Project - SSD Mods

Hi all,

I finally bit the bullet and bought the Super Talent FEM32GF13M myself before seeing any reviews. I too am very happy - in fact I'm typing this message on my upgraded AAO-110 right now !

I had the old Intel 8GB SSD which was slower than continental drift, about 25MB/s read, 5MB/s write and stuttered furiously on random writes. I did every optimization I could find for Ubuntu 9.04 (no swap, noatime, all temp files to RAM, browser disk caches disabled, ext2 file system, etc) and it was still unacceptable at times.

With the new drive, it's like a whole new world is opening . Read performance 60-70 MB/s, writes 30-40 MB/s and 1300 IO/s (4KB).

Code:

sudo hdparm -t /dev/sda
/dev/sda:
 Timing buffered disk reads:  186 MB in  3.00 seconds =  61.91 MB/sec

sudo ./seeker /dev/sda
Seeker v2.0, 2007-01-15, [url]http://www.linuxinsight.com/how_fast_is_your_disk.html[/url]
Benchmarking /dev/sda [29823MB], wait 30 seconds..............................
Results: 1318 seeks/second, 0.76 ms random access time

I tried to attach an iozone3 run (4KB - 32MB) for your perusal, but the attachment kept getting rejected (attachment extension xls, txt, csv all rejected). Oh well, if anybody's interested in the gory details, I can post a followup with the summary tables.

Anyhow, I'm sure the upgrade for folks with the faster original Samsung drive or the revised Intel unit (not to mention HDD) won't be as night & day as it is for me, but I am riding on cloud9 right now )!

---DanQ989

 

Re: Super Talent 32GB

The ferrite is glued to the old SSD. The zif cable goes through the ferrite. You need to pull the ferrite of the old SSD (it was glued to one of the chips) so that you can reuse the zif cable with the new SSD.

I was scared that I might pull the chip off, but I guess it is stronger than that. The new SSD has a sticker where the ferrite goes.

Raf.

 

Erm, you know, I'm going to try something else which doesn't void my warranty.
Install WinXP (or to be precise Windows FLP) on a SD card.
And yes, I know, the Aspire One can't boot from the SD, but (haven't tried it yet, but it should work IMHO) I will use the shareware version of MasterBooter (http://masterbooter.com) to make the MBR of the SSD 'point' to the SD card.

In this way the BIOS boots from the SSD, which immediatly hands over the control to the SD card, on which the OS is installed.
I was inspired by this lad: http://www.ubuntusolutions.org/2009/05/how-to-make-the-acer-aspire-one-faster.html

I'll let you now if it worked.

... Oh, well ... my SSD, as a matter of fact, ceased working just a sec ago. Crap. :x Warranty, where are you?

 

The AA1 D150 10.1" will boot from the SD card.

 

Yes, but I have the A110.

edit:
Okay, it doesn't work. The SD-reader isn't perceived by the BIOS or MBR at all, it needs some sort of driver.
I've ordered the CF-ZIF converter and a PQI 300X 4GB Card.

 

I am too very happy with the Super Talent 32GB SSD from NewEgg.

It is a direct swap, and it only took me about 20 minutes. I did not have to switch cables, remove, or add anything extra. It is just a total direct swap.

You should get this if you want you Acer Aspire One to be in a fast mode!

 

Oh wow, I didn't know that existed. Well, it's quite a little more expensive (twice the costs for CF-ZIF converter + PQI 4GB 300X CF Card), but it's probably worth it.
Thanks for mentioning.

 

help is needed!!

I did the CF mod to my AOA110. I bought a Lexar 300x 8GB CF card, a Zif-to-CF adapter, and also a few flip cables from ebay.

The mod went fine, but when I turn on the machine, BIOS wouldn't show any harddrive information, just "none". The boot sequence also list nothing in ide0 or ide1.

But then if I go ahead and boot into Linux (from a USB drive), I can actually see the drive detected at /dev/hda, and the 8GB win32 partition at /dev/hda1 which can be successfully mounted and used.

The problem is I just can't boot from this CF drive, even after I properly installed an OS and make it bootable on the drive. What could be wrong here? Should I upgrade my BIOS? What BIOS version are you guys using?

 

[Deleted]

 

Has anyone done a Windows partition alignment on the Super Talent SSD? I just received mine in the mail, but don't have time to install it until next week... (I'll post results)

 

I ordered a PQI 4GB 300X CompactFlash card from DealExtreme.
But I'm a little alarmed about all these posts mentioning a non-bootable CF card.
Can anyone tell me a little more about this? Does anyone have an idea or some experience with booting from the PQI 300X Cards?

Thanks in advance.

 

I have only scanned through this thread briefly, and as it its very large I might have missed out on it...

Are there any resonable sized SSD that replaces the 160Gb harddrive that is faster then the stock 160Gb HDD?

I'm looking for a 32-64Gb-ish SSD that is faster then a 160Gb 5400rpm HDD and that maybe even uses less power?!

please link me if this has been discussed before

 

I bought an Aspire One ZG5 off of some one and it seems like the SSD is faulty. Every time I try to install an operation system on it, it works fine for awhile until it corrupts and becomes onbootable.

Anyway, I wasnt too impressed with the problems it has running XP so I thought I would go ahead and get the Super Talent SSD as a replacement to increase my disk size as well as speed up that write time.

Problem is if I replace the drive I'd like to replace the cable too just incase its the culprit as to why my SSD isnt working correctly. I havent been able to figure out if I need a flip cable or a regular 40 pin zif cable for it and where to buy one.

Also, I've only been able to find 1.8 zif cables for sale and the super talent SSD listed on newegg says its a 1.3?


Edit: DId some more reading on the site. Just wanted to make sure that this was indeed the cable I needed:
http://cgi.ebay.com/Flex-FFC-Ribbon-Cab ... 286.c0.m14

 

Can anyone confirm the Transcend 300X 4GB card to work with this mod?

 

well my attempt at this (CF card) upgrade failed...
im using a 5cm flip cable
i assumed the contacts had to be down, so the blue side is up on both the adapter the the motherboard.
adapter is fully compatible with Compact Flash Type I, Type II and Microdrive
the cf card is working: verified using card reader

anybody have any suggestions?

some pics of my failure:

 

I'd just like to add that I just installed my new Super Talent 16GB SSD and it's fantastic! It's soooooo much faster than my 8GB SSD that came with the AA1. Firefox actually runs smoothly now - actually quite fast!

So far I'm very impressed and just wondering if I should have splurged on the 32gb...

Here's the link:
http://www.eworldsale.com/search_product.php?keywords=aspire+one&category=&x=0&y=0

 

Seems you've got a different CF to ZIF converter than the successful ones do.
You've got this one: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.19675
The converter used in this topic is this one: http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.11814

Some lad called roebeet purchased them both. Quoting his review on the black one:

And his review on the green one sounds:

In other words, I assume the black one is fake, and doesn't work at all. Bad luck for you, I'd buy the green one like everybody has.

 

In other words, I assume the black one is fake, and doesn't work at all. Bad luck for you, I'd buy the green one like everybody has.[/quote:3d729v57]

thanks deresser, i was starting to think this was a big cluster ****, i guess i'll be ordering that green one.

 

Hi Guys,

Unfortunately i've got an Acer 1 A110, i've modified it successfully with a trascend 300x and the bios recognize it, but i've installed windows XP from an external DVD Player, after that the CF is partitioned and windows installed, it doesn't boot !!!

Someone can help me ?????

Thank you !

 

Hey lads, I've got exactly the same problem.
Used a Transcend 4GB 300X Card.
Windows XP installs fine, but at the first reboot it halts with the message

A disk read error occurred
Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart

I've been trying to fix this for hours now, and I'm at a loss!
The disk seems fine, the written data can be read if I boot from an external boot disk.
But something goes wrong booting Windows XP.
Does someone has an idea what's going on?

Thanks in advance!