U100 with 240GB HDD

[novaldex]

Last night I successfully got my U100 to boot from a Toshiba 240GB 1.8" HDD (MK2431GAH). Fitted internally! It's a different drive to normal, and in so many places they tell you it won't work with a standard laptop. It doesn't have a 512byte physical sector size, it's actually 4kb. Windows XP isn't capable of handling that yet, although the rumours are that Windows 7 will.

There seems to be sufficient room for it to replace the standard drive, although you do need to take into account the ZIF adapter as the 240GB drive is ZIF only.

I'm using a custom linux build based on Linux From Scratch, so for the time being i've swapped drives back again now that I know it works. A bit of time building out this Linux build and then i'll get around to swapping them permanently..

Nick.

[dodocaptain]

Very nice! What's the rough cost of one of those drives?

[novaldex]

They're notoriously difficult to get your hands on, particularly if you're not in the US. I managed to source mine from Hong Kong, but the guy has since stopped supplying them. I think I paid in the region of £150, but I reckon it's worth it considering.

I had been thinking of some kind of pata-sata converter and then a sata drive as i'm more interested in capacity & battery life than performance, but that was looking a little too difficult at the time.

If you're US based (or have access to stock from there, export rules & shipping costs are such trouble!), try looking for the Apricorn A18-USB-240 external USB drive. There's a firewire version too, but from what i've read elsewhere both of these devices contain this drive. If nothing else, it'll serve as a very handy & small USB drive! They sell in the region of US$230-250 mostly, depending on where you shop.. You might be able to get it for less than US$200 if you're lucky! When I looked at them, the very few places that would ship internationally were wanting at least an additional US$100 for shipping costs, which I have to consider downright extortionate. I've just found them available through Expansys in the UK for just short of £200.

Don't forget you'll need a ZIF adapter too! They're only a few £ on eBay, try and get as small a one as possible.

Nick.