SSD in the miniPCIe slot

T400/410/420 and T500/510/520 series specific matters only
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kkwst2
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Joined: Sat Sep 25, 2004 10:13 pm

SSD in the miniPCIe slot

#1 Post by kkwst2 » Mon May 17, 2010 9:23 pm

I ordered a T410s without the 3G card in the second mini PCIe slot. I got the 128GB SSD, which I think will be marginal for my purposes so to supplement and store all my data files, I was considering springing for one of these to put in the mini PCIe slot:

http://www.runcore.com/content/products ... =16GB-64GB

...and sold here...
http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/SPD/ru ... 358054.jsp

Does anyone see why this would not work?

It is made to put in a particular ASUS model, but I'm thinking it should work. I've put a query into the company but figured I would look for any thoughts on here. Most of the 3rd party mini PCIe cards are abnormal dimensions (70 mm long) to conform to the ASUS Eee "standard" (except the T91, I guess), which I find a bit remarkable. This is the only one I've found which is the smidge less than 51 mm, which is the actual mini PCIe specification. Only reasons I could think of that it might not work is if it is too thick (this is 5 mm) or if the slot is really only made to accommodate the GOBI card. I know it already has antenna cables running to it and such.

Harryc
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Re: SSD in the miniPCIe slot

#2 Post by Harryc » Mon May 17, 2010 9:50 pm

It's kind of Pricey for a 64GB card no? You could sell yours and for another $200 or so you could buy a 160GB Intel X18-M...or you could run an 80GB X18-M in the Ultrabay. Personally I would just get a fast 500GB Drive like an Hitachi 7k500 and pop it in an Ultrabay III caddy (runs at SATA 300) and call it a day.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Ultrabay_ ... dapter_III

kkwst2
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Sep 25, 2004 10:13 pm

Re: SSD in the miniPCIe slot

#3 Post by kkwst2 » Mon May 17, 2010 10:59 pm

Thanks for the reply. I'll likely be using an extra HDD routinely as well, but I need certain core files that currenly sit at around 20 GB available when I don't have the HDD loaded. Having them on a separate disk has some advantages for me, and it actually comes out to be a better cost per GB than your suggestion of trading up for an Intel SSD.

The limited specs I've seen on this drive suggest it is quite fast and likely indistinguishable from the Intel SSD in real-world performance, though admittedly it's a pretty expensive luxury! It's pricey but not completely outrageous, as the 80GB Intel drive is a similar price.

But I would like to know with some certainty that it will work.

kkwst2
Posts: 8
Joined: Sat Sep 25, 2004 10:13 pm

Re: SSD in the miniPCIe slot

#4 Post by kkwst2 » Mon May 17, 2010 11:44 pm

Well I found this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Expres ... _Mini_Card
Some netbooks (notably the Asus EeePC and Dell mini9) use a variant of the PCI Express Mini Card for flash or SSD. This variant uses the reserved and several non-reserved pins to implement SATA and IDE interface passthrough, keeping only USB, ground lines and maybe the core 1x bus intact.[6] This makes the 'miniPCIe' flash and solid state drives sold for netbooks largely incompatible with true PCI Express Mini implementations.
So I'm inferring from this that what I want to do won't work! Oh well.

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