Hello,
I plan to upgrade my Dell D420 ultramobile laptop with some more decent storage and can't find the answers for couple of important questions.
Firstly, the laptop uses a 1.8 inch HDD which spins at around 4200 RPM which produces 20MBps of transfer speeds, seek times you would not believe and general sluggishness. In my desktop, I got myself a m4 SSD and every time I change the PCs, I get awe'd by the m4, or shock and awed by the laptop.
Since there are not many 1.8 inch SSD that use ZIF(ATA) interface, and those that are available are unbelievably expensive (even for a SSD) I'm thinking about compact flash card with an adapter. Since I use ubuntu/fedora, not many media files then 32 gigs should be enough. Other option is to use the PCCard slot for a bootable CF card and leave the 60 gig HDD for media and other large files. This would get me a two drive solution in a UMPC :>
Questions would be:
What kind of speeds can the PC Card interface achieve. The information I could get is - in UDMA mode, 133 MBps theoretical max. Cant find any specs for my dell model so cant tell which UDMA mode is supported here (damn you all OEMs to hell. Why cant you compile one decent spec sheet for anything I buy from you!).
Also, theoretical max does not mean a lot sometimes. Regarding the drive bay - replacement drives from dell have ATA7 interface. Which of course does not mean that the lappy connection supports it. It can be quite slower at ATA6. And there seems to be no info on it.
Second question would be, can anyone tell me what can I expect from CF cards (I aim for 300+ rates)? The newer ones (CF 6.0 if Im not mistaken) have quite decent built in controllers that support TRIM. Again, manufacturers seem to omit the CF standard info on their products. If there would be no trim support, would the performance degradation hurt a lot?
In the end, is it generally a good idea to try and make such a ghetto storage solution? What drawback am I missing?
For an guestimate regarding PCCard speeds etc. The lappy was a quite high end business PC when it came out in 2006. Other specs are Core Duo ULV at 1.2 ghz, 2 gigs of ram.
Thanks for any suggestions/ideas/bashing :>
I plan to upgrade my Dell D420 ultramobile laptop with some more decent storage and can't find the answers for couple of important questions.
Firstly, the laptop uses a 1.8 inch HDD which spins at around 4200 RPM which produces 20MBps of transfer speeds, seek times you would not believe and general sluggishness. In my desktop, I got myself a m4 SSD and every time I change the PCs, I get awe'd by the m4, or shock and awed by the laptop.
Since there are not many 1.8 inch SSD that use ZIF(ATA) interface, and those that are available are unbelievably expensive (even for a SSD) I'm thinking about compact flash card with an adapter. Since I use ubuntu/fedora, not many media files then 32 gigs should be enough. Other option is to use the PCCard slot for a bootable CF card and leave the 60 gig HDD for media and other large files. This would get me a two drive solution in a UMPC :>
Questions would be:
What kind of speeds can the PC Card interface achieve. The information I could get is - in UDMA mode, 133 MBps theoretical max. Cant find any specs for my dell model so cant tell which UDMA mode is supported here (damn you all OEMs to hell. Why cant you compile one decent spec sheet for anything I buy from you!).
Also, theoretical max does not mean a lot sometimes. Regarding the drive bay - replacement drives from dell have ATA7 interface. Which of course does not mean that the lappy connection supports it. It can be quite slower at ATA6. And there seems to be no info on it.
Second question would be, can anyone tell me what can I expect from CF cards (I aim for 300+ rates)? The newer ones (CF 6.0 if Im not mistaken) have quite decent built in controllers that support TRIM. Again, manufacturers seem to omit the CF standard info on their products. If there would be no trim support, would the performance degradation hurt a lot?
In the end, is it generally a good idea to try and make such a ghetto storage solution? What drawback am I missing?
For an guestimate regarding PCCard speeds etc. The lappy was a quite high end business PC when it came out in 2006. Other specs are Core Duo ULV at 1.2 ghz, 2 gigs of ram.
Thanks for any suggestions/ideas/bashing :>
