The Notebook Review forums were hosted by TechTarget, who shut down them down on January 31, 2022. This static read-only archive was pulled by NBR forum users between January 20 and January 31, 2022, in an effort to make sure that the valuable technical information that had been posted on the forums is preserved. For current discussions, many NBR forum users moved over to NotebookTalk.net after the shutdown.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
← Previous page

    DIY SSD Guide

    Discussion in 'Notebook News and Reviews' started by dietcokefiend, Feb 14, 2008.

  1. Spare Tire

    Spare Tire Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    18
    Messages:
    459
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    I contacted addonics to get the power consumption figures of their 2 CF sata raid and the figures they gave me was:
    Maximum current requirement of AD2SAHDCF is 560 mA at 5V.

    And i don't know if that includes the two CF. So yeah, it might draw as much as a normal HDD at load, and i wonder if there is ever an idle state for a raid controler. I guess there's no cheaping out on a read SSD if power saving is your goal.
     
    Spare Tire, Jul 1, 2008
    #101
  2. vcsg1

    vcsg1 Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    2
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    I have the dual CF sata adapter from addonics in a custom pc built from a m1530 motherboard. I am using 2 Adata 266x cards. I am not at home so I cannot upload a shot of hd tach but I am getting read speeds at ~60 mb/s and I cant remember the write somewhere around ~40 mb/s I think.

    I was having a problem installing windows on it until I switched the sata operation in the bios from ACHI TO ATA. Then it installed and worked fine. Startup is ~20 sec from pushing the power button.

    From the tests that I have seen on the adata cards they are capable of 45-50 mb/s read speeds so I am going to try and install the intel drivers and see if that bumps the speeds up.
     
    vcsg1, Jul 11, 2008
    #102
  3. psygn

    psygn Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    259
    Messages:
    460
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    Cool to see some real world results.
     
    psygn, Jul 15, 2008
    #103
  4. Hahutzy

    Hahutzy Notebook Deity

    Reputations:
    126
    Messages:
    1,237
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    55
    No doubts that it would perform well, as vcsg1 suggested. However, previous testers (I believe it's Kevin himself) suggested that it has lag spikes at times... is that true in your case?
     
    Hahutzy, Jul 15, 2008
    #104
  5. eatbuckshot

    eatbuckshot Notebook Consultant

    Reputations:
    19
    Messages:
    169
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    This sounds oddly familiar to a problem with booting win xp from a usb device(flash drive/hard drive)
    I believe that the problem was that the usb mass storage drivers aren't loaded at boot but later (several stages of driver loads)

    i successfully modified a windows cd to install a usb bootable windows xp

    maybe the same could be done with Delkin's drivers?
    we could possibly also make it detect the cf as a fixed hard disk with the hitachi microdrive drivers

    some modified version of this may work. I don't have the Delkin pccard or any CF cards to test though..

     
    eatbuckshot, Jul 25, 2008
    #105
  6. bendsley

    bendsley Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    6
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    I call BS on this. Windows XP and Vista are optimized 512k sectors for spindle hard drives. SSD's however are optimized for 4,096k (or so) sized sectors. There is an option to run HD Tune at multiple block size sectors. When I was at 512k size, it ran ok, but nothing to write home about. When I switched to 4,096k size, I was getting constant 100mb/sec transfer rates on both reads and writes for the entire test.
     
    bendsley, Aug 14, 2008
    #106
  7. John Kotches

    John Kotches Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    133
    Messages:
    381
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    What were the prices prior to this?

    Cheers,
     
    John Kotches, Aug 14, 2008
    #107
  8. Spare Tire

    Spare Tire Notebook Evangelist

    Reputations:
    18
    Messages:
    459
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    30
    I heard SanDisk was saying this is the reason why their SSD performs bad. But do you mean by this the "allocation unit size" windows asks you when you format a disk? If so, isn't this something the user can decide for himself, then wouldn't this blame be BS?
     
    Spare Tire, Aug 25, 2008
    #108
  9. Onie

    Onie Notebook Enthusiast

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    17
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Great to see some realworld results though I'll give it another year or so...

    That is when everything else has been settled: compatibility and when such technology trickles down sans markup.

    I'm such a cheapskate when it comes to these.

    That's just me though... :D
     
    Onie, Aug 27, 2008
    #109
  10. lukkbox

    lukkbox Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    1
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    ummmm

    if you can use your pcmcia slot to expand your usb ports

    then surely your computer must be able to be fooled into beleiving the pcmcia slot is a usb slot?

    if so, it would be as simple as the guy who runs windows off a thumb drive


    any techys know how to make xp recognise my pcmcia slot as usb?
     
    lukkbox, Feb 8, 2009
    #110
  11. tnhdg

    tnhdg Newbie

    Reputations:
    0
    Messages:
    9
    Likes Received:
    0
    Trophy Points:
    5
    Hi,

    can anyone post a step by step method in using a CF card to boot winxp onto a laptop. I had tried several methods and failed. I want to see what I may be doing wrong.
    The CF card I am using is 8gb sandisk extreme III with dual Cf to IDE adapter off ebay onto a thinkpad x40.

    TIA
     
    tnhdg, May 13, 2009
    #111
← Previous page