Lenovo S12 SSDs and Expresscards

Hey all,

I bought an S12 a couple months ago in the Atom non-ION version.

I am looking into boosting the performance even more with new storage options.

FIRST, has anyone tried to use an SSD expresscard w/ their S12s and loading Windows onto it?

ie:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820161325
OR
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820161324

Those have fast read and write speeds.

NEXT, has anyone upgraded their S12's to a new SSD drive?
My question w/ this is, which drive did you upgrade to? OCZ Vertex, Agility, Summit, Intel, ST, Crucial?? What are those read and write speeds?
That will answer my next question of weather it runs at SATA 1.5 or 3.0.

Answers relating specifically to S12's would be great. I've read dozens of threads about booting off expresscard already, but not off an s12.

Thanks everyone for their help.

 

I'm interested in this answer as well. Perhaps there aren't that many people who've tried this, considering the cost of an SSD vs. the S12 itself.

 

Well on the atom the express-card bus is tied to the usb bus it would be slow like no tomarrow, I have the via s12 and have a lower end expresscard ssd and it boots ubantu ina bout 3 mins, So I placed a normal ssd inside as a hdd replacement and it boots win 7 in about 15 secs...

 

I have recently purchased the 48Gb SolidGO expresscard for an Atom S12. Setup as (test) Win7 boot disk. Boots in 6 seconds. I can confirm it definitely is using the PCI-E channel, which is good.Take care not to have external USB devices connected at boot, that takes longer.


As you'll see from elsewhere on the web, the SolidGO devices get really HOT. (measured at around 60 degrees C)

After a couple of hours I found the handrest above the expresscard slot gets uncomfortable to rest your hand on. So, I've decided not to run the SolidGO permenantly inside :-( which is a shame, as that's what I bought it for.

Didn't want to damage the S12, or wear out the SolidGo. Some 'net reviewers elsewhere have had the devices die after a few months use.

I'd say you would need a bigger laptop with a lot better heat distribution away from the expresscard slot

Now looking for a 50mm mini pci-e SSD to go in the spare slot 2 next to the SIM holder.

 

After some more looking around, switched to a Verbatim Expresscard SSD (32Gb). Slightly slower, but on an Atom, we're not exactly going for serious multi-processing anyway.

The Verbatim is not a boot device, unlike the SolidGo, but not a problem for my needs for a couple of virtual machines.


No luck with 50mm SSDs on the spare mini PCI-e slot, not on a gen 1 S12.

I had heard that the ION version S12 bios supported a card in the spare slot.

So far, no luck, with that either.