CompactFlash boot drive
Contents
Compact Flash boot drive
Changing your HDD for a CF boot drive with a Compact Flash card and adapter. This is primarily done by ThinkPad X40 series owners due to the extremely slow speeds of the 1.8" HDD.
What you need
- Passive IDE to CF adapter
- Compact Flash (CF) card with the following
- UDMA support
- X266 speed or better
- preferably one that identifies as Fixed disk
- 4 or 8GB capacity, depending on needs
Tested adapters
IDE to CF
These adapters will work for both ThinkPads with 1.8" and 2.5" IDE (PATA) HDDs.
- Addonics AD44MIDECF (single slot)
- Addonics AD44MIDE2CF (dual slot)
SATA to CF
These adapters are needed for newer ThinkPads with native SATA HDDs.
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TODO
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If someone has tested any, please add them here
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Removable vs Fixed disk type
Most newer compact flash cards identify themselves as Removable instead of Fixed disk. For Linux this does not cause any problems, but Windows has issues with it and will refuse to partition such a drive, and even if you manage to get it installed it will not be able to hibernate.
For the SanDisk Extreme III and IV adapters you should look for a DOS utility called ATCFWCHG.COM (try google). You will need to boot DOS and run it with the CF configured as either the master on the primary IDE interface or the master on the secondary interface. It will not work if the drive is attached as a slave or to any other interfaces.
To set a SanDisk Extreme adapter attached to the primary IDE interface to Fixed disk
ATCFWCHG.COM /P /F
To set a SanDisk Extreme adapter attached to the secondary IDE interface (Ultrabay) to Fixed disk
ATCFWCHG.COM /S /F
SATA to IDE bridge
On ThinkPad models with a SATA to IDE bridge (ThinkPad X40, X41 Tablet) there are some additional limitations and annoyances when changing your HDD to a CF card.
You can only have one CF card, even if you have a dual slot adapter. The second card will not be seen, this is a limitation of the bridge chip and the way SATA functions.
Beeps and error on boot. The ThinkPad BIOS will complain that an unsupported disk is installed (Error 2010), but will continue to boot after 5-10 seconds or after pressing enter (presuming you have a recent BIOS installed).
