Kingspec ssd users? (Pic Warning)

[xtravaganza]

yaa.. but the input voltage is 5v for KingFast.. so i think it is not compatible.. if compatible the price seems to be very cheap... anyone can clarify if this ssd is compatible with ibm x40/41 series please.. thanks

[mdsubil]

Thanks sjthinkpader. I returned the Kingspec SSD and they sent me another one, received last week. Ghost it as per sjthinkpader advise but got cursor on blank screen all the way.
Anyway, I did a fresh installation of WinXP-Pro on the SSD. Then using Ghost, I copied the C: partition of the original HDD to SSD. Now, it boot-up nicely with no issue.
The KingSpec SSD came with "5V" label on it but so far it work fine.

[sjthinkpader]

I am glad it worked out for you. Every time I go to install a drive in X41, I had to go thru pretty much the same hurdles you went thru.

I found an almost new Toshiba 32GB ZIF SSD. I will report its benchmark result once I get it.

[phr]

Those of you using the Kingspec drive, do you get an error beep on boot? Is it loud? Is there a way to adjust the bios to make it stop? I see some conflicting info on this in other forum threads.

There is also supposedly a Lenovo branded ssd for the x40 now, surprisingly enough -- FRU 41W0736 . You can google for it or find a number of them on ebay for a slightly higher price than the Kingspec unit. It is a little slower benchmarked but supports TRIM. So I'm tempted to get that. Lenovo's retail price is around $1200 so the whole thing seems a bit weird, though; Kingspec is more of a known quantity.

[rkommin]

Hi,
Anyone has experience buying Kingspec 1.8 PATA 32GB from MemoryC. Looks like they are located in Ireland. They have the 32GB SSD from $116 + $11 shipping. Seems like a good deal to me.

http://www.memoryc.com/products/descrip ... index.html

Thanks for your reply

[phr]

The memoryc link is interesting. I did some surfing around and found they seem to be legit, but some people reported customer service problems, and slow delivery when using the cheap shipping option. Fedex shipping is $25 so I think I'd go with that. It's still cheaper than the ebay dealers and avoids messing with ebay.

This also looks interesting:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0380923045

It is the 60gb Lenovo 41W0736 for $210 shipped. But the guy only asserts that it works in the x41, maybe not the X40. Some searching shows there's another model, 41W0737 , which may be set up a little differently. You may have to remove some screws from the bracket in the x41 configuration to get the drive to fit in the X40.

I'm a little torn between the lenovo and kingspec setups. More people are using the kingspec and it seems to have better benchmarks and fit directly into the x40 without screwing around, but the Lenovo unit is a name-brand (Samsung) SLC drive.

[m0sh3g]

I've just got Kingspec SSD 64G for X40 and it just zooms around the room

[Weogo]

Hi Y'all,

T

This also looks interesting:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0380923045

It is the 60gb Lenovo 41W0736 for $210 shipped. But the guy only asserts that it works in the x41, maybe not the X40. Some searching shows there's another model, 41W0737 , which may be set up a little differently. You may have to remove some screws from the bracket in the x41 configuration to get the drive to fit in the X40.

I'm a little torn between the lenovo and kingspec setups. More people are using the kingspec and it seems to have better benchmarks and fit directly into the x40 without screwing around, but the Lenovo unit is a name-brand (Samsung) SLC drive.

I bought the Lenovo unit, 41W0736, off ebay and it is working fine in my X41 tablet.
I used Acronis TrueImage to copy my old drive to my firewire backup drive, and installed the new drive and used Acronis to put the old info on the new drive.

Booted, re-booted and everything working fine.
Not hugely faster than the 4200RPM drive, but it seems to be running cool and quiet.

Am looking at Windows 7 now, since it is supposed to work better with SSds than XP.

Good health, Weogo

[sjthinkpader]

Now there is a $110, 32GB solution:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0438013568

Just need to get an IDE-ZIF adapter and may be a reverse contact cable most these SSD boards use.

Edited: This SSD board may use a reversed pinout same as the Sandisk, intel versions. a reverse ZIF cable will be needed.

[mosta]

I'm ready to pull the trigger and get one of these Kingspecs for my X40. But the one thing I'm leery about right now is cloning my existing drive. (I don't want to reinstall b/c I'm missing lots of discs and fear the worst for that, specifically with regard to XP Pro and Office, even though all my stuff is all legal.)

Could someone possibly walk me through one, or some, ways to do this clone? I have XXClone on an A31p that I used to make bootable XP backups. And I have Casper on a W500 to make bootable Vista backups. Neither program has been on the X40, and I'm worried I won't be able to use them without buying them again.

I guess the obvious thing is to install a clone program on the X40 and copy to a USB drive, or an Ultrabay Slim drive? (If I've understood correctly, there is no way to use one ultrabay adapter for both the X40/Ultrabase and the W500?--so that would be two to buy since I still need one for the W500.) And to use a USB drive, do I have to wipe it? Or can I create a partition out of empty space?

The other route for me would be to attach the 1.8" drive to one of the other computers. But that seems like a worse idea (more obscure connectors, eg).

A different approach altogether would be to have someone else do it. But all I've found so far is a service company that starts at $150 to drive to you twice, and they've never worked with these drives.

I hate to wear myself out over maybe less than $50, but paying that, or more, on top of the drive cost (and some more RAM), and pretty quick I should be thinking about getting an entire new (refurb) machine. Thanks for any guidance.

[sjthinkpader]

There are many choices to clone a drive.

A31 method (doesn't work for X41)
Use two Ultrabay trays. New drive in the left bay and old drive in the right bay.

X40 method (doesn't work for X41)
New drive in the X4 Mediaslice and Ultrabay Slim tray. Make sure new drive is 5V capable. Boot cloning software in a USB CD drive. If cloning software is already on the old drive, USB CD drive will not be needed.

[mosta]

Thanks for the help. One more question: don't all the ultrabay drive caddies only take 2.5" drives? I've just spent a fair time trying to search out (with google and ebay) a 1.8" to 2.5" converter that fits this drive and the only thing I've come up with is for the X300 which I'm pretty sure is wrong. Is there a 1.8" caddy, or usb enclosure, or an adapter for those? thanks again.

[sjthinkpader]

The original Hitachi 1.8 inch drives with pins will fit both the Ultrabay and Ultrabay Slim trays. They are rated for 3.3V and 5V.

You should check to see the new drive will work at 5V before you put it in an Ultrabay tray. I think the newer Lenovo drives (HDD & SSD) that are 3.3V ZIF plus a FPC converter and metal housing are 3.3V only and have a small tab to prevent insertion in an Ultrabay tray. If the new drive is 3.3V only, then sole option is to install it in the X4x HDD slot during cloning.

I have done many 3.3V ZIF drive cloning using a IDE-ZIF adapter with a 3.3V regulator. But also had mistakenly fried one in Ultrabay trays using no-regulator adapter.

Just be careful and double check everything.

[phr]

Well I went back and forth a bunch of times and am still not sure it made sense, but I just ordered a 64gb kingspec drive from memoryc.com. It was $183.30 before discount and I used coupon code ME12QV to get 5% off, about $9. I decided to spring for fedex shipping ($25) instead of standard shipping ($11) mainly to avoid a bunch of uncertainty rather than because I was in a hurry. This is for shipping from Ireland to the US, so those rates are pretty reasonable. The total was just under $200. Maybe I should have stayed with the 32gb model ($111 minus discount from them but the shipping charge would have been the same) or maybe I should have gotten the 60gb Lenovo-branded Samsung drive from an ebay dealer (but I'd rather buy from a real shop than from ebay). I sympathize with sjthinkpader that spending $200 on an x40 upgrade is kind of dubious since the x40 itself is barely worth that much, but on the other hand I'm using my x40 quite a lot, and if I upgrade it will probably be to a WSXGA (1440x900) X200S if they start making those again. And I like flash memory and bought a 32gb SDHC card a couple months ago for $70 that I haven't even used, so spending the equivalent amount to move up from the 32gb Kingspec drive to 64gb isn't too bad. I decided to not go with a CF card solution because the 4k random write speeds on all CF tests I've seen have been abysmally slow, and I do care about that. Anyway I probably won't get to install and try out the drive til next week so I'll post another update when I have one.

[sjthinkpader]

... or maybe I should have gotten the 60gb Lenovo-branded Samsung drive from an ebay dealer (but I'd rather buy from a real shop than from ebay)....

And rather go for an off brand in the process? I don't follow.

[RDR]

Hi all.

Just purchased a Kingspec 64gb drive. Cloned my x41 drive using an external bay and Adonic(sp) software. Put the new SDD in and booted with no issue. Just the anoying beep on the incompatable drive message. I took the SDD out and ordered a carrier for it for $9. I couldn't figure out how or if I could get the old drive out of the old carrier. Figured it would be safer to just keep it all intact and spend the extra $9. I stuck it in there long enough to experience what it was like in terms of performance.

- Boot faster
- Launch of Office and document definitely faster.
- Fan did NOT come on as usual after about 30 seconds.
- Utility to keep HD optimized flew!

Going to be a good little system once the new carrier shows up. Battery life with variable CPU running is about 5 hours on the extended battery with the old HDD. The SDD should be better.

Any one know if we can eliminate the drive error and beep on power-on?

Thanks,

Rick

[sjthinkpader]

Welcome to the forum.

Congratulations in getting your new drive to work and it is working well. It will additionally be helpful to others if you have something NEW to share.

[phr]

Well, I'm pretty impressed with memoryc and international fedex. I got a shipping notice the day after ordering my drive, and fedex really did deliver from Ireland to California in one day, at a cost not much more than domestic overnight fedex. My package arrived this afternoon, though I probably won't have time til this weekend to actually install the drive.

[loyukfai]

As a sidenote, FlashPoint has now become FlashFire.

http://zflashfire.blogspot.com/
http://flashfire.org/

[rkommin]

I finally decided to go with the 32GB version from memoryC.com. Since I was not in a hurry I used the standard shipping and received my package in 4 business days. Installation went well and I am really happy with the performance so far. Have to try the flashfire SSD accelerator now.

[fer]

With reference to some of the questions above, here is my experience, although if there is no new information I apologize.

I have a thinkpad x40 2371-hu3 running XP sp3, 1.5 gb RAM. I ordered the 64 gb kingspec drive from Memory C in ireland, regular freight. Took two weeks to get to Boston MA from the EU, which seems reasonable for regular post.

I had previously purchased a USb to IDE adapter from Apricorn, and used their ez gig II software to clone the hitachi drive to the kingspec. The ssd came pre-formatted in NTFS: EZ gig II said that cloning my hard drive would overwrite/erase the existing partition on the ssd, and I went ahead and let it do that. I purchased a new hard drive caddy from ebay for $12 which I highly recommend, and put the kingspec drive inplace of the hitachi. Booted no problem.

I have read somehwere that HTFS is not so good for ssds, and FAT32 is better, but I have had no trouble: no noticable stuttering or hangs. Boot time is qualitatively much faster, but still about a minute from pushing the button to usability. Applications launch quicker - but again I am not that technical and have not benchmarked anything. ut I do have larger drive and a more responsive, faster machine. Considering the few upgrade options for the x40 hard drive, it seems like a good deal to me.

Some ssd+xp tweak sites recommend setting virtual memory to zero. This did not seem to change anything for me, but I did opt to use a 2gb sd card for virtual memory. This is probably idiotic as I suspect the sd card has a slow bus, but again I have not noticed any performance difference and it *may* help the ssd. I have 1.5 gb RAM installed and do not use photoshop or anything to memory intensive on this machine.

I believe this drive does have the infamous Jmicron controller, so perhaps performance will degrade overtime (drive is only half full so it may not be having to erase before writing - yet), or perhaps kingspec built in a larger write buffer? They have the specs on their site, and it does show that the drive can handle both 3.3 and 5 volt - which I can verify as the apricorn usb-ide gives 5v and the thinkpad harddrive slot 3.3 as I understand.

[phr]

It could be that JMicron has finally gotten their act together and made controllers with reasonable performance. Or it could be that crystalmark doesn't exercise the disk sufficiently and make sure the sectors are really written out, in which case I'm going to be annoyed .

Yes, paging to an SD card will be awful. Page to the kingspec drive instead, if you have to page. It's not a matter of the bus speed, it's all about the small block random write speed. At this, the kingspec drive seems to actually beat the Lenovo/Samsung drive, one of the reasons I went ahead and bought the Kingspec. But there is a thread about using a SATA drive with a pata-sata bridge and that's pretty intriguing and if there were straightforward ways to do that, then an Intel X18-M would be the best bet.

[sjthinkpader]

JMicron has pretty good market share until the cache overrun problem appeared. They should have enlarged the write cache by now. It is good to see that MemoryC is offering the Kingspec at competitive market prices.

It was frustrating up to now that the prices was 1.5X+ and yet this board was flooded with posts to promote the Kingspec.

....It's not a matter of the bus speed, it's all about the small block random write speed. At this, the kingspec drive seems to actually beat the Lenovo/Samsung drive, one of the reasons I went ahead and bought the Kingspec. ....

I didn't see a Lenovo/Samsung benchmark. The Kingspec at 2.0MB/s small file random write is good (posted above), but not best in class. I have a Sandisk 32GB that yield 2.7MB/s+. But it doesn't matter that much since even a RiDATA 32GB 233x CF card with 0.030MB/s small file random write is still very usable.

So in the end what is most important for us with these older X4x machines is best in class PRICES and reasonable performance.

[loyukfai]

I doubt the current Kingspec drives have switched to the newer JMicron controller (JMF612). If I were Kingspec I would advertise this fact loudly. I've always speculated that the relative absence of stuttering on these 1.8" PATA drives might be due to the presence of the SATA <-> PATA bridge on the drive itself.

Note: The JMicron controllers are SATA<->Flash so they need SATA<->PATA bridges, which makes it really funny.

X41 Mainboard <-> SATA-PATA bridge <-> PATA-SATA bridge <-> JMicron Controller <-> Flash

[sjthinkpader]

With such a long interface conversion chain, it probably doesn't help performance. SSD write performance is due to the write cache, until that gets full.

Any of these SSDs will give good performance when the devices are new, writing into clean free space (field of 1111...). Proof of the pudding is when the card is full of dirty free space (e.g. 01110011...), then the SSD has to to do erase-write. For most reviewers, only the intel M series does a good job under these conditions.

[loyukfai]

I'm getting off-topic, but the latest flash controllers from Indilinx and Samsung seem to have made a lot of catch-up with the Intel's.

http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=766

Cheers.

[rkommin]

I have tried the Flashfire SSD accelerator but got performance degradation on the Kingspec drive. Anyone has the same experience? Any suggestions on improving SSD performance not that I am compalining with what I have now

[RDR]

I would be really interested in any type of flash optimization. Doesn't the defrag take care of the delete/write latency?

[sjthinkpader]

Flashfire is mainly a write cache program. So it should not change read numbers. As for writes, the Kingspec SSD controller already has a smaller write cache. Flashfire may only improve the random small file write speed as it collects write operations and report back to OS as completed (ready).

Since it takes CPU cycles to do all that, it may cause some degradation on already fast sequential or large file writes.

[sjthinkpader]

I would be really interested in any type of flash optimization. Doesn't the defrag take care of the delete/write latency?

No, Defrag is made for HDD to reduce head seeks. Since SSD does not need to move heads, it is meaningless to do Defrag for SSD. It should be turned off. Win7 if detected a SSD will turn off Defrag but most of the time will not detect older SSD designs properly. So user will need to disable Defrag manually.