DIY SSD Guide

From the IBM logo to pulling up the start menu ~18-20 seconds or so. Is there some kind of software I can use to test it in a more scientific fashion?

 

<del>None, i know of. personally i just use my camera to record it then use windows movie maker to strip off the excess (before i pushed the button and after windows has fully loaded)</del>

Microsofts bootvis is a good one to measure boot speed
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BootVis

<del>ex: http://myspacetv.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=27254977

or you can use a stopwatch.</del>

but thats pretty impressive!

 

I'm really interested in doing this for my laptop, and I saw addonics has a dual cf to IDE adapter, but my notebook has a SATA connection. I now there is a SATA one but I would like to get dual CF cards for 64gb of storage. I've searched around and have seen a lot of IDE to SATA converters out there on the cheap, does anyone have any experience with these converters? Will converting from IDE to sata effect performance?

 

This is a great article! However I think a better solution would be to use a PCMCIA/CF adapter and use that as OS drive - and keep the original harddrive as a storage disk. That way you'd get the best of both worlds: Fast boot and responsive OS as well as plenty of storage at a reasonable price.

Has anyone tried such a setup?

 

Boissez has a good point. Actually, ExpressCard seems the most promising, since you can interface directly with PCI express and get much faster bandwith (320MB/s if I'm not mistaken). You don't need a converter here, just buy the Express Card format instead of CF (unless you really want to do so). On the other hand, I think manufacturers have to build the card in a way so it can use the bandwith to its full potential, so I suspect this will take a while (a few generations of cards / products) before it happens.

There are some 16GB express card models which are quite affordable:
http://shopper.cnet.com/flash-memory-cards/lexar-expresscard-ssd-flash/4014-3241_9-32508262.html
http://reviews.cnet.com/flash-memory/transcend-solid-state-disk/4505-8897_7-32692944.html

Here's a review I've found from Anandtech on the Transcend 16GB. It seems like the card performs as a 133x, which is poor performance considering the speed available from the bus:
http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=3135

Here's another review on the Lexar this time, again speed isn't so impressive:
http://www.crunchgear.com/2007/05/07/hands-on-lexar-expresscard-ssd/

Maybe manufacturers are playing the same game here, meaning release some larger size 16GB but with slower speed. I didn't look to see if there was some 8GB available with higher speeds.

Aside from that, I've just ordered my Corsair 16GB USB stick, still the best bang for the buck and hopefully I will be able to get the 200x performance it promises.

Here's some info from Wikipedia on ExpressCard:

Finally, here's something for a little humor. These guys have put 9 MTron SSDs in a RAID0 array, pretty crazy stuff:
http://www.nextlevelhardware.com/storage/battleship/

 

Express card eh... That's a pretty good idea.

How bout express card to flash card formats tho?

Like, rank these from fastest to slowest:
- normal 7200RPM HDD
- normal 5600RPM HDD
- CF to express 54
- CF to SATA / IDE
- SDHC to express 54

Also, are all the above bootable?

 

How to boot from an express card??

 

You can't! Unless the manufactor supples some kind of a storage driver for using when installing XP, by pressing F6 in the install screen.

and i saw lexar benchmarks, they are not any faster than the usb drives.

 

hp79's right. Actually, I received my USB key 2 days ago and ran some tests. For the record, it's a Corsair 16BG "Flash Voyager".

After running tests with HD Tach, I get exactly the performance that was advertised (and similar to other people's benchmarks I found on the net), which is about 32MB/s for read speed, which is about 220x roughly. Seek time however is at about 1.3ms, compared to about 13ms for my hard drive. There is a small CPU impact, probably due to the USB interface, it used 5-6% in my test compared to 2-3% from my HD.

The key cost me about 120$ Canadian bucks (taxes + shipping included). Compare that to other SSD solutions:
- 220x speed
- 16GBs
- I haven't tried booting XP from it yet, but I think it should work.

Hence I think it's the best value for the money right now, and even defeats the idea of having a CF based SSD as proposed in the article here. The only drawback I see is that you have an "external" device, but at the advantage that you get to keep your internal harddrive.

I did run some tests for the application I want to use it for (a "live performance music laptop") but it only seems like a negligible performance gain compared to using strictly the hard drive. Mileage may vary, but in the end it seems like there just isn't that much "random" file seek in my case to really make it outshine a normal HD. I suspect that's probably the case for most folks too.

So, moral of the story is, unless you have a little bit of $$ to spend and go for a real (fast!) SSD like the MTron Mobi, you're probably going to find you're just wasting time as "we're not there yet" in terms of affordable DIY SSD solutions. Probably in a year or two...

 

FWIW my lappy boots fine from the PC Card/PCMCIA slot. Actually I've just ordered a Lexar UDMA CF adapter and a sandisk extreme IV and will test my hybrid-SSD system out soon.

 

Any updates from anyone? I'm still interested in doing this.

My laptop has a SD reader, PCMCIA slot, and SATA HDD. I'd prefer not to use USB with this thing as having a USB drive sticking out at all times would be quite inconvenient.

 

Well i have made it work so far using this cheapo adapter: link) and a cheapo Kingston 2GB ElitePro 60x, this CF is faulty however and has some random errors so i couldn't make it work stably - I did get windows XP installed eventually (in the 10th attempt).

Partial conclusions so far:
1. The adapter supports UDMA, I get reads/writes of 13 (90x) and 6 (40x) MB/s respectively and 2,3% CPU usage
2. You really need a faster CF than this, performance overall was slightly below that of my 40GB 1,8" 4200 rpm IDE drive (and its 16 MB/s read/write and 22 ms seek). At least a 133x card is needed and a pricier 266x/300x is recommended.
3. battery life went up from about 2 hours to about 2½ hours
4. Having a completely silent laptop is eerie - but nice
5. It is possible to boot from the PCMCIA using a 16-bit PCMCIA/CF adapter port but i get BSODed during windows load, I suppose this is due to the faulty CF but it might be an issue.

I have a 8 gb Lexar 300x and a Lexar UDMA PCMCIA adapter on order - Hopefully I'll be able to play with it this weekend and give some more results.

Best regards.

 

Hi all, like others here i have been researching this subject a lot recently but have been holding off from buying just yet.

Like Boissez I feel the best solution is to use a CF card in the Cardbus or XpressCard slot for the OS and have the main HDD 'spun up' when you need it.

Boissez, as far as I can see the best solution for this is the 32-bit UDMA CF-Cardbus adapters from Delkin, I think Lexar do one also - you will have to check and see if the Lexar one is as fast though. The Delkin allows up to 45 MB/s throughput - interestingly the XpressCard version they make only goes up to 30 MB/s

http://www.delkin.com/products/adapters/cardbusudma/
http://www.amazon.com/Delkin-Cardbus-Compact-Adapter-Compatible/dp/B000T8CFY2

Now, most modern laptops can boot from PCMCIA/Cardbus - but the main problem for Windows users here is getting Windows to see the 'root' filesystem on the Cardbus CF card early enough in the boot process.

With Linux it is possible to boot a kernel and 'initial ramdisk' which allows the Cardbus slot and CF card to be setup and mounted. Then the system 'changes root' to the CF card, and continues to boot from the CF card. Hey presto - best of both worlds (if you dont need Windows).

Maybe some Windows 'hackers' will come up with a way of doing a similar thing with Windows? Maybe a method exists to run an 'initial ramdisk' for Windows in order to setup the CF disk ready to be mounted as root. People from places like BartPE might be able to help here. There was also a guy who put up an account of how he got the EWF (enhanced write filter) working with normal windows XP running from CF (he may know useful info - I am trying to find his site now).

One option here, is to boot to Linux (on CF) then run Windows as a virtual machine with VMware or Xen etc. from an Windows image stripped down using Nlite with EWF installed and hibernation disabled, (possibly swapfile disabled?)


A lot of people are missing one of the main advantages of flash memory here - latency! When a spinning disk starts to 'thrash' constantly it is often because for whatever reason it has many read/write requests at different parts (often opposite ends) of the disk. When this occurs the drive spends the vast majority of time 'seeking' (physically moving the disk head) with a vastly reduced throughput of data. Flash memory inherently avoids this issue by being 'solid state' and 'seek' times are at least an order of magnitude faster. Vista's ReadyBoost is based on this idea.

Another possible benefit is less heat from your HDD meaning a slightly cooler laptop (this may even save the fan from being on so often - quieter and improved battery life)

One last point! - I know at least SanDisk provide wear levelling for their cards at the 'block' level. Each disk block has spare capacity (erase pool) which can be cycled through evenly each time the block is written to. This seems to provide extrememly good lifetimes, although the examples they use are for 'industrial' embedded applications.

See here:
http://www.sandisk.com/Assets/File/OEM/WhitePapersAndBrochures/RS-MMC/WPaperWearLevelv1.0.pdf

Can anyone do the maths here for a 'typical' laptop scenario? (say a 8GB card, filled to 75% capacity being written to say at 1MB/s average 24/7) - I have no idea how much data gets written to disk in an average day!

Excuse the massive post - I have renewed entusiasm on this topic now Ive found this discussion.

 

Does anyone know of an Expresscard 54 CF Adapter that doesn't stick out? I'm wondering if it's possible to dual boot Windows from HDD and Linux from CF...

 

The above would be my ideal setup. I've got a Thinkpad x60t which has an unused CardBus slot as well as a SD card reader that may be of some use. I haven't jumped on this yet mostly because of money reasons, but it might motivate me a bit more if someone else had some success so I wasn't going into this blindly.

 

If anyone is interested, I will be testing out two 16 GB 233x CF cards in RAID 0 and posting my experience this weekend. Look at this post for the details.

 

RAID 0 with 2 CF card results posted here.

 

Hm, some interesting stuff.

How's the battery life between the dual CF cards and the 7200rpm drive? What about heat?

 

Well, I have ordered a Delkin 32 bit UDMA cardbus to CF adapter (from US) so I will try and get a working (linux/ubuntu) setup when it arrives, and will post up my experiences here. I am likely to be using an old CF card however as I am still waiting for flash prices to drop a bit more, in order to buy a decent 233x / 266x 16GB card affordably - I don't consider RiData cards to be 'decent', although Swiftnc's results are pretty impressive.

Swiftnc <<-- Thanks for the results of your testing! Here are some questions...

How do you manage two cards on your laptop? Did you have to remove an optical drive?

Can you keep us posted in the future so we can gauge the longevity of your RiData cards under heavy usage?

Do you feel the usability of your OS is affected by the reduced write performance for small, random writes? Maybe benchmarking after installing EWF may show an improvement, ( benchmarking over a sustained period of random (small file) writes would give us a realistic idea of how much EWF could help ) .

 

I see that there's been some interesting contributions since I've last posted.

FWIW I can share my results (that haven't been so succesful ufortunately)

I've used a 8GB Lexar 300x CF card that I've managed to get to work with win XP. I do have issues with the disk getting recognized as a removable drive - but windows does work as if I format it in NTFS (FAT32 gets BSOD during install).

My problem arises whenever i try to run windows from the PCMCIA slot where it boots fine but crashes during windows load.

I'm not sure whether I should try to either:
a.) find a way to remove the CF cards removable status
b.) go for a small linux install like the one mentioned by willjcroz

Anyways, your help and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

I'm afraid that was what I expected to happen with windows, Boissez

FWIW, this guy ran into problems using his CF card through an ide converter on his laptop, the solution was to use the Hitachi Microdrive Filter Driver (modifying the inf files is probably needed here). This driver hopefully allows us to use our CF card as a 'proper' fixed disk (ie windows will permit all features, pagefile full caching etc), this is the first step to getting our full Windows system running from CF !

I take it you are getting a 0x0000007B Inaccessible Boot Device BSOD? I think our solution lies in installing the Hitachi Microdrive filter driver and then creating a new 'boot device group' in the SYSTEM registry hive (System32/config/system) and add our necessary devices (pcmcia.sys and maybe the Hitachi driver) to this group so that NTLDR can load the drivers before control is passed to Ntoskrnl.exe . I will look into the details when my card adapter arrives.

It may be possible to load the hitachi driver during XP install (F6) and then choose to install to your cf card in pcmcia slot. Drivers need a special inf file for this and I doubt Hitachi have provided it (again _in theory_ this is possible to 'hack' together).

I reckon we have a good chance of success as people have managed to do this to have a full Windows XP install running from USB drives (we just require different drivers to be loaded) in theory it should work for Vista too (though why anyone looking for performance/efficiency gains would want to install that on their laptop I don't know )

 

Update:

I got my old 128MB CF card inside a crappy 16-bit PCMCIA-->CF adapter, recognised as a 'Fixed' or 'Basic' disk...



The Hitachi Microdrive Filter driver is available here

This will also work for CF cards in IDE adapters and even USB flash drives!

You will need to add the lines to the [cfadisk_device] section of the inf file as follows:

%Microdrive_devdesc% =
cfadisk_install,PCMCIA\*** CF Card Hardware ID goes here ***

you can find your card's hardware ID as follows: (make sure your card/adapter is inserted)

Start>>Run>>regedit

HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Enum\PCMCIA\*** CF Card Hardware ID is here ***

Or, if you have your CF in an IDE adapter:

%Microdrive_devdesc% =
cfadisk_install,IDE\*** CF Card Hardware ID goes here ***

Find your ID by going
Start>>Run>>regedit
HKLM\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Enum\IDE\*** CF Card Hardware ID is here ***


You can now just use device manager to update the driver for your card and browse to the filter driver (reboot required). You may then want to activate write caching etc.

Further work is needed to get Windows to actually boot to the card using PCMCIA however, I will post further details soon. (no time, university assignment due today!)

 

Sorry it took me so long to respond, I wasn't watching this thread.
My Sager notebook has 3 HD bays with built in RAID support. So I just used two of the HD bays.
As for my take on the EWF filters... They are not useable by most as they take way too much knowledge. I work with computers and am currently working with Microosft about some complications about using the Write filters with XP Embedded (which is what they were designed for).

As for my system, sadly I am having issues with my BIOS and the CF cards (they BIOS is slowing my whole system down becauase the CF cards do not support SMART).
I am hoping a new BIOS will resolve this issue.

 

Wow! Thanks for all the extensive info Willjcroz... I will definitely try it out this week-end (no time here either).

 

So given a BIOS that claims it cannot boot from Xpress54 or SD, is it possible to boot Linux from either one at all?

 

Yes booting Linux from xpress54 or SD should be pretty easy to do if it's supported by the BIOS. You might however have some small performance issues as SD-readers and (almost) all xpresscards are limited to USB 2.0 speeds (about 30 MB/s max).

Edit: Sorry. I've misread your message. Well If BIOS doesn't support booting of those devices I can't see how you should be able to do it except by hacking the BIOS itself (not recommmended though)

 

I said when it cannot boot from the two. Is it still possible?

 

Most new laptops/pcs are capable of booting from at least usb, normally the BIOS setup program's 'boot list' will not have the devices listed until it can actually see them (ie they are plugged in). As most Card-reader/ExpressCard flash storage devices are implemented as USB they should appear in the list if there is a card inserted (and the laptop supports USB booting).

Cardbus/Pcmcia devices work similarly, although these work through a more direct ATA/IDE interface.

If you are really stuck (BIOS will not boot your device whatever) you still have some options,
probably the easiest is to get your primary HDD to use a boot loader (grub for example) that will load a kernel with usb and usb-storage drivers that can then mount ( as / ) the card you want to use. You will need to establish the device name that your card will use by inserting when running linux from your hard drive first.

Try a google search something like this one to get you started. You may want to search specifically fir the distro that you use.

Boissez - BTW:
My 2GB SanDisk Extreme IV has arrived ( I am waiting for the predicted 'price plummet' of flash memory in 2008 before getting a large card) , but I'm still waiting for my 32-bit UDMA cardbus CF reader to arrive from U.S. - I think running Windows from 16-bit PCMCIA ( < 1MB/s ) will be too painful. So I am going to try getting Windows running from the card through my USB card reader ( ~18MB/s) for now.

 

Can't do much of an update myself - I've just found it that I've bought the wrong adapter (Lexar 32-bit Cardbus non-UDMA) so transfers are capped at 6.4 MB/s and CPU usage is close to 100%. IOW: useless.

I have the Delkin adapter on order now.

 

Are you _sure_ its not UDMA? It is possible that the UDMA implementation on the CF is not compatible with that of the Cardbus adapter (see below). It seems that there is room for incompatibilities in the 'standard'.

I have received my Delkin UDMA adapter only to find that my SanDisk Extreme IV card is being seen 'through' the Delkin adapter as a SCSI device. HDTUNE confirms that the speed is not what it should be ( <30MB/s). I think this is preventing true UDMA modes from being enabled.

After phoning Delkin and getting the support guy to talk to the engineers, they worked out that SanDisk amongst others implement UDMA in a non-standard way (with proprietary 'quirks'). It turns out I have the Mk.1 version of the card and that they have addressed the issue with the Mk2 version. Apparently I can get an RMA exchange from Delkin UK, I will confirm this tomorrow after I have called Delkin UK.

Make sure you are getting the Mk 2 model and not old stock!

 

Well I've spoken with Lexar support and they told me I've gotten the wrong adapter... you need the Lexar 'RW035' reader to reach UDMA speeds. The 100% CPU usage seems to hint that my CF was working in PIO-mode.

About the Delkin adapter I've got mine in mail from the US - can you tell me how to ID whether I've gotten a Mk I or II?

One last thing: 533x/600x speed CF should come out soon - Lexar should have theirs out in june and the rest of the manufacturers will most likely have their models out before Photokina in september (a large bianual photo trade show)... Hopefully upgrading to a faster disk should be a drop-in upgrade as the Delkin adapter supports UDMA 5 speeds (does it support UDMA 6?) - but the issues you've mention ed suggests that it won't be that easy

 

I found a 280X 8GB samsung CF card for just 35$ including shipping could this be real ? seems way to cheap when i look at the other cards. If this is real i think i just order one together iwth a 15$ cf - sata adapter just to try it out

http://cgi.ebay.com/280X-8GB-OEM-SA...yZ122612QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

 

Beware buying ANY flash cards off of ebay, the market is flooded with (mainly chinese) fakes. Even some retail outlets in U.S. and europe have been found to be (unwittingly) stocking fakes. The fakes are often not capable of storing the advertised amount of data and/or are slower and/or fail much sooner than the genuine items. Many people do not demand enough (speed / data / intensive use) of the cards to realise that they are fake, and in effect are satisfied customers (until the card starts showing bad-blocks prematurely). So do not rely on a sellers feedback to tell you that they sell fakes - most people who would notice know to steer clear of ebay when buying flash memory.

My advice - buy from a (mail order) retail dealer who will refund with no qualms if you have not received the genuine item. Ebay really is a minefield when it comes to flash memory. There are even 'working' (to a degree) chinese fake DFI motherboards in circulation at the moment!

 

the 4GB 280x cf is so damn cheap 13 euro that i think i just take a bet and try it out for that money im willing to take a bet if its real i did a good buy if its fake i still did a good buy if it just works

 

Well... as willjcorz said buying flah memory of ebay is a minefield... there probably is more fake flash cards/memory sticks than genuine one out there.

And even if it seems cheap for 4 GB card there are chances that it doesn't even deliver the stated size - with corrupted files as a consequence. So while you might think you've gotten a good deal on a 280x 4GB card you may actually end up with a corrupted overpriced 1GB 80x card.
Then theres the moral issue: do you wan't to support these kind of businesses that knowingly sell underperforming/flawed products?

 

I'm thinking about getting a EEE900, take out the 16Gb minipcie SSD and putting it in my P-6831FX and see how that goes. Any predictions?

 

hehe thats actually pretty smart since the EEE900 has a 16GB ssd and a onboard 4GB chip so even when you remove the 16GB SSD you still have a functional EEE The eee starts xp in like 30-40secs and that with a underclocked celeron at 600mhz so it will probbaly boot up atleast under 30 secs in a decent laptop

 

My prediction: around 30 MB/s max. I believe these drives will be something USB-based like those:
http://www.sandisk.com/Corporate/PressRoom/PressReleases/PressRelease.aspx?ID=3938

Good news is that since the're USB based you most likely will be able to boot from these.

 

So it'll be like a 5400 rpm HDD with instant seek time?

 

Yes... It will be faster in some instances (loading windows or apps) but the difference won't be night and day.

 

Nvm, I found out recently that the 16Gb SSD is MLC, meaning it has a lot less write cycles than SLC SSDs such as the soldered EEE SSD.

So it's not a good SSD to put an OS on.

 

Well now that there's SATA to Dual CF ( http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/ad2sahdcf.asp), I am once more interested in doing this.

This adapter means that my laptop can potentially run a RAID 0 Quad CF setup... Which would probably be really fast, but also a lot of spikes.

But first, I kinda want a recap on each mentioned solution's speeds.

As I recall, this is the order (descending speed):

True SSDs - >65MB/sec
RAID 0 Dual CF with Intel Drivers - ~64MB/sec, but reported to have "lag spikes"
Hitachi 200GB 7200RPM - ~54MB/sec
Single CF - <35MB/sec
5400RPM drives - ~30MB/sec

Maybe Quad CF RAID 0 will make it worthwhile to do a DIY SSD setup? But for now, $80 a pop for these adapters is a bit steep for me to test it out. Perhaps Kevin can give it a shot in his DIY SSD Part 2, if it's ever going to happen?

 

Looks interesting hahutzty Many SSD's are less than 20MB/s you know.

FWIW I am still looking at getting Windows booting from the Cardbus CF adapter, but I currently have no time due to exams and coursework.

 

Nice to see that this threads still lives

I've however abandoned the project since it seems that a special driver needs to be made (an Delkin doesn't make it)

source

Still eager to know if someone manages to make Windows (or Linux) work from the Cardbus-CF adapter.

 

Apparently, there's 3-CF to SATA.

http://www.geekstuff4u.com/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=&products_id=836

I believe it's from a japanese manufacturer called Century.

 

Yeah, the 3-CF could be interesting but it costs more than twice the 2-CF from addonics.
The question remains that battery life may be no better or perhaps worst than a regular HDD (if you consider that the 1-CF to sata is already no better than regular HDD) if the controler that manages the raid is always on and not power efficient.

 

I am sure folks here would find this guy's stuff useful

 

They only sell single CF to SATA, unfortunately.

 

Yea true, the cheapest I can find it online is 16819 yen ( http://www.bestgate.net/extender_century_sdb25cfsr5.html), which is $158.54 USD

That excludes any shipping charges and disregards the fact that they may not ship worldwide, of course.

 

OCZ dropped there prices on SSD massively. This are models with 100-120mb read and only 40mb write:

prices in euros are:
32gb 149
64gb 229
128gb 399

information from:
http://core.tweakers.net/nieuws/54237/ocz-komt-met-prijsdoorbraak-ssd-opslag.html (dutch)
and
http://www.kmelektronik.de/main_site/?SiteType=Shop&type=shop&ArtNr=19081 (german)