Who all has a SSD in their toughbook?

I've had two solid state drives so far and have been very happy with both of them. My first one was a 32GB SLC and decided to get the 80GB MLC Intel drive and was very impressed with the Intel unit. I cold boot XP in less than 20 seconds and Photoshop CS3 is lightning fast. Also don't have to worry about messing up my hard drive (was always the weak point in the Toughbook).
Only way to run a SSD for your OS is with the newer models that take SATA (CF30), the ATA older units (CF28 & CF29) are not fast enough.

 

I'm going to have to dissagree about running ATA SSD's in the older toughbooks:

I'm running a 64GB MLC Transcend ATA drive in my CF-18, and it's great! Performance is right in line with what you mentioned (15 second XP cold boots). The only time I ever see SSD related performance problems is during software installations, where there is a lot of disk read and write going on simultaneously. I did make sure I had my partitions properly aligned, which is supposed to be an absolute requirement to get good performance.

Certianly, an SATA SLC drive would be faster, but the ATA MLC drive still easily blows away the 4200rpm disk it replaced, and I suspect that for most applications, it would beat out the 7200rpm ATA drives (which are unavailable new anyway)

nine

 

Good to hear that, I was always told that the ATA units would be too slow for an OS. Not sure how they did it, but the MLC Intel SSD is way faster than my SLC unit. Both very fast though.
Might have to load an ATA in my brother's CF28 and see how it does. Thanks!

 

The reason for going to the SLC models was that the MLC controllers don’t work very well and freeze up under certain conditions
The transfer speeds are not the issue with the MLC drives
Your Intel unit does not have the same problems that the cheap units that use MLC have
I have a 32gb and 64gb Samsung slc , and a Mtron 32gb slc in my newest Toughbooks



Alex

 

You really should get your hands on the Intel 80gb SSD...you will not regret it.

 

I have an OCZ 64GB SLC-based SSD (rebranded Samsung I read) in my CF-19. At 100Mb/s read, 80Mb/s write it is not quite as fast as some of the most recent drives like the Intel, but as far as I know it is still one of the most power efficient drives. I'm very satisfied with it, the machine is surprisingly fast given the slow CPU, and I can stretch the battery life to 10 hours if I'm really really careful. As I don't need much storage space for my everyday stuff, the SSD is about half empty.

Björn

 

How much battery life is saved by going to SSD drives? I have a 7200rpm drive and on my cf-19 i usually see around 4-5 hours on medium screen brightness and the WWAN running the whole time.
Also would i even see a performance increase in going to a SSD drive? I know some of them are super fast but i do not want to spend $800 on a SSD drive.


-James

 

You can get a good SSD for $400 or so on eBay. You can also get a smaller unit (32gb) on a better deal. Just make sure you do your research because not all SSDs are the same. Some are amazing and others...not so great.
Yes, you will see a big improvement in the SSD over your 7200rpm and you will not run the chance of killing all your info if you drop your toughbook with the HD spinning.
Try it first on your 19 and if you really like it, do it to your 30 as well. The SLC is usually better than MLC, but the Intel 80gb MLC is very fast and uses less battery life.

 

I have a 32 gig Transend unit that should arrive later this week that I will be putting in my CF-27L with a Linux operating system to replace a 40 gig 4200 rpm ata drive. I will let you know how it goes.

 

I'll be doing it no sooner than the fall. I just plan to wait for the right price-point.

 

Well I'm impressed installed a linux distro in a third less time, programs open much faster, and I am getting more time on my battery. Now if I could just locate a 256 MB stick of ram to replace my 128 MB stick, this thing would really fly.

 

Let me know if you find that 256.

 

Biggest thing I can see here is that unlike regular disk drives which are very well tried and proven technology, how reliable are SSD's and will they give 10+ year lifespan which is average for regular disk drives these days in full-time use?

I think they're a fantastic idea and the power savings alone are going to propel the technology a long way into the future, but the reliability is something that I don't see dealt with anywhere.

The other issue is price - at the moment it's massively too high to compete with normal hard drives in all but the highest-end portable systems (like McMac Book's, etc.). I've just had a look on Ebay and here in Oz, there are 128 GB SSD's selling for about A$600 each.

Craig.

 

Craig

This is a quote on the slc ssd drives

“The SSD will outlive the hardware for which it was built for.”

SLC ssds can be calculated, for the most part, to live anywhere between 49 years and 149 years, on average, by the best estimates. The Memoright testing can validate the 128Gb SSD having a write endurance lifespan in excess of 200 years with an average write of 100Gb per day.


Les, a contributor on the forum talks about SSD's here
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=3036991


As far as price the good drives are still expensive
But with time will come down in price

Alex

 

Also, as for the price, I don't think it is too bad. I'm not sure how much HDDs and SSDs actually compete. HDDs will continue to offer much more storage for far less money, likely for years to come. Looking at the capacity alone, SSDs will never be worth it, at least for the foreseeable future, since you will always get a bigger HDD for the same money or less. And yet SSDs sell, and they even sold years ago when you had to pay tens of thousands of Dollars for 64GB, although I suppose that was mostly the military buying. SSDs are not new technology; I became interested in them a few years ago and could only find a few industrial suppliers who charged aforementioned prices. Compared to that, they have already done most of their price-dropping (regarding the number of Dollars/Euros, not percentages). They seem to be quite affordable already, because you can get them almost anywhere now and read about them on all the tech sites, and there would not be that many producing and stocking them if 'the masses' would not buy.

Personally I do not really see HDDs and SSDs as competing. I use HDDs for big, slow, stationary storage and SSDs (well, only one so far ) for the computer I actually work with. The SSD's advantages in speed, power saving and shock protection seem so significant to me that I would no longer use a HDD in my work machine even if it was free and had unlimited capacity.

Björn

 

Three big things with SSD's:

- huge retail cost due to the espensive wholesale price of the RAM flash memory devices,
- *long term* reliability is still unproven in very high capacity SSD's despite claims from Memoright, etc. to the contrary,
- technology is not mature enough for high-demand mainstream consumer use.

I know that military and government organisations have been using SSD's every since flash memory for bulk data storage became viable, so for our Toughbooks that bodes well as they're meant to be 'industrial' grade systems from the outset.

I seriously like SSD's because the huge reduction in power usage and, despite what I wrote in point 2 above, the fact they have no moving parts is an excellent advantage but of course it also means that repairing SSD's is out of the question if they fail (and they will, especially the cheap-arse ones that have poor design and manufacturing standards). Current HDD's are cheap, but at least it is possible to actually get them repaired if required and plenty of places do it.

Main issue I see with HDD's vs SSD's above all else is ensuring the long-term integrity of stored data, as hardware is replacable while stored data is not, and I think this will depend very much on the way that the control side of the storage devices develop over time.

I also think lots of people will fall into the mis-conception that SSD's mean backups are not required at all, and that might create some hairy situations. I have a tape backup system for my Sun servers and workstation back over at my house in Sydney which is definitely old-skool but it works very well, however that isn't feasible for a toughbook setup like I have here while I'm living in Adelaide (though now I have the CF-28 networked via a DLink DIR-451, it creates more options), especially when I am just renting a room and not a whole house.

Perhaps the real boon of SSD's will be that once they become cost-effective, we'll be able to clone one SSD to another and use that as a primary backup (especially since it's extremely easy to move to off-site storage if necessary) rather than disk or tape based arrays. I also see RAID-style SSD arrays coming (again since they will be massively more compact than HDD RAID arrays).

What backup methods could we employ with our TB's that involve using SSD's? Seems like an avenue that should be explored, even if it just means we use SSD's for backup media and keep using much cheaper, proven, HDD's for primary data storage.

Craig.

 

The set up that I use is my Intel 80GB SSD as the main drive and I have a backup of all of my files on a standard Western Digital external hard drive. I also have a 32GB express card that I copy all of my files to as well. If I ever do have a failure of my SSD, I can get the info off of one of the backups I have.
One thing is this, I've fried quite a few standard laptop hard drives, and if you run a fast hd like a 7200 rpm, chances are, you will mess it up in the future. With a solid state, you at least do not run the chance of mechanical failure that you do with spinning platters.
As far as a pure cost objective goes, I've seen a lot of laptops cheaper than a toughbook...netbooks are even cheaper. Why do any of us own toughbooks than (other than the ones that buy the really old models)? I think it has to do with the durability of the product.
In my line of work, if I were to lose everything on my laptop to a failure, it would cost me many times over more than the most expensive hard drive I could put in the thing. To me, it's worth the cost.

 

I won't post any links here but there are several forums that deal with tweeking SSDs to work better with windows and linux. Google "SSD Tweeks" and you can read for yourself. The main thing is that you want to minimize writing to the disk and disable the indexing services, the pre-fetcher, and the disk defragmenter. Due to my memory limitations I did not disable the swap file / paging file. I am runniing Win XP Service Pack 3 and it is snappy considering my procesor and ram.

 

Interesting info there - thanks.

I guess the big thing is still the cost factor - SSD's are just far too expensive to be affordable compared to well-made 2.5" form factor HDD's but I know that will change. Just like when HDD's first started. I used to have a pair of Hitachi DK-815 disk drives. 850 MB storage on each, huge 9" multiple platters. Enough heavy duty mechanicals to built a tank from, and when they spun up it sounded like a modern 2-engine jet airliner throttling up for takeoff.

I think SSD's are definitely the way to go for eliminating mechanical issues associated with HDD's. The challenge will be seeing if they can withstand other stresses as well. I'm betting there are 'industrial' and/or 'military' grade SSD's coming with really good specs for EMI/EMP tolerance, heat, etc. but they'll be out of reach of most of us for quite a while.

Craig.

 

Well... SSDs have their OWN issues, as I'm finding... ESPECIALLY the faster ones using a SATA/Mini-PCIe interface. They DO run faster, but the more price-friendly ones (Like the Super Talent & Runcore models so popular for use in the NetBooks) have an advertised life of 100,000 read/write cycles per cell. Now 100,000 cycles is a lot... with most applications and data, that is more than enough for a lifetime. But when part of that disk is used for a swapfile, that life can be used up FAST. I know they promise "intelligent wear-leveling" and all that dren; but this really is still an infant technology and I'm not inclined to trust ANY critical data to storage with such advertised limitations; I'm finding myself wondering what "Undisclosed Features" might be lurking in such a device. Winblows really will not run worth a crap with the swapfile disabled, especially for OS use. EVEN with 2GB RAM, it EXPECTS the virtual memory to be there, and it will TRY to use it even when there is more than enough RAM to do without it. My experience with Windows tells me that most failures in conventional hard drives (which have a life cycle of hundreds of millions of read/write cycles per sector) first manifest in the areas used to store the swapfile because of the way Windoze abuses it; I can't imagine decreasing that life by a factor of 1000 is going to be a good thing.

mnem
Oh crap... I just killed the brain cell with my phone number on it...

 

Yes I agree

I would not recommend any “price friendly model”
I use Samsung and Mtron SLC models only

Alex

 

Well, yeah - sure. But... I can't justify spending $600 on a drive for a $179.00 NetBook; the entire point was to build a small, cheap machine that I could afford to carry with me all the time and NOT be worried about.

With the 2GB / 32GB upgrade, I have $290 invested in this machine; that's HALF what I have invested in my PHONE. I think it will be much more cost effective to just do regular backups and buy the cheapo drives; they keep getting cheaper EVERY DAY.

Plus - the cheaper they get, the faster they'll drive down the prices on the high-end drives.

mnem
The trend in the PC industry, unfortunately, is the OPPOSITE of the ToughBook philosophy; we are moving towards the age of ALL technology being "Bic-Lighter Technology" - buy it cheap, use it up, throw it away.

 

Yes I agree it's not a good idea to buy an expensive slc ssd drive for a netbook
It is however a good choice for a $3000 Toughbook

Here is a notable new netbook that uses a standard hard drive
ASUS’ new Eee PC 1000HE is one hot selling Netbook
The slightly larger screen size (10.2 inch LED-backlit LCD ) in comparison to previous models 8.9in screen is a big improvement
And of note here is the use of a 160GB Seagate Momentus 5400.5 Hard Drive in comparison to the inexpensive problematic ssd drives that competing and previous models have is a real improvement

Alex

 

Mmmhmmm... that's the updated version of the 901HA - I looked at them, but the conventional HD cuts battery life almost in half.

That model is going toe-to-to against the HP Mini pricewise; I think I'd still rather get the HP if I were going to spend that kindof dough, especially since everybody says their screen is almost twice as bright and HP's laptop keyboards are the best in the industry. That becomes very important when you go shrinking it down; my ASUS has an 84% scale KB; the HP has a 92% scale model with full tactile.

My ASUS is just what I expected; a CHEAP, TINY laptop. It's PERFECT for what I want it for.

mnem
I can get it for you whalesole!

 

I am not in the market for a Netbook ,but the computer online store that I buy my desktop parts is promoting them and they seem to know the trends

I guess its like buying shoes, you have to try them out and compare side to side
I had not thought about the keyboard size , that’s some thing to get used to just like the cf-18/19
You mention the screen brightness, I wonder if the HP uses a conventional ccf instead of the led ?
One issue to note as far as hp is the software load is terrible in hp laptops and desktops
I have never seen a more bloated software load from any manufacturer

Alex

 

That is not surprising. Although I have never had a HP notebook, my new printer came with an irreducible driver set that was just shy of 1GB. I had to call India to get the "corporate" laptop version which came in at around 178MB, that's just shy of 9 times the size of my first hard drive! Talk about "bloat ware".
CAP

 

From what I've seen, the HP Mini is advertising a LED backlit Tru-Brite screen; as far as the software load... well, yeah - it is pretty bad, but no worse than D ull and E- TardMachine. Remember, these machines are aimed at the lowest common denominator in the market - as a result, they're full of crap to appeal to the O-Gee Wiz-Bang crowd.

Also - you are talking about people who still VOLUNTARILY use AOL... you can't possibly make things TOO EASY for that crowd; the LAST thing they want to do is THINK about using their computer. That's why there's an app for EVERYTHING... and why they're made so you can initiate a full data backup and a system restore (from the built-in restore partition) REMOTELY.

mnem
I've worked h3lldesk; I've looked into the abyss of human stupidity, and it looked back into me...

 

Bought OCZ V2 120 Gig for my CF-19 MK1. Works as expected.

SIN

 

I just wanted to post a little perspective of fledgling (New) Technology. No such thing in Electronics except when it comes to Cell Phones and MP3 players, Camera's. All Computer Technology has been out for 20 years or more and follows a development and production for the Consumer Market that goes back at least 5-6 years before releasing to Public..........ie CPU Technology, RAM Technology. USAF was using SSD's in the 80's for an Air Defense System.............funny thing is it was around 1K. It never went down when I worked there and lasted for years running 24/7. Developed by Hughes in the mid to late 70's. The Big Difference for Electronic Technology is (as its always been) miniaturization.

SIN

 

Well, that switched-state bubble memory you're referring to is about as closely related to a modern SSD as it is to a pipe wrench ( I'm serious - it was based on ferrite core technology - iron - and modern SSDs/NVRAM are silicon-based); not only was it not discrete, it was proprietary and would only work with the backplane system it was designed for.:GEEK:

The notion of technology moving to market being a linear development is not surprising; what is surprising is how often commercialization redirects development. 20 years ago we dreamed of a wireless phone we could put in a pocket; now we COULD build it in a pen, but you can't buy a cellphone that doesn't have a dozen (or dozens of) other, non-phone related bits of crap to make you buy services from the service provider you don't need or even necessarily WANT.

20 years ago, we had portable computers that weighed 16 lbs and could barely keep track of paper clips and thumbtacks; we got excited when Apple gave us one that not only had a floppy drive, but a hard drive as well. Now we're not happy unless we can get a 4 lb laptop that combines the functionality of a video arcade, high definition home theater (with remote control), telephone, television, personal secretary, GPS, and stores our entire music collection while providing us access to our eMail, favorite newsgroups and IM, plus lets us look at every retarded bit of video on YouTube... Oh, wait, you want WIRELESS ANYWHERE with that, and all under $1000?

mnem
But wait. Now I've got all that... in MY PHONE. And it weighs 4 OUNCES... :wink:

 

Uhhh No.......not ferrite core based. Tread lightly in your assumption. The nice bit about working in the USAF was seeing technology that was made from the 40's to devices that took years to become mainstream ie the SSD.

SIN

 

If I wanted to install an SSD in my Cf-30, can I use the standard TB harddrive case, or would I require a special mounting "platform" to fit it in the harddrive bay ?

 

Most of the common SSDs in production today are offered in standard HD form factors; don't pay any attention to my posts about the eeePC - they use a mini-pci express SSD. The CF-30 uses a 2.5" SATA HDD, so a suitable replacement should be available from numerous manufacturers. Look on newegg; they have oodles... but be prepared to pay a fair price for one with good speed and capacity; the caveats I mention earlier DO still apply re: short life expectancy with the cheaper drives.

mnem
Zoot zoot ZOOTY!!!

 

BTW -

I didn't SAY they WERE ferrite core; I said they were RELATED TO it, and they were. The principles on which bubble-memory work were discovered by the scientists who were working to make core memory smaller and faster. Bubble memory has very little in common with modern silicon-based RAM/NVRAM; but the US government was very interested in it and spent a lot of money developing it until they found out just how susceptible it was to even a mild EMP.

mnem<~~~Bubble-icious~~~*

 

Question to those who have Transcend IDE SSD drive installed, was there anything special done to make it work?

I was considering installing one like that into my CF T2 (instead of 40 Gb Toshiba MK4025GASL).
I contacted several repair shops in my city dealing with Panasonic, but they've said that doing this not possible, since Toughbooks use 3.3v native drives, and Transcend is 5v.

 

I hear that everybody keeps talking about power savings with the SSD technology, but exactly how much "extra" run time do you get from using the SSD drive. Are we talking about an extra 30 minutes on a laptop that already gets 7 hours, or are we talking about 2 hours?

thanks

 

By far, the largest power consumption on a laptop is the backlight, you'r not going to get huge amounts of extra runtime without addressing that, and your easiest, cheapest way to increase battery life is to keep it turned down as far as possible. For going to an SSD, I'd say 30min extra on a 7 hr laptop is probably in the ballpark, but it's going to be very usage dependant

nine

 

The main reason to upgrade to ssd is performance
other benefits are
less heat
shock resistance
silent
lower power consumption



Alex

 

A bit offtopic note: to increase battery life it is always good to have maximal possible amount of RAM onboard - it allows OS to use swap memory less and hence lower power consumption.

I guess speed, safety (even though toughbook HDD's are pretty safe themselves) and silence are main reasons to install SSD. Current technology, indeed, does not provide that much power saving, at least I would say that about SSD "for people', not uberexpensive ones.

 

Looking to put an SSD in a CF-18 /i have installed on my police motorcycle. I want o get rid of the constant reboots I am experiencing. I don't need a large drive as I am using just under 15 gigs right now with little need for expanding on this. I was looking at a Trancend 32 gb pata mlc drive http://www.amazon.com/Transcend-32GB-SSD-2-5-Inch/dp/B000T9QRKE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1243817682&sr=8-1
Would this be good drive to use. The programs I run are for police reports and traffic tickets so they are not that intenive . Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

As you notice, the reviews on that Amazon page are quite mixed - that's because Transcend has been quietly updating its MLC-SSDs over the years, yet Amazon thinks they are all the same product, listing reviews for all generations on the same page. The first generation was horribly slow, and if I remember correctly Transcend themselves recommended against installing an operating system on those. The newer ones have gotten faster, and while they won't satisfy those who want high end performance, they seem to be pretty decent for their price. Just make sure you don't get an old model!

 

I've got an intel 64gb SSD running windows7 in my CF-19. I got a great deal on it so I decided to give it a try. For me it's almost not worth it to give up my 250gb HD I had installed. I'm not a huge multimedia guy but I do like to carry alot of software and my TB serves as kind of a jack of all trades pseudo-work computer when I'm on the move. I added a little more room with a 32gb express card so we'll see if that works out. So far I haven't used it enough to tell if it's worth the increased battery efficiency and potential resistance to rough handling versus less storage. I'm a Soldier currently deployed so if it's going to work for me this will be the time to find out.

 

Could anyone suggest a good fairly priced 32 gb ssd pata drive

 

tcrwfrd50:
I have the 64GB version of that SSD in my CF-18. Works great. Performance is excellent once I got the partitions properly alligned (do a google search on SSD partition alignment)

nine

 

I actually went with the Transcend 32 gb SLC model instead. A bit more expensive but it should be the better option. Is there still a need for partition alignment with the SLC?

 

I will actually be using Apricorn's EZ upgrade kit to clone my hard drive to the SSD. Will this prevent me from retaining any partition alignment I would do to the SSD?

 

yes, you still need to align your SLC SSD. Good info on alignment:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=350177 post #6

and a nice discussion on how to do it:
http://www.ocztechnologyforum.com/forum/showthread.php?p=325221#post325221

I'm not familiar with the Apricorn software. it may or may not preserve the alignment.

nine

 

Thanks to those who helped. I ended up with a Transcend 32 gb SLC SSD. Aligned, formatted and cloned. Put it in and it works great on the bike. 6 hours of HARD riding and it did not miss a beat.

 

Intel has a good video of there SSD in a laptop strapped onto an enduro bike racing in a cross country rally. It took a licking, and it wasn't even in a TB.

I had ordered a Intel X-25 Extreme 32Gb SSD from NewEgg last week. It's the fastest, most advanced SSD Intel makes right now that I am aware of. They had messed up on my order so I had cancelled it since I was going out of town. I really would like to have 64Gigs but damn they are expensive! I have a Hitachi 320Gb 7200 Rpm now in my CF-30 and only have 19 Gb's used. I stripped this thing down to only the programs I use.

My XP start up times are at 41 seconds which blows my mind, I can't imagine what it would be with a SSD.

If I decide to reorder I will report my findings.