 6:02 pm

weepy wrote:well, your description "not recognized by my IBM at all" is not very accurate . Try the x41 ssd thread, especially tekkaman slades hints. Your cf might be "removable media" type and these need to be bootprepped before installation of windoze.

edit: the symptoms you describe could mean you forgot your boot cd (or boot usb, dunno) inserted and left the boot order preferring the installation disc.

Yeah I'm sorry, I didn't get it to recognize the card at first (impossible to tell which way the adapter has to be inserted!) not to mention getting this thing in the IDE port was near impossible (I had to rip the keyboard out.

If someone could give me any other pointers I'd appreciate it. Even if I did leave the CD drive as the boot drive (I didn't) it should still continue with the proper XP installation screen rather than starting over again.

weepy · #17 Post by **weepy** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 4:20 am

DaddyLongLegs wrote:(impossible to tell which way the adapter has to be inserted!)

On my adapter (dual addonics) and my x41t, there are key pins everywhere, I believe it's a standard.

DaddyLongLegs · #18 Post by **DaddyLongLegs** » Wed Apr 23, 2008 1:56 pm

weepy wrote:
DaddyLongLegs wrote:(impossible to tell which way the adapter has to be inserted!)
On my adapter (dual addonics) and my x41t, there are key pins everywhere, I believe it's a standard.

I have some no name dual CF adapter. But I figured out which way to insert it, it's not a problem (except that it's very short and I had to remove the keyboard to put it in my X24 properly!

Like I said however the problem is that after I format the card and get XP ready to install on it, when XP restarts and usually continues the installation it goes right back to the blue screen where it tries to format the drive and copy files over

TdiGuy · #19 Post by **TdiGuy** » Sat Apr 26, 2008 8:08 am

I dont know why but i experienced a temporary failure after using a CF to IDE adapter. It is not really the use of it that makes me wonder why it fails but more why it was only temporary. I think it also toasted my old HDD which is a huge annoyance because i lost 1 days worth of classroom notes (thankfully i had backups for the test of my notes). I had the adapter in the computer and shut down via start menu then plugged in the old hdd this is when i experianced the failure i then plugged the CF adapter (with card of course) and it still failed. After i let it sit overnight with no power (batter was removed) apparently there is some sort of self reseting breaker? (I dont really know I am just guessing) because next day the thing powered up fine but the hdd would not work no matter what i did ( i tryed it on another laptop and 2 USB to HDD adapters).

Now my computer is running fine and i have a replacement motherboard on the way lol guess i should have waited.

I do have a question though also. Is there or what is the advantage of using a cf to sd adapter? Does SD last longer being written to then CF? I have heard CF wears out over time when being written to. I have shut off the pageing file but i love to use OneNote which i believe must constantly write to the hdd since it never requires me to hit a save button to keep all my work. Write speed is not much of a concern to me once windows is up to date and i have my programs on the drive the number of writes to the drive will be fairly low and small amounts of data.
To help further with the CF drives life i have a seperate drive in the CF reader slot that i have redirected my documents to so that my main OS CF drive will be written too even less.

I forgot to add. If you do go the route of using a CF to IDE adapter if you have a X24 or similar that has a very slim slot for the HDD i suggest using a pair of nippy cutters to trim the leads down close to the circuit board doubble check the soldering (the board i got for 3$ was a A typical mass production board where some holes were not fully soldered or cold soldered and a couple had solder only on one side) and put some electrical tape or other insulator on the back side of the board to ensure it does not short out on the chassie after being inserted.

weepy · #20 Post by **weepy** » Sun Apr 27, 2008 10:26 am

Wearing out is a property of all flash based media today, including sd. I would choose the cf, because it is usually faster... If you fear wear

, try the Enhanced write filter (search here&google).

TdiGuy · #21 Post by **TdiGuy** » Sun Apr 27, 2008 11:17 am

wow that EWF is a pain in the neck to setup. i really dont like editing the registry i think i will just leave that feature alone and simply setup a backup process to a network share.

X24 + addonics IDE-CF adapter

X24 + addonics IDE-CF adapter

CF card as HDD

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