laptop tech Q

perry

Retrobike Rider
I know a few of you lot are in the compooter game so im hoping you can help me with something that is puzzling me .

iI use a Dell 1501 laptop . I've ran out of space on it so will be getting a external HD in 500gb flavour . As I use Xubuntu Linux I've checked that the one I want is compatible ; As long as I don't need to put a file over 4gb on it I'm fine with fat32 . I could reformat to ext3 but one of the computers in the house is still windows so fat32 is fine . I cant think of a single file bigger than 4gb anyway .

I also have an IBM x31 which I like a lot more than the Dell , even though the screen is smaller and it struggles with 500mb compared to the Dells 2000mb ( I'm going to upgrade it to 2000mb at some point soon anyway .)

I want to use the x31 more which is the main reason I want to go with an external drive . If I ever needed to use the Dell I could just plug it in . As all my stuff will be stored on the external HD I want to change the creaky 20gb PATA HD in it to a SSD , sadly there is little choice of 2.5 PATA SSD hard drives and they are comparatively pricey .

Would this replace the 20gb pata ?

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebP ... ce=froogle

It's the flash part that confuses me , does this go where the old drive went ? Yep its only 8gb but with the external drive all I need on the laptop itself is the Linux OS and a few files so i don't have to drag around the external drive ( not that its too large to do that , or I go anywhere anyway )

A 32gb PATA SSD is around £80 and I don't need 32gb of storage , is there anything much smaller/cheaper that will run the OS ? I want solid state as its quicker . I could use a USB with Linux on it but theres limited read/write life with those , although how long will they last in the real world ?
 
Yes it will, and it will be as reliable as a bond film at Christmas. The interface it presents is PATA, to the computer it is just another hard disk.

Although, if I were you, I'd get a CF > IDE adaptor, and make do with compact flash cards, with an distro like Puppy that runs entirely in memory. CF cards like USB sticks have a limited shelf life (unless you buy the expensive "industrial" ones), but with an OS that doesn't write to them much it's not really an issue, and bearing in mind they're cheaper than potatoes it's not the end of the world when they do fail.

Or run completely without a hard disk, booting up from your CD rom as you switch the PC on. The ultimate in security, if you get a virus reboot and you're back to normal, a bit like the old Archimedes.

Shout if you get stuck. ;)
 
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Just put " compact flash lifespan " into google and got this

http://mrzonbu.wordpress.com/2007/09/23 ... per-zonbu/
I'll find out what a zonbu is in a min but "We evaluated that it would take 10 years continuously writing on the card before the failure risk becomes significant." certainly sounds a lot better than the couple of months i had envisioned :LOL:

£15 each year is something i can happily live with :LOL:

How quick is a compact flash ?
 
This one, squire:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/CF-to-IDE-44-Pin- ... 286.c0.m14

The Kingston CF card will be perfect.

As to service life, I'm afraid the best answer I can give is "depends". There is actually a utility whose name escapes me that analyses a disk image and tells you how long it will last before it fails if it was run on flash memory. The factors are how much space is used and the number of times it is written to.

Saying all that, they're pretty reliable. My old laptop (PII 366mhz, with 128mb RAM and a 1GB compact flash card instead of a hard drive) never failed, and I ran my old business from it. It was running Puppy 3.01, and would have run for years with its frugal install. I gave it away in the end but it's still going perfectly.

I would expect a normal Ubuntu installation will go for months, possibly years without trouble. But buy two and do identical installs on both, so a failure just means a reboot and swapping over.
 
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You'll likely increase its life of the card by adding the extra memory as it'll not need to access it as much.

You could of course just put the compact flash card in your compact flash slot and use it there ;) (type II you can use)

I think you'll need v3 or v4 cards (I get lost here) to see any benefit of speed other than access times to a harddrive

Your memory is normal SO-DIMM DDR PC2700/3200 so is not the cheapest to buy new though and not sure but you may be limited to 1GB for that computer (2x512Mb) so see if someone has any spare.
 
Cheers chaps

Why that adapter specifically Chris ? is it the master/slave ? id like one that has 2 slots , not that its a big concern , a single 8gb will be plenty .

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Compact_Flash_boot_drive

Sadly it looks like the x31 card reader can't be used as a bootable drive . I'm pretty sure it will take 2 slots of memory , which i planned on upgrading , even more so now doing this will be so cheap :D
 
Shame about the internal CF not being bootable, that would have been neat (you could just swap OS's as you need slightly easier)

Though you should be able to use it for a second drive, say for temps or user space or as a swap partition to keep the hits of you 1st bootable drive.


Yes the computer does have 2 RAM slots, hence the 2 x 512MB max I think it has. You just need to find someone with a PC2700/3200 SO-DIMM in 512MB size, I don't think I have one spare but will look when I venture into the draws again.

EDIT ThinkWiki says 2GB max (Crucial say 1GB max), I'd go with ThinkWiki as that's user content I assume
 
Specifically that one because I know it will work*. I've never dealt with a two card adaptor. Possibly it just gives you one interface to both cards, but it might be designed to do something like wear levelling or striping. Whatever it does, I can't say for sure if Ubuntu will just know about it.

The X31 card reader won't allow booting from CF, but you're not using it to do so. With the adaptor plugged into your computer's IDE interface, the BIOS sees a hard disk, like it always did; it's just that to you it's physically different. Besides which, removing the card while it's being written to might noodle it; better to have it inside the case, away from potential accidents.

*assuming it fits in your laptop's case.
 
I'll go with that one then .

Been looking at cards and the Kingston 133x seems the one to go for and its only £2 more than the one i had looked at to start with .

Ram is confusing me . I wrote down ages ago I need pc2700 ddr333mhz . 200pin . sdram sodimm 2.5v .

Which seems to be this ?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/1GB-PC2700-DDR-SO ... 286.c0.m14
 
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