1.8" ZIF PATA SSDs available

For largely the same reason people buy sports and muscle cars and only drive them down the street instead of taking them to the racetrack every week. For many people, their computers are their toys, and they like to "deck them out," no matter how lightly they're used. After all, how many people buy a quad-core just because it's "futureproof", or buy a hexacore CPU when all they do is play games?

I mean, we're talking about upgrading 1.8" ZIF drives here, so don't forget the kind of systems that come with these sorts of drives. If they were really looking to be doing work on your level, you'd be advising them to get a whole new system.

 

Judicator,

Good points!


But to those people: do you want to buy a FASTER decal from me to impress even more people that see your toys?

 

It doesn't make any difference - any modern SSD is much, much faster than your fully optimized mechanical drive.

Then you had an unrelated problem. A modern SSD is significantly quicker than any 15,000rpm enterprise drive, and even faster still than the slow 7,200rpm drive you're comparing to.

Any modern SSD will do the trick.

I'm not sure what your point is - if you're generally trying to say that a mechanical drive can approach the speeds of an SSD, for daily usage, then you're wrong. That is simply not true - pick any metric you like, apart from price, and the SSD wins by a huge margin.

 

You really are missing my point.

I'm not saying that an SSD is not faster at some (unimportant/benchmark) things - I'm saying that a properly setup HDD is just as fast or faster doing (my) real work. With no capacity, setup headaches or $$$ penalty either.

Not 'real work' in isolated testing (non-representative environments), real work as in using it for a few projects and directly comparing my output to the previous week with the exact same computer/OS/apps/drivers/utilities setup except with a mechanical HDD instead.

SSD's do give glimmers of what they'll be able to achieve one day - but that day is still a ways off.

Now, granted - for the type of 'work' that you can do on ZIF connector systems - it may seem like a real upgrade - but I still wouldn't let SandForce into this party (it is still promising things it can't deliver consistently).

 

*removed because of missunderstanding*

 

Hello everyone, I couldn't find anyone here with a Sony VAIO TZ150N, so I thought I'd add my SSD compatibility findings!

Thanks to the recommendations here I ordered a Renice K3VLAR K3E 64GB SSD drive to replace the failing Toshiba MK1011GAH 100GB hard disk in my VAIO TZ150N. The laptop is about six years old and hasn't had a BIOS update. The SSD was recognised straightaway and I could install Windows 7 on it without problems; interestingly the UDMA mode was also set to 5 by default, although I can't confirm what the UDMA setting was for my hard disk as it now fails to boot.

So far two days in with no problems.

Great upgrade which has given this lovely laptop a new lease of life.

Thanks to everyone here for their guides and advice. Without these posts I'd have almost certainly ended up buying an incomaptible drive.

Gordon

 

Hum.when I had my 64GB Samsung SSD it was on udma 4..

 

A little request for help if possible:

I am trying to install a new mx-nano zif pata drive in my hp compaq 2510p, as others here have done. BUt I seem to be falling at the first hurdle - the drive is not recognised.

I suspect the problem is the orientation of the ribbon cable. The drive comes with a card saying pin 1 is at the right-hand end of the zif connector on the drive, when viewed from the bar-code side of the drive and looking towards the connector. If I mate that to pin1 as marked on the ribbon cable, the metal connectors on the cable are facing upwards, away from the drive, not down towards the drive board. This doesn't seem right, but not having done it before I'm not sure. Is this the right orientation?

The other possiblity is that I haven't inserted the cable far enough; it only went in about 1mm, but was secure once I closed the latch on the drive's zif connector. I wouldn't try to push the cable in further - certainly not zero-insertion force if I do!

I am re-using the existing Toshiba ribbon cable from in the 2510p, as the drive didn't come with one, and anyway, the cable is attached to a moulded connector at the other end.

If the alignment I have is wrong, how should I fix it? If the alignment is right, anyone have any other ideas?

Many thanks in advance your help.

 

I just got the 30Gb Renice K3VLAR for my Dell D430 and did a clean install of WinXp Sp3. However, my write numbers seem to seriously crappy!!!

I have done the tweaks of disabling indexing, prefetching, ...and also used Bar -Edit to adjust the 66mhz thing. Yet even after all those changes, I havent seen the slightest smidge of improvement. is WinXP the problem here? Any suggestions?

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/804/crstl1.png
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/32/baredit1.png

 

Sorry if I'm asking in the wrong thread, but it's hard to find the right answer. I'm looking to replace a 60gb hard drive in a Sony VGN-T350P with an SSD. It's 1.8" drive made by Toshiba. The specs indicate it has a 44 pin connector, but I can't tell if its a 'standard' connector or not. I have not ripped the machine apart to examine it (yet).

I basically want to know what SSDs will or won't work. Or what adapters would be necessary to get an effective replacement working.

Again, sorry if this is the wrong thread but I've been scouring the web for details all danged day and not finding the info I need.

 

Friends, am a new member. Need your advice on upgrading my Compaq 2510p (uses PATA HDD) to SSD...which 1.8" PATA SSD drive is compatible with this laptop ? thanks in advance

 

The 1.8" PATA/IDE 44pin package differs in dimensions to 1.8" ZIF. Consider if you have chassis space to do something like this. More than likely you will not have room to manoveur a ZIF SSD into your chassis.

No need to fret however. There is some quality 1.8" IDE drives that would fit without modification. Recommend the MX-Technology EWS720 unit below for best balance of performance, battery life and native PATA compatibility.

MX-Technology 1.8" PATA MX-NANO 44 SSD (EWS720) see ordering details.

RunCore 64GB Pro IV 1.8" PATA IDE SSD Solid State (Indilinx stp+Jmicron)

Kingspec 1.8" IDE SSD (SMI/Jmicron)

Plenty of confirmed working 2510P systems with ZIF (+2.5" sata SSDs via optical bay caddy) are shown in the Examples of modified 12" HP 2510P system.. table at http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...52887-hp-2510p-owners-lounge.html#post4518853

Again recommend the EWS720-based units (Renice K3VLAR-E, SuperTalent ZT2, MX-Nano) for best balance of performance and battery life.

 

Ah, that's exactly the kind of info I need! Thank you. I really wasn't sure about the whole form factor and interface details, this clears things up a bit. Some other threads have been less informative.

From what I've seen there's not a lot of room to work inside the T350. I had it completely torn apart a while ago to replace the PCMCIA socket. So skills-wise I'm more than able to pull off this upgrade.

When researching this upgrade I came across another guy that had replaced the optical drive with an SSD: My Ultra Cool T350p Second Hard Drive Mod But I'd rather keep using the CD/DVD. Note in his picture the location of the HD in the upper left. There's not a wiggle room with regards to the IDE cable. It runs flat over some other stuff and then angles in tight behind the drive.

But when I compare that space with pictures on the translated (thanks for that) X40 upgrade it looks like there might be enough room to do something with an adapter. From what I can tell the X40 drive bay used a half-size drive, correct? The Sony does not. So there ought to be enough room to stuff in an adapter and a ZIF drive. I'm assuming some amount of padding or trimming of the drive hold-down bracket might be required and that's fine.

Are there any pictures of a 44-pin SSD next to a ZIF one? Or some drive dimensions? It's tough to hunt down all the details.

I found info on the X40 and it's drive was 60x70x9.8mm (with the connector on the 70mm edge). The Toshiba MK6006GAH drive in the Sony is 54x78.8x8mm (with the connector on the 54mm edge). Thus it appears I have a bit more 'length' to work with in the T350P vs the X40. The bracket that holds down the drive allows for a few mm of the drive to stick up through it. I may have to 'adjust' this bracket.

But my BIG question is: along which side does the PATA connector sit? Is it on the 60mm or the 70mm side? In the Sony I'd need to plug the connector into the 60mm edge. When I look at various pictures of the SSDs it looks like connector is on the 70mm side, which would be a problem.

If the connector isn't on the 60mm edge then it might be necessary to go with an adapter/zif combo. I could probably squeeze the adapter into the cable and then fold a ZIF cable as needed to connect the drive.

Right now it looks like the MXSSD1MNANO-60G is a decent choice for a drop-in replacement (provided the connector is in the right place). Is there a ZIF drive (of similar capacity) that would be a better choice?