Comments on: Poor man’s SSD

By: Anton

Anton — Thu, 05 May 2011 19:38:17 +0000

So, I finally got around to purchasing one of these adapters. Too bad it won’t fit in my Thinkpad T23. The IDE connector on the bottom of the PCB shorts against some metal foil in the HDD bay. Sooner or later though, I’ll probably come across a laptop that I can use it with.

By: Poor man’s SSD: Confusion and disappointment « Motho ke motho ka botho

Fri, 29 Apr 2011 06:53:42 +0000

[...] whether I should be embarrassed, worried or amused. For the greater part of a year I’ve been pushing CF cards as a method of rehabilitating out-of-date [...]

By: icesnakefrostfyre

icesnakefrostfyre — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 23:28:29 +0000

Tim, look on eBay for parts; once a laptop dies, it’s either a doorstop or a parts cache. The smarter guys can make enough selling the parts to pay for a netbook.

By: icesnakefrostfyre

icesnakefrostfyre — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 23:26:22 +0000

For those trying to find CF-to-IDE (which is that same as CF-to-PATA) adapters, I have used this http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/ad44midecf.aspand a couple other models (including CF-to-SATA) with good success. Beware of trying to use the dual-card adapter in a “super slim” laptop, however, you may find that it’s slightly too thick.

By: Poor man’s SSD: No news is no news « Motho ke motho ka botho

Poor man’s SSD: No news is no news « Motho ke motho ka botho — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 23:31:42 +0000

[...] mentioned it, because there wasn’t really anything to report. But since Anton Eliasson noted the six-month anniversary of the CF card installation, I suppose I should acknowledge [...]

By: Ozzy

Ozzy — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 21:52:36 +0000

Yay, saw this post just after you did it, came back today to see that there has been no doom and gloom

I have a few old Thinkpad 760′s (XL, XD, EL etc) and i snagged a few dual ide–>cf cards from dealextreme, a pile of 4gb 133x transcend cf’s from newegg… and when they get in… WHEE

Oh, the guy up there that is confusing PATA with IDE… i think he means the adapter that is on the caddy… my Thinkpads have that strange ibm connector on the motherboard, and uses a right angle adapter on the hard drive caddy… will plug right into the cf adapter (make sure you get one with male pins and not the direct plug type).

By: K.Mandla

K.Mandla — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 23:18:04 +0000

Most definitely. Best US$30 I ever spent, and so much so that I keep an extra one as a spare, for the next unwanted machine that comes my way.

By: Chubby Checker

Chubby Checker — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 11:11:56 +0000

I certainly would. In fact, just yesterday I revived an old laptop this way. Works like a charme…

By: Anton Eliasson

Anton Eliasson — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 19:55:37 +0000

Now, half a year later: would you still recommend replacing a ~10 year old laptop’s HDD with a decent CF card, in regard to the possible speed improvement?

By: Merula

Merula — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 21:34:15 +0000

One of the massive benefits to using CF over SD is that CF was designed to operate over PCMCIA, an already-old system. As KMandla has said before, go with older tech; give the geeks a chance to write drivers for it.

SD cards, by comparison, have drastically higher capacities, but their specifications keep changing. Not only that, CF has higher write speeds than SD. (http://www.tested.com/news/sd-vs-cf-vs-memory-stick-flash-memory-showdown/195/)

@KMandla – I’ve got an ALIX board that runs entirely on CF. Yes, it’s an embedded box designed for that, but it’s remarkable how well it work. Not only that, it’s cheap to replace a 2- or 4-GB CF card. SD is still approximately half the price of CF, but until the *nix geeks figure out how to really make SD/SDHC/XD/? work well as primary storage, I don’t mind paying $12 USD for a replacement.