*HP 2510p Owners Lounge*

[Jay2k1]

A guy in the German hardware forum claims that he has gotten info from mtron in his mail box (http://www.forumdeluxx.de/forum/show...postcount=1951)

According to that, the Mtron 1.8" 64GB SSD MSD-PATA3018-064-ZIF2 will be available in April. Now I wonder if I should cancel my order ^^

[Jay2k1]

Yeah, perhaps I should waste the 16 Euros for such a card... After all it's not that much money... but as stated before, I can't seem to get my hands on a *short-type* adapter card, I only find cards that extend by about 1cm.

The 32 GB Mtron was ordered for 169 EUR + 6 EUR shipping.

[nando4]

Originally Posted by Jay2k1

I can't seem to get my hands on a *short-type* adapter card, I only find cards that extend by about 1cm.

Here ya go: worldwide shipping, built-in cardbus e-sata. You can see this is the same card as this "hide type" (AKE BC198) but is cheaper

[Jay2k1]

I found the exact same article on ebay Germany and ordered it for about 20 EUR. So as the auction text says, it'll take 22-24 days to arrive here.

[nando4]

Found out e-sata is specifically for external sata drives and uses different electrical connectors. If wanting to thread it internally to a SATA drive (eg: X18-M), would need a SATA port, which apparently this card provides:

[Jay2k1]

Not necessarily: https://www.akumen.com/store/files/images/d_553.jpg

Just need an appropiate cable

[sfsilicon]

Good stuff. Finally the discussion is getting going on replacing the 2510p stock 1.8 ZIF HDD. Here are some additional info:

• I tried using the onboard miniPCIe slots to add an SSD and it didn't work. Besides the size issues I read that HP has a white list of recognized cards and that ASUS and DELL have proprietary protocols for using the mini PCIe interface. If anyone can figure this out this would be a cheap alternative since the second mini PCIe slot is free (unless your using mobile broadband). Runcore makes 2 upgrade modules that have decent speeds (MLC so not comparable with Mtron) as seen in these video.
• Runcore also released a ZIF 1.8 version with 16-128GB capacities and folks are gunning to use these on the MacAirs, HP Minis and Aspires Ones. Since it is 1.8 ZIF I'm hoping it will fit, but it looked a bit big to fit in the 2510p to me. See this early video in a HP Mini. Here is the review with benchmarks. But I'm guessing it should fit since the 1.8 format is a standard (comments welcome). I contacted Runcore about this and they haven't gotten around to testing them yet, but said I could return the drive if it didn't work. The drive is MLC like their mPCIe products and has 80/45 (R/W) Mb/s advertised specs. I read in another thread that it uses the dreaded Jmicron controller, but the good news it is the newer revision and so far there are no visible performance issues. The drive is 5mm height except for the 128GB version which is 9mm. Note the first batch had big problems with their ZIF cables and the latest batches (shipped this week so I'm waiting for feedback) seem to have these fixed. Here is the direct link to their US reseller mydigitaldiscount. They are currently back ordered. They also have a mini ZIF version in case they don't fit size wise and those go up to 64GB. Pricing is significantly cheaper than Mtron's SLC drives at an average $60 per 16GB. I've ordered a 32GB version on Thursday and when I get one I'll post results here.
• Concerning the cardbus port. I bought a Viking 32bit cardbus controller off ebay and a Transcend 300x card. I tried the 32bit Delkin drivers and the best I could get is 7mb/s reads. On a IDE to ZIF adapter I get ~35MB/s. I thougt it was a driver issue, but it could also be the controller. I didn't know that there was a controller issue before reading it here, but I would stay away from the above seller since he never answered my emails and I think his UDMA support statement in his ad is incorrect.
• Tried a 1.8 Zif to CF adapter with good results on a 300x Transcend 8GB card with good results. I was getting 30-45MB/s on read/writes. 8Gb was pretty small even on an XP install. I was doing a lot of hibernates vs shutting down my 2510p. One day it would boot so I reinstalled my HDD. I was worried that I had "used up" my CF card but after a reformat it worked well in my camera. Thankfully Transcend has a lifetime warranty so I will RMA the card if additional problems turn up (no problems using for pictures). I worry about using CF cards since I question the wear leveling used since the target application is very different. I also have a 4GB 150x SD card and that is super slow too (also in the 7MB/s read range). I'm using it as a swap drive. This will hopefully will reduce wear on a main SSD if turning off swap is not feasible for my applications. Besides SD cards are cheap now.

Some questions:

• Has anyone tried the SATA DVD caddy mod post by Nando4. Does that ebay part fit into the 2510p?
• I hardly use my optical drive so I'd like to remove it. Does that save power? What can I use to plug the hole? Any instructions how to do so and will this void my warranty? Any thoughts on where to get a DVD+R/W replacement? Mine came with the DVD/CDR combo drive.
• This is off topic, but has anyone tried the Intel wifi Draft N 5100 mPCIe card? Initial feedback from an ebay seller is that it won't work, but no reason why. The 5100 has half height version and only uses 2 antennas as the existing card does. The supported draft N card is the Intel 4965 which has 3 antennas but only 2 need to be connected. The 4965 is more expensive ($35 vs 20) than the newer 5100 or its bigger brother 5300 (400MB/s max).
• Any thoughts on using hibernate on a SSD? Writing 2GB of data on a 32GB could increase wear. I'm hoping shutdown will be faster so I won't need to use it much. On my 4200rpm HDD shutdown and restart takes forever.
• Where can you download the latest BIOS for the 2510p? (Duh! from HP.com F.0E (4 Nov 2008))

Finally, I use my notebook as a portable device and have a desktop for more storage at home. With a fast wireless LAN and and external USB drive I won't need more than 32GB onboard storage for now. 64GB would be better, but I don't want to spend $200 when you can get a 100Gb 7200rpm 2.5 SATA drive for $50. I'm looking for decent performance at a reasonable price and it seems the 2510p lucked out when it was released with 1.8 ZIF interface. $119 (plus ship & tax) for a 32GB drive with 80/45 MB/s performance sounds right for me.

[Jay2k1]

I have the Intel 4965AGN wifi card and it works well, costs 19 EUR here...

I've stumbled upon this thing http://geizhals.at/deutschland/a405317.html - any idea if it might work using the WWAN miniPCIe slot?

edit: apparently not

[Jay2k1]

As for the dvd replacement:
* No idea what you could get as a replacement
* I doubt that removing the drive would void the warranty, HP usually lets you replace most of the stuff w/o losing warranty (although the DVD drive is the only part that has no mark symbols beneath the screws)
* the mentioned HDD bay for the MultiBay slot does NOT fit in the 2510p. I removed the DVD drive and made a photo of its connector:
http://pub.jay2k1.com/2510p-optical-drive-connector.jpg
This is definitely not the kind of connector that can be seen on the eBay auction's pictures.

[sfsilicon]

Originally Posted by nando4

2510p users need a "slim" 9.5mm 2nd drive caddy like the IBM Ultrabay Slim ones, but with a standard JAE 50 on the back. I've trawled EBAY and cannot find one that exactly matches that criteria. This has the right rear, but looks too fat http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=280282221369.

Would this work? http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?...roducts_id=186

They have a PATA and SATA drive version with a JAE 50 connector. They even display an HP notebook, but the orientation of the drive is on the opposite side of the 2510p. They mention HP-Compaq Multibay compatibility.

Does anyone have a link for instructions on removing the optical drive?