Considerations for using CF-IDE adapters

[springbox44]

Hi all,

I'm considering buying one of these each for my G40 and 600E, with the intent of installing 98/2000 on them.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/3283846 ... 50-RLziiwM

However, before forking out my money, is there anything I should be aware of, in terms of extra adapters required or otherwise? Looking for the cheapest option really.

Thanks

[dr_st]

The VOGONS forums are probably the best source of information for such questions. I never tried one myself.

[Neil]

I've used such an adapter in my X40 for many years. Works great. Only gotcha is it's very difficult to install in the drive bay. One basically has to remove case plastic to gain access to the IDE connector. That's about my only option with the X40, but with other devices with a full size HDD slot, I would recommend an adapter with a case or a dual CF card adapter something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Micro-SATA-Cable ... 07&sr=8-18

[cadillacmike68]

Neil, how is the speed on one of those?

[Neil]

Well, I can't really comment much on the speed, as it's the only drive I've ever had in the X40. So there is nothing for me to compare to other than other ThinkPads of similar vintage that are running spinning IDE HDDs. And to me performance is about the same. The X40 with CF card probably lags a little more that the others at times, but it's all purely subjective, as I've never measured anything.

Given the choice, I would choose a "real" hard drive every time. But, for the X40, at the time (many years ago), CF adapter was the only affordable option. And it worked. I've been using it (on my second CF card, first wore out) for several years with various Linux distributions. Even ran Win XP for a while some years ago, but that was more trouble than it was worth.

[theterminator93]

I have something like this in my X41T. The main thing is the CF card you use needing to report itself as a fixed disk, not removable; I tried upgrading to something bigger than the tiny 16GB CF card that was in it when I acquired it, and the 64GB SanDisk card I used did not work...

Here's an article that may yield some mental nuggets on the topic: https://www.daniel-boehmer.de/thinkpad-cf/