Good news for Latitude X1 owners!

Nice, do you have a UK supplier contact by any chance?

Daniel


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PhotoFast UK - Home

 

Has anyone advice about using a modern CF card and CF-to-IDE adapter in the X1, sort of like an SSD replacement for the internal 1.8" HD, e.g. something like:

CF card: Newegg.com - Transcend 32GB Compact Flash (CF) 400X Flash Card Model TS32GCF400
Adapter: DealExtreme: $10.65 Compact Flash CF to 1.8" 50-Pin IDE SSD Converter

UDMA-5 compatibility seems to be there in the CF cards, are there technical drawbacks to using a CF card instead of a dedicated SSD?

If workable, the combo would be only about $132 for 32Gb. I didn't read the oldest posts, but I figure the technology has improved so the question (even if answered prior) might have new relevence. I too prefer my aging X1 over the newer crop of notebooks, so I'm looking for an upgrade path. Am I correct that a drop-in replacment for the Latitude X1 would require 50-pin IDE, hence the above (or similar) adapter? Thx in advance, this has been a great forum.

 

Following Fredda's suggestion, I bought the Kingspec SSD 2 weeks ago and it dropped straight in:
32GB KingSpec 1.8-IDE CF 50 pin SSD
2 weeks ago it was £77.44 ($110) so it looks like it's gone UP in price!

The photofast V4 was quicker but quite a lot more money.

I've done a fresh install of Windows 7 (with 1.25gb ram) and I'll let you know how things benchmark when I have a moment.

Daniel

 

When used as system drive, the speed of writing a lot of tiny files is crucial (e.g. browser cache, log files) and may differ dramatically between brands and SSD and CF. Writing speed may go extremely down when erasing blocks is necessary. You must rely on other's experiences and benchmark results.

Read this post and perhaps the whole thread (they were talking about Transcend CF 133x): LeoG.net Ultra-Portables Forum - Poor man's SSD: CF to 1.8" IDE converter

I expect this to work, but there are cheaper dedicated SSDs which are probably faster.

Yes, and the adapter looks perfect, I would like to try it.

 

Yep, CF cards generally have very bad random write speed, which destroys any performance benefits you could gain compared to mechanical disk (unless you're running some kind of special read-only operating system).

 

I am interested to know how it turns out for you. I've just ordered the same KingSpec SSD off of eBay as well as additional RAM. I will be reinstalling XP with the recovery disc (which i had lost but Dell mails you an additional disc, one time only per purchase).

When installing the OS, did you have to format or fragment the drive initially?

Right now, with my original Toshiba HD, I am average 6 MB/s (no joke), with a max of 15, using HDTune, so I'm really looking forward to this.

 

If you mean defragment, then no, you never defragment an SSD. It's not only unnecessary, it reduces the life span of the drive.

 

I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but I have two of these X1 laptops. One I installed an Mtron SLC 32gb SSD, and the other a Kingspec MLC 128gb SSD. Both are ZIF 1.8" drives and I used the adapter earlier in this thread to connect it to the laptop's connector (I used the first version of the adapter, not the newer smaller one - the first version works just fine and fitment is a squeeze but fine also). The SSDs work very well, however the laptop itself is a bit too underpowered for me now and I have since upgraded to a Samsung X360 ultraportable (Core 2 Duo ULV 1.4ghz) several months ago. I still do like my X1s, and both are in nearly perfect condition - almost like new. So I'm not sure what I'll be doing with those laptops now, seeing as the resell value is low.

 

They go for $200-$300 on ebay. Not bad for such an old laptop!