[ltp] X40 upgrade notes (SSD, Ubuntu Precise)

[Richard Neill]

>
> Any idea how using the Kingfast SSD affects power consumption? A few
> years back I recall reading up on one particular X40 / SSD combo that
> looked good from a performance standpoint, but apparently was also a
> bit of a power hog (sorry, don't recall the specifics).

For me, the battery is wrecked - I use the machine as a silent 
media-center pc (music over NFS, USB audio to hi-fi). Usually, SSDs tend 
to be pretty good.

> Also, any thoughts on going with the Kingfast vs any other available
> SSD in this application?

As far as I can see, it's Kingfast and Kingspec as the only options.

>
> On my X40 I was using a "poor man's SSD" -- a 16GB Kingston Elite Pro
> Compact Flash card in an Addonics CF/IDE Adapter. I'm thinking a real
> SSD might provide noticeably better performance.

Indeed. I did very much the same a while ago. The CF cards provide 
silence, low power, and read speeds slightly worse than HDD. CF's write 
speed is awful; up to 1 second of latency.


The SSD is really quite good  - the machine feels pretty snappy.
I did a couple of measurements for you:

hdparm -t /dev/sda
	=> 64 MB/s read speed

dd if=/dev/zero of=tmp bs=1M count=1000; sync
	=> 1 GB written in 21 seconds.

boot time from poweron to xfce being completely ready:
    27 seconds (of which BIOS + GRUB take 8 seconds).


Best wishes,

Richard