*HP 2510p Owners Lounge*

[pocket_geek]

ok, so the Indilinx controller includes sata support, so then they have to use a sata to pata bridge chip... I imagine that would increase power consumption and decrease compatibility.

the OCZ Apex SSD is more or less the same design and the Photofast V2 drive, and from looking at benchmarks if the partition is aligned correctly it seems to have about as good performance has the Samsung SSD in my 2510p now...so maybe it is an option after all.

[sfsilicon]

Originally Posted by nando4

EDIT: Milton from photofast.com.tw explaining 1.8" V3 power consumption using sata-to-pata bridge:

> The bridge chip is from SunPlus, and it’s built on the same PCB. Not separately, which replies. I don’t
> think the power consumption is going to increase a lot since it’s within the same PCB. I’ll re-check
> again and let you know if it’s incorrect.

So are we looking at the same performance/power consumption as a Indilinx SSD + SATA-PATA caddy? Will the drive power off if not used because of the bridge? Getting Idle and Use rate would be nice.

BTW, has anyone done benchmarks using an Indilinx SSD with a PATA to SATA bridge? I have a 2.5 Patriot Torqx drive right now that I'm testing on an old PC and it is fast. Windows XP boot-up is around 30s on an old Celeron D 330 with 2GB of DDR1. Sadly no SATA to PATA caddy.

Nando4, given that the Indilinx controller only supports SATA natively I'm wondering if I should just buy a DVD caddy and run a hybrid SSD/HDD config using the 80GB 1.8" drive plus a Indilinx drive in the caddy. Can you boot from the caddy? Can you dump the 1.8" drive and just run off the caddy?

[sfsilicon]

Here is the latest responses from Jason from dvnation. I also referred him to this thread so he might chime in. At least he knows that we are looking to dvnation for the G-Monster drives.

Originally Posted by sfsilicon

Thanks for the additional information. I took the liberty of posting your response to notebookreview.com forum where several 2510p owners have been waiting for the V3 ZIF as an upgrade to their existing 4200rpm HDD. There is some additional information from Photofast on the compatibility issues. It has something to do with the SATA to PATA bridge that they are using in the V3 ZIF.

*HP 2510p Owners Lounge*

I'm not too interested in the V2 since it uses the old Jmicron controllers in RAID configuration. While the dual RAID configuration works better than the single chip configuration it is significantly slower than an Indilinx solution. Plus I don't want to take the risk of experiencing lock-ups.

Thanks again for your time and please let me know if you get the V3 in stock at some point.

Best Regards,
Scott



> Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:57:05 -0400
> Subject: RE: 1.8" Photofast G-Monster V3 ZIF
>
> All 1.8" Photofast SSDs are a faster replacement than hard drives.
> The 2.5" Photofast SSDs use Indilinx controllers, and are COMPLETELY
> COMPATIBLE. So I have no IDEA why a 1.8" SSD with Indilinx controller is
> not has compatible. The price and performance of V1 and V2 are still very
> very good. $189 for 32GB vs Mtron $229. And MTRON stops with 32GB.
> We've got 64GB and even 128GB. (V3 only goes to 64GB. V2 can be
> purchased up to 128GB).
>
> We will carry V3 if they fix compatibility, but in the meantime, any of
> our selection should be excellent.
>
> Jason
> DV Nation
>
> >
> > Hi Jason,
> >
> > I didn't know about the compatibility list and can understand your
> > companies decision not to carry this drive. It is a pity since the
> > Indilinx controller being used is well reviewed (e.g. OCZ vertex - see
> > Anandtech SSD technology comparison, Patriot Torqx) and has significantly
> > better 4k random write benchmarks when compared to for example Mtron SSDs.
> > See here for a benchmark comparision:
> > http://forum.notebookreview.com/show....php?p=4876737. While agree that
> > the 100MB/s read speed is similar among all competitors in this class
> > (limited by the ATA interface). Poor random write performance (especially
> > in the MLC drives) have been known to cause stuttering in cheaper Jmicron
> > based SSDs. Hopefully the compatibility issue will be resolved and you
> > might see it fit to carry the drives at some time.
> >
> > Best Regards,
> > Scott

[pocket_geek]

Jason is right about pretty much any Photofast SSD being faster than a 4200rpm 1.8" hard drive...

I'm actually thinking about picking up the 128GB V2 drive for my 2510p, should be about the same speed as my Samsung as long as the partition table is aligned correctly and I could really use the extra space.

[sfsilicon]

Originally Posted by pocket_geek

Jason is right about pretty much any Photofast SSD being faster than a 4200rpm 1.8" hard drive...

It's not hard is it?

Originally Posted by pocket_geek

I'm actually thinking about picking up the 128GB V2 drive for my 2510p, should be about the same speed as my Samsung as long as the partition table is aligned correctly and I could really use the extra space.

How do you do this? Can you share more info about this? Any chance of stuttering? What about power consumption?

Have you considered other drives like the Kingspec?

[pocket_geek]

The easiest way to align your partition table correctly for these less fast SSD's is to just let the Windows Vista installer do it since it automatically aligns new partitions at 1024k.

I've looked at the Kingspec drive, but I've only found it on ebay and I'm not sure what controller(s) it uses. That and with dvnation warranty replacements are done through them so that's kinda nice.

[nando4]

Originally Posted by sfsilicon

Nando4, given that the Indilinx controller only supports SATA natively I'm wondering if I should just buy a DVD caddy and run a hybrid SSD/HDD config using the 80GB 1.8" drive plus a Indilinx drive in the caddy. Can you boot from the caddy? Can you dump the 1.8" drive and just run off the caddy?

Can do a few things to make the proposed config work:

- run the 1.8" ZIF as slave by bridging pin 1 and pin 2 on the cable (described earlier)
- run the optical bay caddy + Indilinx SATA SSD as master
- there's bios options to select if you want to boot off Notebook Hard Drive (master) or Optical Disk (slave)
- In such a config, I wish the DVD could be made to run as master so then I could still swap in the DVD and, boot of the ZIF HDD, but haven't figured that out yet).

Here is a collection of benchmarks of 1.8" ZIF SSD plus SATA SSDs using sata-to-pata bridge adapters. Notice the ultrabay sata-to-pata adapter gives 87MB/s, using the same Marvell sata-to-pata bridge as is on the ebay optical bay caddys.

Preliminary pricing suggests the G-Monster V3 price-per-gb is twice what say a 2.5" G-Skill Falcon SATA SSD would cost. So I think it doesn't represent value for money. A hybrid 2.5" SSD via optical bay caddy + 1.8" HDD being the value option, but it has it's pros/cons as well.

[sfsilicon]

Originally Posted by nando4

The undisclosed connector in the 1.8" drive bay

I've also had a look at that connector in the 1.8" drive bay. Interestingly, the pinouts *appear* that they may match the 2730P SATA cable. So if you have F.0A bios with an extra IDE controller in Windows it may mean there is a SATA connection already. SATA port appears as IDE since the bios would has disabled the Native SATA enabled option, an option that appears to exist in F.07. However, HP refuse to provide bios downgrade ability.

I think I have the F.0E bios. CPUZ reports: "68MSP Ver F.0E".

I'm not sure if I have an extra controller, but I might have one. From my device manager here is what I see.

IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers
+ Intel(R) ICH8M Ultra ATA Storage Contollers - 2850
+ Primary IDE Channel
+ Primary IDE Channel
+ Ricoh SD/MMC Host Controller
+ Secondary IDE Channel
+ Standard Dual Channel PCI IDE Controller <-- is this it?

Could the second controller be related to the CF card? I don't have a CF card installed so that might be why it is not showing up. From what I recall the CF controller is also from Ricoh.

[sfsilicon]

Originally Posted by nando4

- run the 1.8" ZIF as slave by bridging pin 1 and pin 2 on the cable (described earlier)
- run the optical bay caddy + Indilinx SATA SSD as master
- there's bios options to select if you want to boot off Notebook Hard Drive (master) or Optical Disk (slave)
- In such a config, I wish the DVD could be made to run as master so then I could still swap in the DVD and, boot of the ZIF HDD, but haven't figured that out yet).

If there are bios options for booting off slave, why not connect the optical caddy drive as slave and boot from it? Just trying to clarify. You might be giving me all possible options, but I'm looking for the simplest configuration where I keep both drives in permanently and boot off the caddy drive.

[nando4]

Originally Posted by sfsilicon

Could the second controller be related to the CF card? I don't have a CF card installed so that might be why it is not showing up. From what I recall the CF controller is also from Ricoh.

Yes.. the secondary IDE controller might be related to the CF card. I disable mine in bios yet the controller still it appears in the device manager.

Originally Posted by sfsilicon

If there are bios options for booting off slave, why not connect the optical caddy drive as slave and boot from it? Just trying to clarify. You might be giving me all possible options, but I'm looking for the simplest configuration where I keep both drives in permanently and boot off the caddy drive.

You are correct. Simplest is to jumper the optical bay caddy as slave, exactly as the optical drive is and set boot menu to boot of "Optical Disk Drive" (this is slave). Works fine with the newmodeus sata-to-pata caddy since it's master/slave jumperable. Only reason you might want the optical bay caddy to run as master is for full performance. Running a SSD in caddy as slave *might* give lower performance than if running the caddy as master.

Whichever caddy you go, I'd be interested in knowing the performance you get with the Indilinx SATA SSD (OCZ Vertex/G.Skill Falcon). Might be worth replicating your config. I'd be curious if you acquired the ebay caddy, just as a comparison point. The ebay caddy is unproven by a credible 2510P owner as yet and doesn't have a slave jumper. Though pin47 CSEL *might* be able to be isolated to set it as slave, depending on if the sata-to-pata chip reads that pin to configure itself. By credible I mean a forum member that doesn't just appear, show pics of the caddy and a 2510P, make claims it doesn't work, then disappear again, or add similar comments to the 6510b caddy thread, adding a $ystem upgrade bia$ to mix.