Dual HDD Laptop?

I am very dissapointed with my current HHD performance. It's a 1.8" 30GB ATA Toshiba drive running @ 4200rpm.

I was considering replacing it with a CF card(w/ an adapter) but the largest I can resonaably afford is 8Gb($30). So the big tradeoff would be size for speed. I dont want to spend too much on this upgrade considering it's only a $400 laptop.

I was hoping for a compromise since I have no need for the PCMCIA slot. Is there anyway I could get a connector cable for dual HHDs so i could keep my existing drive and place the CF card inside the PCMCIA slot? That way I can have the OS on the CF card and just use the existing HHD for additional storage.

If this is not possible, then the question becomes, are the performance gains of a CF card more or less than a new 5400rpm drive. And what would be the highest speed rating I could captitalize with that interface.

 

What laptop, what specs?

You would most likely be best off just getting a 5400rpm or even a 7200rpm hard drive to replace it with. 4200's are pitifully slow.

Greg

 

A $30 compact flash card is going to be slow.
You would want a 266X Compact flash card for optimum performance. These cards are aboiut $80, for 8 GB.
A 266x card is able to do 38mb/sec continuous read/write speeds.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211164
A good compact flash adaptor is like $15. So you can upgrade for under $100.

I know its a lot of money in realtion to a $400 notebook, but I advise not to get the $30 cards.
All of the $30 cards are 32x, which is very slow. Actually these cards would be much slower than your 4200rpm harddrive.

I am guessing this is an ultraportable laptop, so no, you are not able to find a dual ata adaptor for your laptop.

Speedymods, he will not be able to upgrade to a 5400rpm or 7200rpm drive, he most likely has an ultraportable, since his harddrive is a 1.8" drive.

K-TRON

 

While a CF card will give you superior seek times to 4200RPM and 5400RPM drives, transfer speeds for most CF cards hover around those of 4200RPM drives and many of them are slower. Combined with the added cost of a CF adapter and the relatively low capacity, it is probably better for you to simply upgrade to a 5400RPM drive than try the whole CF trick.

 

Hi.

the acer aspire 9920 has 2x250mb hdd`s

but it has an 20" screen not exactly portable.

regards

John.

 

The guys can't get a new computer

 

Yes, it is an ultraportable. Its a Toshiba r100. I wish they just used a 2.5hdd instead...it would've made my life so much easier...There are no 5400rpm drives that are ATA I can only find them in SATA. So I guess im stuck with the CF card for an upgrade.

K-tron, why did you say no cable was possible for an ultraportable? I only need a male adapter to plug into the laptop and 2 females for the CF card and HDD. Why would there not be room in my laptop? Or did you mean laptops in general?

 

The port on the motherboard is system specific.
Usually there is a special adaptor which a laptop harddrive fits into, which runs directly to the ata interface. Depending on the motherboard manufacturer, the ports can be different.
And there are no 2 port ide cables for laptop harddrives.
Well there are, but you need a system, which can support two harddrives.

You can use a compact flash card for more space, but I would recommend against using a $30 compact flash card for the operating system. a 32x card is slower than your 1.8" harddrive.
The cf card I mentioned will be faster than your 1.8" drive, but its pretty expensive.

K-TRON

 

Actually the card I mentioned was a 60x card. would that be at least comperable to my current hdd? I think me unit has the capablity to boot from pcmcia but Im not sure if it's restriced to toshiba's pcmcia cd-rom drive. It should work if I plug in a CF card reader there right? Does anyone know of a pcmcia CF card reader that doesnt protrude out of the case? I dont want anything sticking out that I can break. Besides it just looks damned ugly

 

I would not bet my life on the ability to boot of a CF card in PCMCIA adapter, despite the ability to boot from Toshiba's PCMCIA CD-ROM Drive. If you decide to try it, please let us know the outcome.

 

You can still lift it with one arm, can't you?

 

AHA! looks like i've found a solution to my problems afterall...Apparently they make dual CF to IDE connectors .

http://www.addonics.com/products/flash_memory_reader/ad44midecf.asp

If I slap in a 2 266x card for the OS and a 16GB 133x for storage I'll be good. Of course I'll need a 2.5" to 1.8" adapter as well. So if I fork up for their over priced adapter it'll be $110 total. Has anyone seen anything like that for cheaper?

Ktron, if they can make a dual CF adpater why the hell dont they make dual IDE adapters for laptops?

 

Wow, that is indeed a good find.
Yes, youre idea should work then.
The 266x card will be good for the OS, and the other one for your data.

The 2 cf cards will be read as a harddrive in the bios, cause you are making use of the internal ata connector.

They do make dual ide ports for laptops, but you need a thick laptop to fit 2 2.5" drives.
It looks like this: (the problem is, it goes to some random port on the motherboard) If all notebook manufacturers used the same port, it would be possible for you to use this adaptor.
http://www.excelcomputerinc.com/html/details.asp?ref=1497&category=cables

Pretty cool,
I hope it works out for you

K-TRON

 

Damn...looks like I spoke too soon...I've got a 1.8 to 2.5 adapter but its a male to male interface. My laptop connector is also male and I cant for the life of me find a 2way female connector for it!!! I was so close...damn

 

Ok so it looks like I'm stuck with either a solo 16GB 233x card from RiDATA or a 133x Transcend card...Both are of equal price($75 inc. s/h), (but I've never heard of RiDATA before and their reviews are 50/50) or an 8GB card @ 266x from AData.

 

hmm...came across another possible solution(much more causious this time around), there seem to be some old 2/5GB PCMCIA HDD's floating around. According to the specs they contain 1.8" HDD's. Perhaps there is the possiblity of dismanteling these and replacing the hdd with my larger 30GB one. Of course this need further research...any thoughts guys?

 

I have never heard of pcmcia based 1.8" harddrives.

how come you do not just get a faster 1.8" harddrive. The 60 and 80gb 4200rpm 1.8" drives are faster than your 30gb drive, cause they have a greater data density.

If they are out of the option cause they are too expensive, I would just go for the 266x Adata 8 gb card

K-TRON

 

Here's a link I found: http://www.theunwired.net/?itemid=702

As for a faster 1.8 hhd, would it be a significant gain over the 30gb? And wouldnt access times increase as the drive fill up?

 

Okay, this is what I want you to do:
Download a copy of hdtune, and run a benchmark of your drive.
This program will tell you the speed of your drive in megabytes per second.

My friend has a Fujitsu ultaportable, with a 60gb 1.8" 4200rpm drive, and here is the hdtune of his drive:


If your harddrives performance is much less, than I would suggest upgrading to a 60 or 80gb 1.8" harddrive.

By the way, that 5gb pcmcia harddrive will run about as fast as a 66x compact flash card, which is most likely much slower than the speed of your internal harddrive.

Post your hdtune result, and we can see what is your best option

K-TRON

 

Well I had intended to replace the drive with my current hdd and use it as extra storage as it would be cheaper than a 30gb cf card. but that idea is done as my hdd is too tall to fit into a type II pcmcia slot. I will run hdtune when i get the chance and post the results. thanks for your help ktron

 

Here are the results...not surprising... so larger hdd or cf card?

 

Well, your 1.8" drive scores relatively the same as the other 1.8" drives.
I would not upgrade to a larger capacity 1.8" drive, cause the most you will get is 5mb/sec faster, which is not that much.
I would upgrade to a high speed 266x compact flash card.
One of these cf cards ia ble to do 38-40mb/sec, which is much faster than any 1.8" series harddrive.
If you can live with an 8Gb cf card, than I would recommend upgrading to one.
I dont know how you are going to be able to connect it.
I would email addonics, and see if they have any cf to 1.8" ata adaptors.

Good luck,
K-TRON

 

I just got my R100 to boot off a 512MB CF card loaded with Linux over the weekend it was crazy slow as HD Tune gave the crap card w/ crappy adapter a 1.2MB/s Avg Read/Write speed haha. But at least I know it works! Now I can keep my HDD. Ordering an 8GB card from NewEgg as soon as they have the one I want back in stock, which should be in a week or so. Will post the benchmarks when it comes in. Thanks for the help K-Tron

 

just get this http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/1-8-for-toshi...ryZ41994QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
and this
http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/ProductDetail.jsp?LISTID=8000060B-1200514765
and you're sorted for $73

 

Thats pretty much the adaptor he needs.
However, do not go with that compact flash card. The 8gb 266x cards will be much more advantageous, for your ultraportable.

K-TRON

 

i already bought one of these :
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Compact-Flash...ryZ31534QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
and i will soon buy this:
http://www.mydigitaldiscount.com/ProductDetail.jsp?LISTID=80000714-1208444104
because its superfast and has an endurance rating of 1,000,000 which is at least equal to any modern ssd drive!
i will then run xubuntu 8.04 on it -
does anyone support me on this?- is it a good idea?

 

Sorry for the late reply. That adapter is not the kind I need. As I said before, I got my R100 to boot from the PC Card slot so no need to swap out my IDE HDD anymore. I can keep my HDD in the HDD bay and just stick in a CF card into a Cardbus CF cardreader.

This is the card I'm planning on getting when they get more in stock:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820183189
Reviews say that the card is 233x for read only and 100x for write. Dont believe I'll need fast write speeds as the only thing going on it are the system files. (Please correct me if I'm wrong on this)

This is the adapter I plan on using:
http://shop1.outpost.com/product/55...28f00eZVA**.node2?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG
Just need to find somewhere that has it in-stock still

 

You dont need a 300x card. The adapter you bought has a max transfer rate of 33MB/s which is the same as a 220x card. And since it says "up to" i doubt it will actually tranfer at that specific speed due to the manufacturing process so you'll be getting under 200x. At most you should buy a cheaper 266x card, you wont get any gains buy going to 300x. K-TRON?

 

Actually, its most likely an advertsing gimmic. Many will jump the actual speed, in order to attract buyers. You will see no difference between a 266 and 300x card.
In essence, a 266x card is 150kb/sec x 266, which is 39.9 mb/sec. Depending on the cf card manufacturer, this speed can actually be radically different. San Disk for example, is known for this, their cards are labeled as having much higher read/write speeds, than their benchmarks show.
Also, I believe the data bandwidth of the cardbus port is 38mb/sec, so you will be maxxing it out, with a good 266x card.
As always, the speed of the card will fluctuate. Usually flash media is faster at read/writing small file like 4-256kb, and slower at larger files like 2-8mb. This is why it says "up to".

K-TRON

 

Mr_bankai, I think I found exactly what you are looking for

Check this out:
Its a 2.5" ATA female to 1.8"ata female adapter and its only $5.

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.10887

I hope this is what you need,

K-TRON

 

Thanks for the assistance but I need a male 1.8 adapter. But I really appreciate the help.

I had actually found a solution with the PCMCIA adapter but unfortunately the day after my 8GB CF card arrived,,,my laptop had an accident with 2 cars... long story short, the laptop survived (very luckily) but the card did not. I do not had the money to reinvest in another card & adapter combo($120) so I'm settling for a cf to IDE adapter and an my 4GB 133x card. I'll just carry around my 40GB HDD in an exteral case. It's not that big...just would have been nice to have it all internal. But no choice now...

 

I am sorry to hear about the accident, are you okay?

I will keep an eye out for the adaptor if I see a male one

K-TRON

 

Oh wait, Im sorry, the adapter does need to be female, but I dont believe a zif connector will work. The zif connector is the ipod adpater and looks like one of those film connectors. I need a female connector for pins.

As for the "accident" I was not in it. I had absent minddedly left it on top of my car and drove off. Found it on the road in the opposite side of traffic. Luckily It was in a semihard case and the cars only nicked the corners. There was a tiny crack in the bottom and one of the corners was scrapped but all superficial. Im counting my blessings...Thanks for your concern.