ATA vs USB

[OilSheikh]

I have an ancient Lenovo T43 motherboard. ATA hard drives are no longer manufactured and Lenovos are also picky on which brand's which model hard drive they want to work with.

I am thinking of using a USB stick as a boot HDD and install Windows, programs, etc. on it

Will this be too slow ?
ATA - 133Mbps ( As this is 5400rpm, might be slooower )
USB2.0 - 480Mbps

[kalniel]

ATA speed depends on mode. Ultra 6 is 133 MB/s, not Mbps. USB2.0 is only 60MB/s. Ultra 7 is 167 MB/s.

I.e. the USB 2.0 bandwidth is at least twice as slow as ATA. ATA is unlikely to limit hard drive speed in most cases, USB 2.0 will limit speeds in most cases.

[kompukare]

Will this be too slow ?
ATA - 133MBps ( As this is 5400rpm, might be slooower )
USB2.0 - 480Mbps

There fixed that for you. So it's more like (theoretical) 133MBps vs ~ 44MBps.
It will be slow and the USB will stick out too. Better of to look for some old PATA 2.5" drive. The Thinkwikis:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T43
http://thinkwiki.de/t43
say it takes 9.5mm so not the really thick 12.7mm ones. It also has an optical bay where you might be able to fit a HDD (this is certainly the case with the more modern SATA Thinkpad T's).

[OilSheikh]

So, do I buy a 5 year old used ATA HDD ?
Damn thing has no other storage interfaces

[kompukare]

Or go the ultrabay way:
http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T61-and-...es/td-p/201268

If you fancy a solder mod, there's always this crazy idea:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=94308
http://mikejmoffitt.com/wp/?p=5

Most Thinkpads can be set to boot from the Ultrabay HDD so that might be your best option if you are willing to lose the optical.

Of course, a lot of ebay vendors claim to have new 2.5" PATA drives but that must surely be new as in sat on a shelve for years.

[OilSheikh]

Thanks guys, will get an Ultrabay and a SATA HDD or who knows ... an SSD?

[DanceswithUnix]

If it is that old, are you better off getting a cheap AM1 socket setup?

[Agent]

If you're talking about a flash drive (you don't specify) - no. It'll wear very fast and the random I/O on them is terrible.

[kompukare]

If it is that old, are you better off getting a cheap AM1 socket setup?

Problem is those are really cheaply made. This is proper Thinkpad. There was one issue with the T43 AFAIR in that there was too flex in the chassis which could break the motherboard. Thing is, with Thinkpads people feel it's a good idea to hold them at one corner. Still, think the T43 had a better keyboard than the T60 onwards. Also, although this was after Lenovo bough the company, the T43 still got to say IBM on it. Thing is is only a Pentium M (T60 was Core2, while only T61+ were Core2 Duo, i.e. 64-bit).