1.8 SSD for X4 series

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loyukfai · #31 Post by **loyukfai** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 10:20 am

FYI, someone on 51nb.com mentioned that the ASAX models use the SMI2233 solution (native IDE) and the Kingspec models use the JM solution (SATA + IDE bridge). Not sure if it's true, nor what does it implies through.

And one more... From Japan...?

http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/akiba/ho ... pfast.html

http://translate.google.com/translate?p ... =en&swap=1

ricerocket · #32 Post by **ricerocket** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 10:25 am

Has anyone benchmarked the ASAX disk? Even if the Kingspec is a JM bridge, the 4 kb write performance (where most SSDs choke) isn't bad at all.

Edit, found some:

http://www.51nb.com/forum/thread-793226-1-3.html

Gotta be a member, but in short, on an X40, 32 GB:

Sequential: 71.96 MB read / 35.39 MB write
512 kb: 71.32 MB read / 25.09 MB write
4 kb: 10.85 MB read / 1.235 MB write

bananaman · #33 Post by **bananaman** » Thu Mar 05, 2009 1:00 pm

I can't believe it! Now there are choices! The Japanese version even has special drive firmware for use with the X40/X41, presumably to eliminate the BIOS boot error? Perhaps someone can try one of those out and post.

loyukfai · #34 Post by **loyukfai** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 1:39 am

If machine translation is working, it seems that the 2010 error still persists with the Photofast. I'm not aware of the "special firmware" through.

http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... id%3D18304

bananaman · #35 Post by **bananaman** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 8:54 am

Thanks again loyukfai for the links to the great stuff you are finding.

The SSD special firmware update is discussed in the Japanese forum thread you just linked to. I don't speak Japanese, but the Google Translate appears to say that the Photofast firmware update does not eliminate the 2010 error message, but it does allow an X40/41 to boot without the user having to press any buttons.

Our friends in Japan and China are working the kinks out of these X40/41 1.8" SSD's! I'm going to dive in soon...

ricerocket · #36 Post by **ricerocket** » Fri Mar 06, 2009 9:32 am

That's just the standard IBM firmware update that lets you do that. It beeps, but then it continues.

loyukfai · #37 Post by **loyukfai** » Sat Mar 07, 2009 1:29 am

The 2010 error doesn't affect the X40-series which has a direct PATA connection. And on the X41-series (which utilizes a SATA-PATA bridge), it's only a newer version of BIOS that brings about this issue.

If I'm not mistaken, one can "downgrade" to a lower version BIOS to avoid this issue (together with the consequences of running an elder version of the BIOS). I'm not sure of the exact version through, but a Google search should find it.

My guess is that the newer BIOS compare the installed drive against their internal database, which is similar to the internal WLAN adapter checks. So one can hack the BIOS codes to get rid of the error code. Like what Zender has done for the WLAN adapters.

Cheers!

loyukfai · #38 Post by **loyukfai** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 3:06 am

BTW, AFAIK, if you use Sleep/Standby mode (Suspend to RAM) instead of powering on/off or hibernation (Suspend to Disk). You can avoid the 2010 error as well.

Some photos of the Kingspec drive... (From a forumer over 51nb.com)

PDF: http://ifile.it/mu638ba
Original link: http://www.51nb.com/forum/thread-795146-1-1.html

loyukfai · #39 Post by **loyukfai** » Sun Mar 08, 2009 11:24 pm

Remember that people on 51nb.com always talked about the “interruption”/“freezing”/”stuttering” issue while testing these SSD…? (Which BTW, doesn’t’ seem to affect the Kingspec drives IIRC what I’ve read on 51nb.com these few days…)

“Finding good data on the JMicron JMF602 controller is nearly impossible, but from what I've heard it's got 16KB of on-chip memory for read/write requests. By comparison, Intel's controller has a 256KB SRAM on-die. And I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that given Intel's experience with CPU caches, that its SRAM implementation is probably very well done.

With the JMicron based solutions, if you try and write too much to the drive (and trust me, it won’t take a lot) and the buffers get full, the controller tells the system that it’s not ready to write more data and you get a pause.

When you cause the JM602’s internal buffer to overflow, your system runs in bullet-time. Applications take much longer to launch and close, windows take longer to appear, and there are distinct pauses in anything you want to do that involves the disk. Want to send an IM? Well, that writes to an IM log - you can expect a pause before you can send your IM. Loading webpages is the worst, reading from and writing to the cache wreaks havoc on these cacheless MLC drives. Just for kicks I tried loading AnandTech while I was extracting a 5GB file on the SuperTalent 60GB MLC, it took over 10 seconds for the website to load. Once the JM602 was free to fulfill the read request, the website just popped up - but until then it was like my DNS was failing. It’s a lot like what happens to your notebook if you try and do too much, the disk quickly becomes a bottleneck.

Thankfully, as we've already seen, this problem is only limited to JMF602 based MLC drives. The SLC drives and the Intel MLC are totally fine, so while I'll include these problematic MLC drives in today's comparison, let me state now that I would not purchase one.

JMicron's roadmap shows a new controller next year with an integrated ARM core as well as support for external DRAM, which could alleviate these problems, but until now the controller, and drives based on it, aren't worth it. You get a much better overall experience out of a conventional mechanical disk drive, and much better performance from the Intel SSD or any of the SLC solutions on the market.”

Quoted from http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/In ... =3403&p=10

More information:
Avoid SSDs with Jmicron’s JMF602 Controller http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ssd-jm ... ,7057.html
New JMicron JMF602/JMF601 Revision B supposed to fix stuttering writes on lower priced SSDs. http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview ... id=2270110
JMF601 / JMF602 with SSD life prediction software monitoring for "JSMonitor" http://translate.google.com/translate?h ... 1229794552
JMF602 datasheet http://share.dzkf.cn/down/down.php?downid=5159&id=0

ricerocket · #40 Post by **ricerocket** » Mon Mar 09, 2009 7:41 am

I thought most of the stuttering issues could be eliminated by disabling Windows precaching and such?

jellycow · #41 Post by **jellycow** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 5:43 am

WOOHOO. Got my Kingspec 64GB SSD and installed it to one of the X41t. I ordered two from ebay seller "ventures_cn1". One of the SSD drive turned out some what flaky, but they cross-shipped me the replacement (it's on its way), which is pretty rare. I gotta recommend them.

It replaced my Hitachi 60gb which was 9mm. So you can see it in the picture that it's 5mm and has a gap. Fit perfectly into the tray and into the HD slot.

It says 5V on the unit itself but works without a hitch on my X41 tablet.

It causes the 2010 BIOS warning on boot. You can set the BIOS setting to continue on error so it'll beep twice, pause, then beep another time as it posts. WHY are these beeps on the X41s SOOO loud? Is it possible to turn that down? It's loud enough I'd be afraid to turn it on in an airplane...I'd have to take it on-board while it's on stand-by mode. I guess I can just disconnect the speakers from bottom of the units...after the warranty expires. One fun side effect of this is when I turn the x41t on at the office, the sound of the notebook beeping few times on power-on makes all the techies freeze. It took few power cycles before they stopped coming over with, "oh crap...that didn't sound good..." Our entire office is based on Dell/HP desktops with all laptops being Thinkpads, so they are familiar with the dreaded beep patterns.

I'm in the process of doing a full performance testing. I've collected bunch of CrystalDiskMark from various notebooks I have (T61, HP tx2500z, etc...) so I'll post them up once I get them organized. I didn't tweak the machine much...just turned off the virtual memory is about it. I find the x41t lot more responsive overall with the SSD. Whatever boot up speed gain is negated by the pause during the 2010 bios error. But all my apps start faster whether it be Adobe Photoshop, Office 2007, etc. I disabled the hard drive active protection as well since it's absolutely not necessary anymore. So while in tablet mode, if I'm viewing a video, I can move it around without the active protection kicking in and stuttering the video and such. Definite plus.

There are no random pauses/stuttering/interruptions that people run into with IDE/CF adapters and some other SSDs. I've used it for hours at a time without anything like it. But I CAN saturate the CPU/Bus/Bandwidth faster since I can request it to do a lot more, like launching Office/Firefox/Adobe Photoshop at the same time...but that's just mean.

Overall, even with slower CPU, this unit is just as responsive or better than my T61 (w/ 160GB 7200rpm drive) for normal office use. (Still doesn't come close to T61 in more CPU intensive categories like compiling/compression/etc but that should be obvious).

I'll follow up with more CrystalDiskMark screenshots from various configs for comparison.

guanghua19 · #42 Post by **guanghua19** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 9:10 am

Thanks for the great post. I wish somebody can solve the 2010 warning soon.

jellycow wrote:WOOHOO. Got my Kingspec 64GB SSD and installed it to one of the X41t. I ordered two from ebay seller "ventures_cn1". One of the SSD drive turned out some what flaky, but they cross-shipped me the replacement (it's on its way), which is pretty rare. I gotta recommend them.

sjthinkpader · #43 Post by **sjthinkpader** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 10:24 am

jellycow wrote:WOOHOO. Got my Kingspec 64GB SSD and installed it to one of the X41t. I ordered two from ebay seller "ventures_cn1". One of the SSD drive turned out some what flaky, but they cross-shipped me the replacement (it's on its way), which is pretty rare. I gotta recommend them.
....

Wow, $255, it will be a while before I can afford one. I'll have to use something cheaper in my soon to arrive X41t. Performance is not bad, close to the 2.5 inch Transcend.

loyukfai · #44 Post by **loyukfai** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 10:48 am

USD255 including shipping? Which kind?

Maybe I could start a business selling these on eBay as well... : )

Anyway, someone benchmarked the drives - ASAX and Kingspec, 32GB and 64GB.

PDF: http://ifile.it/qads076

Original under Google Translate sans images: http://translate.google.com/translate?p ... h-CN&tl=en

Marin85 · #45 Post by **Marin85** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 10:53 am

@jellycow: You should be able to disable the annoying beeps from within BIOS somewhere (configuration/setup or warnings or whatever it is called)

netcomrade · #46 Post by **netcomrade** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 10:12 pm

why do you want the SSD? do you get much better battery life?

Marin85 · #47 Post by **Marin85** » Tue Mar 10, 2009 10:15 pm

netcomrade wrote:why do you want the SSD? do you get much better battery life?

I guess, mainly for performance. It´s an interesting question if those X41 get better battery life with that particular SSD.

jellycow · #48 Post by **jellycow** » Wed Mar 11, 2009 4:12 pm

netcomrade wrote:why do you want the SSD? do you get much better battery life?

I haven't tested the battery life...I have the 8 cell battery so mine lasts A LONG time before it dies anyway.

Main thing for me is performance. It's definitely faster and more responsive. I also get better use out of the tablet function because I don't worry about handling it roughly...because it's SSD, no more stuttering of video / programs when you move the notebook and aps kicks in. It's a pricey upgrade, but when I sell my 60GB 1.8", the price difference isn't too bad.

syhead · #49 Post by **syhead** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 10:51 am

jellycow, I look forward to seeing your benchmarks...

Did you have more time to test? Are you sure there are no pauses?

jellycow · #50 Post by **jellycow** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 7:55 pm

I finally got around to doing some testing. Numbers are pretty impressive.

Here are the numbers:

I think the biggest difference is the 4k Read speed -- 12 MB/s! I think that helps A LOT in normal day to day activities on the latop.

Test configuration (x41t): 2.5GB of RAM, No virtual disk, Plugged into X4 Dock.

The 60gb Hitachi and 64gb Kingspec were ghosted so they have the exact same configuration.
All the times measured were done 3 times and averaged. It's in mm:ss format.
I load a lot of stuff on boot. I wasn't sure where to stop the timer, so I picked it to be when my RocketDock loads. It ends up loading pretty much at the very end after all the others have loaded, so I figured it's a good "end of boot" point. (If you don't know what RocketDock is, it's a good free product. You should check it out)
All the app loading tests were done 5 minutes after the computer has finished booting with no internet connection (My FF3 opens to a blank page)

I wanted to do a similar comparison on my T61, but it doesn't have the same setup nor the same apps.

I haven't noticed any stutter at all. I've tried to get my Fujitsu p7120 up and running with a CF adapter before and I couldn't use it because of all the random starts and stops. It was horribly annoying. But with the Kingspec drive in the X41, I haven't seen that at all yet. I can, however, overload the computer where it seems to slow down and hang (typical Windows thing) though...like launching Photoshop Elements and Firefox 3 before the computer is done booting or whatever....but I can do the same on my Quad Core/Raid 0 desktop setup too.

jellycow · #51 Post by **jellycow** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 7:56 pm

Marin85 wrote:@jellycow: You should be able to disable the annoying beeps from within BIOS somewhere (configuration/setup or warnings or whatever it is called)

I haven't been able to figure that option out. I can make it so that it "continues" without stopping. But I can't make it not beep. I don't mind the pause...If I can just lower the dang volume, I'll be happy.

Marin85 · #52 Post by **Marin85** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 8:45 pm

Hm, ok, maybe different BIOS options. I´m not aware of any reasonable way to lower the beeping mute.

#53 Post by **underclocker** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 8:52 pm

Incredible.

virge · #54 Post by **virge** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 9:00 pm

jellycow wrote: I haven't been able to figure that option out. I can make it so that it "continues" without stopping. But I can't make it not beep. I don't mind the pause...If I can just lower the dang volume, I'll be happy.

I don't have a working X41 myself, but in my T4x and I think all other Thinkpads I have, the beep settings for power and error are found in Configuration Utility. You can download the program from the X4 driver page. http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-54078

Marin85 · #55 Post by **Marin85** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 9:09 pm

underclocker wrote:Incredible.

???

#56 Post by **underclocker** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 9:28 pm

Sorry, I was responding to the performance stats. Just incredible. This adds new life to the X4x machines. I can't wait to upgrade mine, but I'll wait until the 128GB or larger drop in price.

Marin85 · #57 Post by **Marin85** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 9:33 pm

Ah, ok, sorry, I haven´t understood you at first. But I agree, the performance is indeed incredible. Such an upgrade can make many new machines envy

Actually, to be honest, I´m considering doing something like this myself. Just getting an older classic IBM ThinkPad and putting in something like this SSD. And it´s like reborn.

jellycow · #58 Post by **jellycow** » Sun Mar 15, 2009 10:18 pm

Marin85 wrote:Ah, ok, sorry, I haven´t understood you at first. But I agree, the performance is indeed incredible. Such an upgrade can make many new machines envy Actually, to be honest, I´m considering doing something like this myself. Just getting an older classic IBM ThinkPad and putting in something like this SSD. And it´s like reborn.

Definitely true. All our sales guys use X61s (non tablet) and my X41t pretty much runs circles around it for normal day to day use. Main problem with X40/X41 was the 1.8" drive...and getting rid of the achilles hill pretty much makes this notebook an ideal one for me. I bought the x41t for personal use after looking into netbooks and I gotta say, it was a far better choice for about the same price (because I would've upgraded whatever netbook I got to a 64gb SSD anyway) .

syhead · #59 Post by **syhead** » Mon Mar 16, 2009 8:32 am

thanks jellycow, these results a really impressive

I have ordered a 32Gb SSD from KingSpec (ebay too).

I will let everybody knows how it performs once I get it.

loyukfai · #60 Post by **loyukfai** » Wed Mar 18, 2009 7:51 pm

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=3531

A new (and long...) article over at AnandTech about SSD. Talks about the current market; Various controller manufacturers (Intel, Samsung, JMicron, Indilinx); The graduated slowdown of SSD (which according to the article, applies to all SSD when they are filled up, not just Intel's); The stuttering issue caused by certain controllers; And more...

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