Has anyone tried using a SD Card and an adapter like those on eBay right now that say they can be used to replace a Hard Drive? I've searched the forum and have only found info on using a SATA SSD as a Hard Drive replacement.

Two of the T23s in the lot that I recently purchased off of eBay do not have hard drives and I'm looking for an inexpensive hard drive replacement for one of them so I can have a computer out in my shop to check e-mail and look up parts schematics / wiring diagrams when I need to. I'm not too worried about lightning quick speeds as all I'm wanting is a bare bones system that I can use when needed and won't constantly lock up or Blue Screen me to death.

I'll be a happy camper if it'll work with an adapter that will run less than $10.00 shipped to my door since I have a couple of SD cards that XP will easily fit on already sitting here in a desk drawer gathering dust.

Please let me know your thoughts / experiences with this,
-Scott H.

Are you speaking of these?

SD SDHC card to 44pin 2.5" IDE HDD SSD PATA Adapter
http://www.ebay.com/itm/400274175303


SD SDHC Card to 44 pin 2.5" Male IDE PATA SDD Adapter
http://www.ebay.com/itm/250661316031

Robert,

Thank you for posting the links that I forgot, those are exactly the type of adapter I was looking at to use for the hard drive replacement.

-Scott H.

This is very interesting.
What is the effect of flash memory degredation when using an SD card as a HD replacement?
The cost is attractive. Buying a 64GB SD card is about $80, a 64GB SSD is about $130. So you save about 30% vs buying a SSD.

Is there a performance trade-off?

Can you boot an old T2x from one of these without a HDD? I have an old T21 and this would be an interesting alternative.

This is my first post to this board, but...

I picked up a T20 with a bad HD for 10$. Instead of replacing the pata drive I got a compact flash/pata adaptor. I am running Debian without issue off an 8gig CF card. I will likely pick up a second card (adaptor has two slots) for my home folder. I think it works good so far, but have only has this thing running a couple of days now.

Scott, I've go the first one that Robert posted,
on it's way from over the seas.

I'll post my results, if/when.

steve

I see they also make a CF adapter.
The sweet price point seems to be 32GB.
Above 32GB, the price gets steep.
Although 64GB is a more reasonable starting point, 32GB can get tight real fast. I have a 100GB HD on my T23, just so I don't run out of space at a bad time.

Like others, I wonder about the long term effect on read/write on a camera media that wasn't designed for the kind of I/O a computer will do to it.

Thank you for the replies! I had honestly forgotten about this thread as things have come up in my life that has caused me to put the T23s on a back burner for now.

With that said, I'm still HIGHLY interested in the results of your experiences with using a card as a hard drive! I have a 40 gig hard drive in one of the T23s now, but it is noisy and sounds like it will give up at any second. Unfortunately it's the only working hard drive I have for all 3 laptops.

-Scott H.

I've FINALLY! got my adapter, but the largest chip I have
is a 4 GB one. I'm trying, and I've had other issues, too.

You've got to take the top off of the base, (the keyboard
bezel/wristrest) to install the adapter, and it is best to
leave it off, until you get the OS installed.

For those of you, who haven't run a T2* with the bezel off,
if you line up the bottom right of the mouse button
area up with the line on the base, the keyboard will plug in and
work.

Oh, I've formatted this with WXP, and the format takes
about a second per % (or, about 100 seconds to finish.)

steve

Now, I probably should have got better CF, but I only got 133x. Speeds "feel" good on this old machine.

hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 308 MB in 2.00 seconds = 153.87 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 74 MB in 3.04 seconds = 24.36 MB/sec

It maxes out ~27MB/sec buffered disk reads.

What type of speeds should I expect from a t20?

24MB/sec sound reasonable.

But what is the write speed to the CF card?
That I think is key. I used USB flash memory sticks where the write speed was so sloooooow that I switch to using 3.5" external hard drives to move large files.

What will be good is the power consumption will drop, making the battery last longer.

10 runs, 120-145 MB/sec write

Cool
Now to keep an eye out for a good sales on a 32GB CF card.
And order the CF card adapter.

Would it be possible to install the Mini Flash Mem card adapter by modifying a HD caddy?

How about using a two pairs of small pinched-nosed pliers?

Perhaps it isn't that difficult to remove handrest bezel?

That would depend on which adapter you get.

Both styles of adapters that are currently available, the short stubby ones and the full length ones, will require some modifications to make it work with the factory hard drive caddy. The larger versions look like they'll be close to a drop in process with little modification needed to get the caddy to work properly, but I'm only going by the eBay pictures as I don't have one physically in my hands to work with yet.

Check the pictures of which one you want to purchase though, as some have the card holder on the top of the adapter and some are mounted on the bottom. The top mounted units will require less modification to the caddy to work since you won't have to cut out clearance holes.

Since I had some use or lose eBay Bucks, I just pulled the trigger on this one since I could get it for free and it was the larger adapter:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/130522900981

Once it gets here, I'll take pictures and make a web page on how I am going to try to get it working with the factory T23 Caddy. Trust me, if I can or can't get it to work like I want to I'll put it on there to help others that might want to try this conversion. Once I get started on the refurb of my T23 to use in my garage, I'm going to make a section on the site I'm currently in the process of building covering the whole process actually.

-Scott H.

Well, I have one of these adapters, and comparing it to a 2.5 inch IDE hard drive none of the mounting holes line up. Also, while hard drives have mounting holes on the PCB side, the adapter doesn't (the holes on that side are not tapped).

Link

Here is a compact flash adaptor similar to what I got. 2.5" ide compatible. Worked without any modification needed.

I've got a larger memory chip, and am still not able to install WXP.

Even with a 32 GB SDHC, it will freeze at about 50 or 60%. It formats, then starts installing files. At about 50%, I get a warning message that *** file cannot be copied. (I think it is DrWatson.) After that point, nothing more will be copied.

Any suggestions?

steve

Do you have an original XP disk you can do the install from? Dr. Watson may be getting it's signals crossed.

I now have a 4 gig card thanks to another member here and as soon as the adapter makes the trip here on the slow boat from China, I'll be starting my expiraments and will be using the XP cd to do my installs. I've just never had much luck with cloning programs so I don't use them an more.

-Scott H.

I've tried 4 or 5 different versions of XP, all straight XP discs, and all which have worked on other installs.

I've also tried Win7, with no good results, too.

This is with a 32 GB sd chip. Did the same with a 4 GB chip.

steve

I've just tried this myself with an encouraging partial success today. I've used my £12 8gb Sandisk SDHC card with this, which arrived this morning for £10:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/290373959850? ... 569wt_1308

I've installed Linux Mint 9 just as a test. I'd already partitioned the SD card with gparted but then let the mint installer do its thing. That had already proved a bit heavy for my T22 but I think I need a higher class of SD card. This is a 4 I think and maybe a 10 would be fine - I got the card in a supermarket so I expect they didn't go for the best, just casual camera use. I'm seeing the CPU useage seem to veer between 30% and 70%, no appearance of idling, which could be the distro in use or the card's fault? (More of the swap was being used than with Xubuntu which I had a few days ago and which often showed very low CPU use.) Programs open a bit slow compared to Windows 2000, whether due to the distro or the card. Fitting the adapter wasn't too hard - didn't have to take the keyboard bezel off after removing the keyboard, hd and dvd drive, but just undid its three hidden screws on the base and gently stretch it away to make finger room. There is a little hook/catch by the pcmcia card slot which needs unclipping which I almost overlooked and might have broke otherwise.

sudo hdparm -tT /dev/sda

cached 125.75 MB/s
buffered 8.80 MB/s

Hadn't used that command before (abbreviated results) and don't really understand it, obviously not as good as DRobinson's Compact Flash card though.

I'm inclined to try XP but it sounds like a bit of a hassle. A bit of reading maybe this afternoon... But I'll try a lighter Linux distro first.

Still hot on the bottom by the drive though, which suggests it is the bit of circuit board by the ram or the ram making that heat. The SD-IDE adaptor is suspended in the air apart from at the point of connection and not conducting much like the hard drive was. (Just as long as it's not a risky, flammable adapter! The seller has good feedback though.)

Are Compact Flash cards better intrinsically or just what some people happen to have to hand? (Reading the specs, some 133x cards say they have 25mb/s read time, some 65mb/s, some 133mb/s which makes the term 133x seem a bit meaningless?)

Edit: It is a class 4 I was using. That would be the weak link wouldn't it, they're useless for video in a camera. While I wait for a 16gb class 10 (SanDisk Extreme 45mb/s) to arrive I can get my head round how to install XP. I've just read in the Comments following a YouTube demo of the Sd-IDe adapter that XP needs a 50 or 55mb/s read time though so this might explain some troubles mentioned in the thread?

After a bank holiday-delayed wait the class 10 SDHC card (rated 45mb/s) came. I'm afraid it hasn't proved fast enough either for this job. Using hdparm -tT /dev/sda the first speed was roughly between the 133x Compact Flash card another used here and the class 4 SDHC card. The second figure was only one mb/s higher than the class 4 card (rated 20 or 25mb/s). I tried two Linux distros, Linux Mint Debian, the new one with the Gnome desktop, and Linux Mint 11 with the lighter LXDE desktop. Though the latter felt better, with snappy menu-opening and better general speed than Gnome, and with some recogniseable CPU idling, the CPU would go to 100% at the slightest exertion, like opening a simple text editor. It strikes me this wouldn't be good for the computer in the long term. This is a 900mhz laptop so maybe in principle the adaptor and SDHC card can work well if you're not scraping the barrel with the technology it's being added to. But as it is the computer seems to be doing odd things if the CPU is taxed so much with this Frankendrive.

During my previous attempt also I'd overlooked one screw, holding the cmos battery in. With that out the fitting of these adapters is a doddle as the keyboard bezel can just be lifted, further than I had before. It's not a fiddly job at all.

I think I've blown a bit too much money for the moment on this - shame the card shrewdly isn't packed in a returnable way - but I'm thinking I might just try a 95mb/s card unless enquiries I make in the meantime suggest it will still not do the job. Hopefully my findings will save some people money and effort anyway.

An almost mint replacement lid has just arrived for my T22 a minute ago so I'm going to be absorbed in fitting that, a new sort of job for me. Pray for me, brothers.

The SD adapter that I found does NOT appear to have any mounting holes to secure it to a drive caddy.
http://www.amazon.com/44-Pin-Male-IDE-C ... B003MN1H9U
w/o mounting holes, it would make it difficult to install in systems that use drive caddies.

The CF adapter that I found does have mounting holes to secure it to a drive caddy.
http://www.logicsupply.com/products/cfdisk_2g

Any one got one of these working in a Windows environment?
I would like to install XP on an old laptop.
I've got that laptop running on a 25G drive, so a 32G SD card would work just right.

Got a great deal on a 32GB SD card (Sandisk Ultra, class 10) at Best Buy for $30

BUT...now I need to find an adapter that I can screw into my caddy.
The drive caddy only guides the drive in, the drives pins plug directly into the computer, not into the caddy. And I can't find an SD adapter that has mounting holes.

Well I did find one with mounting holes, but it maxes out at only 4GB.
http://3acyber.en.alibaba.com/product/2 ... apter.html

It may turn out that CF is the only way to get an adapter with mounting holes.

I got 2, 32 GB cards from Newegg, a few weeks ago. 16 bucks each.

Neither worked here, but both worked just fine in other apps.

steve