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Solid State Drives - 3 questions...
I have a 512 MB solid state disk made by Winstation, it is in 2.5" IDE
format. Before anyone goes dismissing this at not enough space, this is only a system drive and I have it in a small laptop, running a simple install of Windows 98, which is less than 200 MB, and is perfect for this disk. Overall, a great way to make a machine dead quiet (no moving parts whatsoever) and shock resistant. No wonder the military like these things ;-) However I have some questions which the manufacturer has not yet answered for me, and I though I would ask here just in case someone knows. 1. Physical dimension tolerance - the two SSDs have seen are not perfectly sized - in fact while I was able to fit the thing into an IBM Thinkpad with some effort, placing it in a Toshiba Libretto misaligned the pins, which made it necesary to remove and install only the circuit board and dump the casing. I have told the manufacturer this but they did not even respond. Has anyone seen flash disks made by others (M-Systems for example) and are they physically compliant with the 2.5/3.5 etc dimensions? 2. For some obscure reason pin #20 which is non-existent on all normal laptop IDE disks is present on the flash disks, making it impossible to install it in a receptacle such as that of the Toshiba Libretto, which has the pin blocked, unless you cut it off - which is what I did to get it in. The manufacturer did not address this issue either. Any specific reason why this dead pin is there? 3. Once the drive was running in the laptop, I tried to write a hard disk password on it from the Thinkpad's BIOS utility, and the write failed. Does anyone know why, and has anyone successfully written a hard disk password to a solid state (flash) disk? Thanks to anyone who can answer any of these. |
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vlds8 wrote:
I have a 512 MB solid state disk made by Winstation, it is in 2.5" IDE format. Before anyone goes dismissing this at not enough space, this is only a system drive and I have it in a small laptop, running a simple install of Windows 98, which is less than 200 MB, and is perfect for this disk. Overall, a great way to make a machine dead quiet (no moving parts whatsoever) and shock resistant. No wonder the military like these things ;-) However I have some questions which the manufacturer has not yet answered for me, and I though I would ask here just in case someone knows. 1. Physical dimension tolerance - the two SSDs have seen are not perfectly sized - in fact while I was able to fit the thing into an IBM Thinkpad with some effort, placing it in a Toshiba Libretto misaligned the pins, which made it necesary to remove and install only the circuit board and dump the casing. I have told the manufacturer this but they did not even respond. Has anyone seen flash disks made by others (M-Systems for example) and are they physically compliant with the 2.5/3.5 etc dimensions? The question is whether laptops are "physically compliant" with any standard set of drive mounting dimensions. At one time there was significant variation, meaning that you could generally only count on using drives from the laptop manufacturer on that manufacturer's laptops, but with laptops becoming semi-commodity items that may be changing. 2. For some obscure reason pin #20 which is non-existent on all normal laptop IDE disks is present on the flash disks, making it impossible to install it in a receptacle such as that of the Toshiba Libretto, which has the pin blocked, unless you cut it off - which is what I did to get it in. The manufacturer did not address this issue either. Any specific reason why this dead pin is there? Since laptop disks can generally only be installed one way it seems odd that they would be keyed, but that pin is missing just to allow the use of "keyed" cables that are difficult to plug in backwards. Whether it's present or not generally is a reflection of the age of the drive more than anything else. 3. Once the drive was running in the laptop, I tried to write a hard disk password on it from the Thinkpad's BIOS utility, and the write failed. Does anyone know why, and has anyone successfully written a hard disk password to a solid state (flash) disk? Thanks to anyone who can answer any of these. Does the device support passwords? -- --John Reply to jclarke at ae tee tee global dot net (was jclarke at eye bee em dot net) |
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"J. Clarke" wrote:
Since laptop disks can generally only be installed one way it seems odd that they would be keyed, but that pin is missing just to allow the use of "keyed" cables that are difficult to plug in backwards. Whether it's present or not generally is a reflection of the age of the drive more than anything else. Yes indeed, it's just that all 2.5" drives I have ever seen (going back some 5-6 years) all have that pin missing, that includes Toshibas, IBMs and Fujitsus. It is also specifically listed in the IDE spec as "not used" so it would make sense to follow the general industry standard when making IDE flash disks, especially when the manufacturers advertise them as "drop in replacements" for regular platter drives. 3. Once the drive was running in the laptop, I tried to write a hard disk password on it from the Thinkpad's BIOS utility, and the write failed. Does anyone know why, and has anyone successfully written a hard disk password to a solid state (flash) disk? Thanks to anyone who can answer any of these. Does the device support passwords? IBM's Thinkpads can write a password to any hard disk, that is any regular spinning platter disk. I have tried it with many different drives, regardless of manufacturer. Unless you enter that password at boot-up, the drive cannot be accessed, not even in another system. Since the flash drive is, to the system, just a storage device like a platter drive, I thought the same would be true, but so far it has not worked. I just wish Winstation would answer my question, and indeed if they don't, I will not buy any more drives from them. There is another manufacturer out there called M-Systems that I will probably try. The device itself isn't too different from a regular hard disk - a Lexar or SST interface chip to "talk" to IDE, and a bunch of Toshiba flash memory chips for storage instead of platters. |
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