Laptops - A Solid State do-it-yourself FAQ - v 0.2

[MissaFX]

Hello everyone,
I have decided to make a little guide here which will be helpful to people considering converting their laptop to solid state on the cheap.  This guide is for pcengine-fx.com only and may not be re-printed in any other form or on any other website.  This guide was written entirely by me except the one part I borrowed from Wikipedia as stated below.  Stealing faqs is not only fattening but can increase your chances of cancer.  You've been warned.

Version 0.2 - Corrections + More Partition Information
Version 0.1 - Alpha FAQ
(C) 2008 - PhantasyStudios

Because of the speed differences between Compact Flash cards and other flash memories, I have only considered using CF cards (and Microdrives) for this conversion.

Considerations and Limitations:
CF 4.0 cards come formatted as a removable drive with a flag so that all windows partition managers will ignore the drive.  This can be overcome with dos software or with linux.

CF cards over 4GB cannot be mounted to the PCMCIA bus.

Flash memory usually can write 100,000-1,000,000 times to sector 0, but they do not really know how many writes all the other parts of the card will handle.  Because of this, you must control Window's use of the page file or put the page file on a PCMCIA CF while the OS is on the internally mounted CF.  Or you can put the page file on a ramdisk, but there can be problems with this as well on the OSs that need it most.

CF cards generally run 1/14th to 3/14ths the cost of a real solid state drive.

DMA buffering can become an issue on windows 2000 and newer, this can result in "sparkles" in your mp3 playback.  I am trying to find a fix to this short of storing the mp3s on a ramdisk or a CD/DVD disc.  In Windows 98 you can set DMA buffers which help, and on the older P1 and P2 laptops it is really a crapshoot how well this will fix it.  This does not make programs work badly however.  Now really causes any issue browsing the web or viewing your favorite hentai picture collection (infact pictures and directories with MANY files load really, really, really fast on a 133X card).  This DMA buffering problem is I think caused by the fact that CF cards do not have a buffer like HDs do.

DOS and Windows 9x are really the ideal CF OSs, but 2000 and XP can be installed if you know what you are doing.

The following describes how fast of a card you need for the cpu of laptop you have.  It's not any trouble to use a faster card in PC laptops, but these speeds will tell you about what you need to have, to make the CF work as good as a HD in a range of machines:
CPU: Pentium I    Pentium II    Pentium III    Pentium IV
CFS:    80X            133X       133X-266X    266X-300X
OSs: DOS, 95      95, 98, 2k    98, 2k, XP     98, 2k, XP

Multi Level Cell VS Single Level Cell (from wikipedia):
MLC NAND flash is a flash memory technology using multiple levels per cell to allow more bits to be stored as opposed to SLC NAND flash technologies, which uses a single level per cell. Currently, most MLC NAND stores four states per cell, so the four states yield two bits of information per cell. This reduces the amount of margin separating the states and results in the possibility of more errors.

MLC NAND has the benefit of being cheaper due to the denser storage method used, but software complexity can be increased to compensate for a larger bit error ratio (BER).

The higher BER requires an algorithm that can correct errors up to five bits and detect the condition of more than five bad bits. The most commonly used algorithm is Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH code).

Conclusion?  Get SLC CF cards for OSs newer than Win98 if you can afford to.

Required Hardware:
The following website has most of the parts you could need, they are cheap and they all have free shipping.
http://www.dealextreme.com/products.dx/category.313

You may also need to order a PCMCIA to CF adapter.  Which can be found for about 6 dollars on ebay.
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37.l1313&satitle=sandisk+pcmcia+CF+adapter&category0=

The most common part you will need to do this is a 2.5" CF laptop adapter or a 1.8" CF laptop adapter.  These adapters are a long green board which plugs into the same socket your HD used to use. (From dealextreme)

As of the time of this writing I know of only one source for a dual CF to 44 IDE adapter (1.8" size):
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=320292984484

Though I am not covering desktops in this guide, many internal IDE adapters for CF cards can also be used.  266 or 300X cards make fine OS drives in a desktop as long as you put the swap file on a real HD.

You may also require a CF to USB adapter for some operations:
http://www.etechisland.com/product_info.php?cPath=536&products_id=30962&osCsid=0486c29c161a8b9e55fb208323b65658

Some people may also find a Microdrive (non solidstate) can meet some of their secondary needs.

Required Software:
Internal CF only, single partition - fdisk, fdisk /mbr
Internal CF only, multi partition - HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool, fdisk or other partition manager
Bootable external CF - HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool, fdisk or other partition manager
Ghost 7.5 or 8.0 can be very, very handy to have.  Ghost 8.0 has its own USB drivers, Ghost 7.5 can mount USB drives which are given a DOS driver or a BIOS pre-boot driver, the latter of which is starting to pop up on new machines with only serial ATA drives.

Ghost - The DOS versions of ghost, 7.5 and 8.0 are both wonderful tools for many PC projects.  However Ghost can be VERY helpful in setting up the partition table of your CF.  Want more than 2 Primary DOS partitions?  Yup you can do that.  Want to mix FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS?  Yup Ghost will let you do that too.  You see, it seems for whatever reason, you can only alter the partition table of a CF once per formatting.  So it is not possible to make one partiton, and then add another and then add another.  You have to write them all in one pass.
What I do is to set up the partitions I want on a HD.  I used a 20GB HD as a simulation 16GB CF card.  Using Disc Managment in Windows 2000 (or in XP or Vista) I wrote a 4GB FAT32 partition to it, then made it active and a dos bootable system disk for windows 98se.  I then wrote another FAT32 partition to it, this one 2GB for windows 2000.  I wrote a 3rd partition which was a 8.9GB NTFS and then read this 20GB disc into Ghost 7.5.  I made an image of the HD with the boot option selected, high compression.   I then put this image back onto the 20GB HD and wrote the information from it to my 16GB CF.  I used 15GB in my formatting estimation, so it made my partitions all slightly bigger than they were to use this extra space.
If you put this card now in a USB card reader, you can only read the first partition.  But if you put it into an internal reader device, you can use and view all the partitions normally, like if they were on a HD.  I am guessing this is because of a bug/limitation in the code for removable disc drives.

The following picture is what my 16GB CF looks like after formatting with Ghost (Note: this is a Dual CF setup)
/cfpartvn9.jpg

I can make custom, empty ghost disc images for people to put the partition table they want on their CF as long as time permits if you cannot figure out how to do it yourself.  Just PM me with the subject Ghost Help.


I will now break the modifications down into 4 levels:

1 - The Non-mod:
This modification or lack thereof is one where you buy a 4GB or smaller CF card or Microdrive and put it into a CF to PCMCIA converter card.
Result - The laptop now has more drive space to store files.
Drawbacks - Accessing a PCMCIA card uses CPU time like USB does, a PCMCIA card typically takes 1/14th or less the power a HD does, but this does use a little bit more battery power.
Advantages - You do not have to modify anything. With an internal HD OS, you can in most cases, use this to store more MP3s.

2 - Single Internal CF:
This modification uses an internal converter board which takes CF into 44 pin IDE.
Result - The laptop is now fully solid starte.
Drawbacks - CF cards do not have their own buffer, because of this streaming audio or video files off the internal CF is extreemly hard if not impossible without getting *sparkle* in your audio.  This can be overcome by using a ramdisk to store the file you wish to stream to winamp or windows media player or by putting your MP3s on a CD/DVD and then loading them into the ramdisk from that drive.  Windows 2000 and later have a swapfile which might cause problems for your CF card down the road, mostly if it is a MLF card.  MPG, WMV and AVI files seem to play back 100% fine.
Advantages - Your laptop probably gained about 40% additional running time since the "HD" now takes 5-10% of the power of the HD you just removed.  No HD noise.  HD cannot crash if you drop the laptop.

3 - Double Internal CF:
This modification uses an internal converter board which takes 2 CF cards into 44 pin IDE.
Result - The laptop is now fully solid state.
Drawbacks - CF cards do not have their own buffer, because of this streaming audio or video files off the internal CF is extreemly hard if not impossible without getting *sparkle* in your audio.  This can be overcome by using a ramdisk to store the file you wish to stream to winamp or windows media player or by putting your MP3s on a CD/DVD and then loading them into the ramdisk from that drive.  MPG, WMV and AVI files seem to play back 100% fine.  By having the second card, which can be a smaller 2-4GB card, Windows 2000 and later have a dedicated swapfile disc, which will save you from loosing your system CF from tons of swapfile writes.
Advantages - Your laptop probably gained about 30-35% additional running time since the "HD" now takes 10-20% of the power of the HD you just removed.  No HD noise.  HD cannot crash if you drop the laptop.

3b - Single Internal CF with PCMCIA swap CF:
This modification uses an internal converter board which takes 1 CF card into 44 pin IDE.  And it requires a PCMCIA to CF adapter.
Result - The laptop is now fully solid state.
Drawbacks - CF cards do not have their own buffer, because of this streaming audio or video files off the internal CF is extreemly hard if not impossible without getting *sparkle* in your audio.  This can be overcome by using a ramdisk to store the file you wish to stream to winamp or windows media player or by putting your MP3s on a CD/DVD and then loading them into the ramdisk from that drive.  MPG, WMV and AVI files seem to play back 100% fine.  By having the second card, which can be a smaller 2GB card, Windows 2000 and later have a dedicated swapfile disc, which will save you from loosing your system CF from tons of swapfile writes.  However the PCMCIA bus might be slower than your internal IDE bus on the laptop.
Advantages - Your laptop probably gained about 30-35% additional running time since the "HD" now takes 10-20% of the power of the HD you just removed.  No HD noise.  HD cannot crash if you drop the laptop.

4 - CF-FX:
This modification uses an internal converter board which takes 1 CF card and 1 Microdrive into 44 pin IDE.
Your laptop must support 3.3v IDE power!!!
I personally suggest this drive: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/storage/display/seagate-st1-5gb.html
A typical price on ebay is about 14 dollars with shipping for one or less as of 9/1/08.
Result - Your laptop OS is now solid state as well as many of your files.  But your swapfile and streaming media are stored on a Microdrive which has a standard buffer so it will not sparkle.
Drawbacks - Microdrives use more power than a CF, but not a terrable amount.  Microdrives will generally fail if you drop one while it is in operation from 4 feet or more.
Advantages - You get basically 90% of the advantages of running solid state, while not being affected by any of the dwawbacks.  However this method costs the most to do.

4b - CF-FXb:
Same as the CF-FX, but you add a 2nd CF card via a PCMCIA port, or even heck 2 more

[albinoMithos]

Nice work Missa. 

[Paisa49]

For non-techie rejects, such as myself, what does this mod accomplish exactly?

[NecroPhile]

Nice write up, Missa.

For non-techie rejects, such as myself, what does this mod accomplish exactly?

Longer run times on battery power, less heat being generated, and much less chance of damage to your data due to physical shock.

[albinoMithos]

For non-techie rejects, such as myself, what does this mod accomplish exactly?

Usually solid state drives (SSD) are faster than drives with moving parts and last longer.  So in effect you're speeding up the data access time for your computer and the lifetime of your data.

[MissaFX]

For non-techie rejects, such as myself, what does this mod accomplish exactly?

This mod does a lot of things, assuming you are not doing mod 1.

It increases battery life, in P1 laptops up to 50% or more by simply swapping your old dying HD for a CF card.
It dramatically increases read times for files in most cases.
Writing times are often the same or better too, especially if you buy a 266 or better SLC card.
Less heat in your laptop.
Less chance to loose your data due to mechanical failure.
Less weight.
Etc.

As long as you want to take an old laptop and make it a viable web platform, most of these options will work.

[ClodBusted]

Time to fire up this old thread.

I just retrofitted my Dell Vostro 3360 with a 500 GB Samsung SSD. This computer has been upgraded from Windows 7 to Windows 10.
Usually, this is not a big deal with toda Ys (fuck PCEFX forum's autocorrection) computers. However, for me, it wasn't as easy, since there's no dedicated drive bay accessible from the outside on this ultrabook sized laptop computer.

What I did:
1. Bought a Samsung SSD.
2. Bought a USB 3.0 to S-ATA cable.
3. Attached the SSD to my computer using that cable.
4. Downloaded and installed Samsung Data Migration for Windows.
5. Cloned my internal 320 GB HDD to the 500 GB SSD using the Samsung software. Took about 2-3 hours.
6. Shut down.
7. Disassembled the computer to replace the internal HDD with the SSD, using this video guide:

8. Reassembled the computer.
9. DONE! Windows 7, 8 and 10 will recognize SSDs automatically and configure the system accordingly.

Fuck yeah. :catastrophy:


EDIT:
10. Downloaded Samsung Magician for Windows to check for firmware updates and SSD configuration (AHCI, trim, etc.). And as I said before, all the important config settings were already done by Windows.

[SignOfZeta]

And to think, if made today this would be a 22 min unwatchably bad video.

[Psycho Punch]

Wow this is a dark age era thread all right, nowadays having 500 gb ssd cards running is almost plug and play.

Nice info for retro PC enthusiasts though.

[SignOfZeta]

Wow this is a dark age era thread all right, nowadays having 500 gb ssd cards running is almost plug and play.

Nice info for retro PC enthusiasts though.

I only ever remembering it being plug and play. My earliest SSD system was a 2008 Unibody MacBook. It must have only been difficult for some machines and drives in a very specific time period...and for some reason the people of PCEFX were uniquely gifted this essential guide. I just hope nobody got killed for jacking this FAQ.

[ClodBusted]

And to think, if made today this would be a 22 min unwatchably bad video.

Cut the crap.
You are not the target audience for this video. You neither have that laptop computer, nor you have the need for replacing the HDD within that device.

At least you can do the assembly by yourself within that 22 minutes leisurely WHILE watching the video. Instead of having to reach for the TV remote, tablet, whatever, and pause it for every step.
Also, if that video or similar ones wouldn't exist, I would have to go by trial and error, which means more wasted time than just the length of the video.

One thing I have to thank Dell is, even if they crammed the HDD deep into the Vostro 3360's guts, they made it somewhat simple to disassemble and rebuild the computer. I had to deal with 3 types of screws, which were easy to discern, and one of the types (M2.5x5) were even referenced on the components . The keyboard was simple to remove. The flat ribbon cables plug into connectors with flip-tops to hold them in place. Removing the top base plate was even more simple than shown in the video. It also helps that the body is mostly metal.

The last Sony Vaio laptop (standard size) I repaired was a nightmare of plastic hooks that need to be pryed apart in many places simultaneously.

[BigusSchmuck]

+1 for Samsung's ssd migration software. Hence the reason why I usually suggest their ssds over Intel (though Intel has their own migration software). I would also point out M2s are not as great as advertised, seen them fail like those old hitachi deathstar drives.

[xcrement5x]

Does the Samsung migration software need a Samsung drive for both ends, or just as a target?

[ClodBusted]

It needs a Samsung drive as a target.

[BigusSchmuck]

Does the Samsung migration software need a Samsung drive for both ends, or just as a target?

Just as a target. Intel is lame that they both have to be Intel drives. I use HDClone, its free and does the job nicely. Just very slow. https://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html

[xcrement5x]

Does the Samsung migration software need a Samsung drive for both ends, or just as a target?

Just as a target. Intel is lame that they both have to be Intel drives. I use HDClone, its free and does the job nicely. Just very slow. https://www.miray.de/products/sat.hdclone.html

I will bookmark this for the future.  I needed to do the migration for my wife's laptop a bit ago and it was a pain in the ass.  But it was also a Samsung EVO I was putting I guess I could have used their software if I'd known about it.