[Arm-netbook] AC100 Upgrades

[Gordan Bobic]

On 07/11/2012 06:50 PM, Mike Howard wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I upgrading my AC100 (following Gordon's tips) and rather than follow
> exactly the SSD tip at;
>
> http://www.altechnative.net/2012/02/07/morebetter-internal-storage-on-the-toshiba-ac100-part-2/
>
> I was wondering if this would be compatible;
>
> http://www.memoryc.co.uk/products/description/32GB_SuperTalent_IDE_Half_Mini_2_PCI_Express_SSD_Solid_State_for_Dell_Mini_9-80_40MB_read_write_/index.html
>
> Cheaper, neater and no soldering :)
>
> Anybody any idea?

Unfortunately not. Read the previous article in the series where this 
issue is covered:

http://www.altechnative.net/2012/01/24/morebetter-internal-storage-on-the-toshiba-ac100/

The only lines wired up on the mini PCIe connector are for USB. 
Everything else isn't connected to anything (even though the SoC 
actually has PCIe in it, it just isn't wired up to the slot).

That means that the only mini PCIe SSDs you can use are miniDOM-U 
(miniDOM-U is mini PCIe form factor but USB connected) The only two such 
devices I have been able to find are the ones mentioned in the first 
article. The reasons why I decided against them are also detailed in 
that article: astronomical price and performance worse than some SD 
cards. You might as well use an internal miniPCIe-USB SD card adapter 
(also described in that article), and use plug in something like the 
SanDisk Extreme Pro 95MB/s SD card:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005LFT3QG/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=altechnative-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=B005LFT3QG

Full benchmark of various SD/CF/USB flash media is available in this 
article:

http://www.altechnative.net/2012/01/25/flash-module-benchmark-collection-sd-cards-cf-cards-usb-sticks/

(see link at the bottm for details, and look at the bottom table there, 
scroll down - the important figure is random-write IOPS, everything else 
you might as well ignore).

As far as SD cards go, the SanDisk Extreme Pro 95MB/s card (note - there 
are Extreme Pro cards that aren't 95MB/s ones, it seems, avoid those) is 
by far the fastest one. It actually seems to manage random writes at the 
same speed as a 7200rpm hard disk. You could argue this is attrocious 
for NAND, but SD cards are really crap. That's why I went to the trouble 
of fitting the RC8 internally - 2000 IOPS on both writes and reads make 
a massive difference to the feel of the machine, especially when memory 
is limited enough to impair caching ability.

Gordan