Surprise ! CF CARD !

[DrThinkpad]

Tonight, I was pretty [censored] at an old HDD that wasn't working. USB power was dead. As I always do when things brake, I broke the casing (that wasn't meant to get opened) and found, to my surprise, a CF card (IDE) ! It needs a 50 pin adapter. Would it be possible to buy an adapter, put it in a X4x series thinkpad and it would work ? It would make an awesome alternative to Asus EEE IMO. When making the switch from an ordinary HD to a CF card, do you still need the HD caddy and cover ? Stupid as it seems, I have never switched a laptop hard drive on my own

[stuartf]

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=41568

[sparta.rising]

Wait wait wait... you had a hard drive that was really a compact flash card? Do you mean an external drive? Or was this inside a laptop?

[DrThinkpad]

External, my bad. It is listed as a ''Microdrive''. Is there a difference with CF cards knowing they use the same connector ?

[rkawakami]

Microdrive is a hard drive and not built on flash memory technology. It merely uses the same CF pinout. They were popular (?) back when the largest flash memory densities were around 1GB.

[DrThinkpad]

Would it still be viable for a X4x series hard drive knowing I can deal with not much HDD space ? Do they have a longer life length than CF cards ?

[rkawakami]

Since the X4 systems use the expensive 1.8" drives, replacing it with a CF or microdrive makes some sense.

As long as you treat the drive with the same care as any other magnetically-based, rotational platter technology then it should last as long as a "normal" (i.e., desktop) hard drive. If you need more information about them, I'd search for "microdrive MTBF". MTBF stands for "mean time between failure"; an estimation of the amount of time a system will go without failing, based upon accelerated testing and past history.

Flash memory cells will wear out after approximately 100,000 to 500,000 erase/write cycles but they can withstand vibration and physical impacts without causing damage (or loss) of data. On the other hand, a microdrive is prone to the same "head crash" as can happen with any hard drive and are susceptible to mechanical failures in the bearings, motor, etc.