Bill Bogstad wrote: > The other machine has a large (640 gig) SATA drive which is 90% full... > and for economic reasons isn't going to be replaced with a SATA SSD
How about a hybrid drive? I have a 500 GB Seagate, and they now have them in 750 MB and possibly larger sizes. It's definitely an easy, no fuss solution, and pretty cheap, but it is up for debate whether such drives really provide much of a real-world performance boost. > Both machines, however, have CardBus slots. Given that CardBus is > essentially a 32bit PCI bus connection... Have you looked at mSATA drives? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSATA#mSATA The connector is similar in appearance to a PCI Express Mini Card interface, and is electrically compatible; however, the data signals (TX±/RX± SATA, PETn0 PETp0 PERn0 PERp0 PCI-express) need connection to the SATA host controller instead of the PCI-express host controller. Hmmm...my recollection was that it used a PCI interface, but I guess that's just the physical connector. So you still need a SATA controller. Seems like theoretically, if you can mechanically fit everything into the available space, you could find/make a CardBus to mSATA adapter that would contain a SATA host controller chip. The PATA to CF card adapter that Shankar suggests seems like the more practical approach. > Unfortunately, that is a CF to 2.5" PATA adapter. That is much more > common then the 1.8" PATA ZIF form factor. Is this just a connector incompatibility that can be addressed with a passive adapter? If you can get an adapter of any kind - even one that won't fit into the available space - if it is cheap, you might want to get it and benchmark the solution to see if it achieves your goals. If it does, then maybe you can hack the adapter to be smaller or cannibalize an old 1.8" drive to build your own adapter. I wanted to see what a PATA ZIF connector looked like, and a search turned up this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardware-components-aftermarket-upgrades/356421-those-slow-1-8-pata-drives-wanting-sata.html which covers both commercial solutions and hacks for getting an SSD for a 1.8" PATA ZIF form factor. Sounds like the best option is a micro SATA (different from mSATA) to 1.8" ZIF adapter, which can be had for $16: http://www.ebay.com/itm/16pin-Micro-SATA-SSD-HDD-to-1-8-ZIF-adapter-card-cable-/320690745896?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4aaaa87228 and then you use a micro SATA SSD. micro SATA connector: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSATA#Micro_connector -Tom _______________________________________________ Hardwarehacking mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/hardwarehacking
