CF-19 MK5, alternative boot drives, lets discuss!

Going off on a tangent here, so best to not put this in my build thread...

There are some really cool chinese adapter cards on eBay. I have one in my orange CF-19 that allows me to attach a SATA drive and also a USB through the WWAN PCI-e mini card slot. Works nicely. I can turn of WWAN in bios and the attached thumb drive vanishes.

My original intent was a hidden, bootable linux drive. I need a bigger thumb drive though, and this adapter required micro hard soldering. So, I am off to look at other inexpensive and simpler options. Like maybe PCI-E adapter cards to put SSD drives in there. Then a normal platter drive in its regular spot for large file storage space... Or attach a SATA (my adapter can, if one could find the room and motivation to do the micro soldering). And a super cool one allows you to put dual SD cards into there.

The dual SD cards is my favorite option. I am likely getting one just to fool around with.

But is there any disadvantage to using the PCI-e slot for a main boot drive day in and out? Are we taking a big performance hit to load the primary OS through there?

Heck, can windows even be loaded onto a "usb attached hdd"?

 

windows can boot from usb stick, so mini pci hdd should work IF it is a full mini pci slot ... and not just one that misses half the ports due to intend for wwan-only ... you need to verify this for your particular model

only downside i see might be additional heat ... and thus additional throttling via the toughbook bios ... nothing some cold water couldn't resolve ... it's a toughbook after all ;-)

 

I like the mini usb drives that will fit behind the back rear door. Of course,I'm talking a persistence feature MX-16 bootable live usb that will save your settings & adjustments (in Linux). This would allow you to surf the internet between machines quickly and easy. Would just need to change your boot order in Bios

 

just tossin' this out there ...
https://tails.boum.org/

i have used this in the past when i did not want to use a "company machine" to research some things related to a *problem* with their business .
there are also other cases for using it
if you want to impress the owner of a business and show him how easy it is to use his network and bandwidth for nefarious purposes and not leave a trace , drag this out .
explain that you can use his network to do anything and (while powering down the machine and pulling the flash drive) that when you power back up ... no one will be the wiser .
this would be great to carry on one of those super small usb drives that fit behind the door on a few of the CF models .
heck , pack one on your key chain !

 

That is VERY COOL!