Fast Hard drive and memory card setup for winXP

Okay, here's the deal....I have the AAO-A110L. Now we all know this model has a sucky 8gb ssd. At first i simply replaced the incredibly slow ssd with an 80gb Samsung Spinpoint (hs081ha) in the hopes of having decent access speeds as well as the extra storage.

I swiftly learnt two things from that mod;

1. Ipod hard drives are not significantly faster than the ssd, but they are an improvement.

2. Never use Samsung Ipod HDD'S, why?? They don't like massive file transfers. They produce a lot of heat during Write Cycles (I killed two model "hs081ha"s trying to transfer 22gb of music across my network onto the netbook) The end result?? A netbook that goes straight to the bios information screen when switched on and "none" listed as your hard drive. My advice, pay the extra £10 for the same size TOSHIBA hard drive (the 80gb Toshiba is called MK8010GAH)

So after a spending a fortune on postage to return two dead hdd's to the ebay seller and having to wait longer for the Toshiba to arrive (new year post, god dammit..lol) I got my AAO up and running with Xp. But i was still unsatisfied with the hdd access speed's (don't get me wrong, It was much faster) I started to think, what if i took windows off the hard drive and run it off a usb key or memory card. It would free up some of the hdd's limited read/write cycles for actual data storage.

So here's what I did

1. I got an 8gb sd card (I didnt want a chunky usb pendrive constantly sticking out the side of my netbook)

2. I used an external card reader(for the 8gb sd card) because windows xp setup won't detect the memory card when its in either of the AAO's card reader's. I used external CD/DVD drive to install windows with (although the usb pendrive method would also work)

3. I the used my desktop pc to download Grub2 bootloader (the AAO won't boot off its own sd card reader's, so I used grub2 to get around this) Grub2 Is here http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/grub-2.en.html

4. I installed GRUB onto the Ipod hdd using HawkPE. You can get it here, its a miracle tool to fix any pc
Live DVD is here http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4479694 ... e_Live_DVD (This version Has SLAX)
OR
Live CD IS here http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/4479669 ... fe_Live_CD (This version does not have SLAX)
NOTE! There is documentation that comes with hawkPE that tells you how to run this software from a pen drive instead of cd/dvd

5. I set up GRUB2 to load the operating system from the AAO'S Card reader


End result.....

1. An operating system Independent of your HDD (useful if winxp messes up, you will be able to format and reinstall it whilst keeping all your data on the hdd intact) But don't worry, we all know windows never messes up for no reason....Right? :lol:

2. A Little security feature, Remove the memory card and your left with unbootable Netbook until its reinserted. Or until someone Installs windows or linux, etc. onto the hdd and probably destroys your data in the process.

3. More of you hdd's speed for use by you. (because windows is beasting the memory card not your hdd with its pagefile, etc, etc)

4. Precious hdd space is saved because you no longer waste 1 - 2gb installing windows and another 768mb - 2gb for the pagefile.

5. A major headache from setting this up.



Okay so thats what I did. Now i'm finally happy with the setup I have on my AAO. I used google to get most of the information I was unsure about during this setup process. I don't have any of the links available because i did this two weeks ago.

I will get round to writing a proper Tutorial after I have came back from Pirbright. Thats if someone else hasn't already found or made a tutorial before me.

 

There is some good stuff here, but begs a couple of questions . . .

How much was the hard drive delivered?
Why not by the XP version with hard drive in the first place?

 

My AAO came with the 8gb SSD, I installed an 80gb Toshiba Ipod HDD

Why not by the XP version with hard drive in the first place?[/quote] Good question, I have often wished I had. At the time (Nov 08) I lacked the money to get the more expensive XP version of the netbook. I see no point buying the xp version now considering I can't return my AAO (warranty now void after fitting the IPOD Drive) and now my AAO has XP so it all turned out good in the end.

 

Seems as good a reason as any and judging by the problems people have with linpus I am sure you will not be the last.

So as a reference, how much was the hard drive delivered?

 

Food for thoughts...

Running linpus on L110 with 8Gb SSD

Install VirtualBox which allows you to run virtual machine like XP

Install XP virtual on a 8G or 16G SD Card.

You still have quick boot into linpus for light surfing and can run XP "on top".

If you also have a desktop machine, install VirtualBox on that one as well, pop the SD card into it and you have a "moveable virtual XP" machine.

Speed is not bad at all.

Pretty easy to do using macles blog.

 

TO "ndirons" The 80gb Toshiba IPOD hdd cost me £58 (UK Sterling) which is approx $80.5 (US Dollars) or $122.9 (AU Dollars)

TO "champagj" That seems like a good alternative for achieving the same result without voiding the netbooks warranty (through changing the hdd) Whilst still leaving the original operating system intact (for when windows doesn't play nice)