EeeUser Eee PC Wiki

(Last edited Feb. 20, 2009)

The following is an outline (not step by step instructions) of the actions involved in transferring an Asus installed working system which uses the two original SSDs of 4G and 8G holding the Asus Windows XP system, programs, and your data, to a single fast SSD. The notes especially apply to the 4G+8G XP 901 model, but could be adapted for other models having a removable slow secondary SSD. In these notes the expression “old C” or “old D” or the word “old” refers to the original SSDs as installed by Asus, while “new C” or “new D” or the word “new” refers to partitions 1 and 2 on the replacement fast SSD, which can be of any size from 16G upwards - a minimum of 32G is recommended.

The principles in this wiki can also be applied by the lucky owners of 901 models with extra zif connector, to add a large capacity 1.8” 5 mm thick HDD to their 901 instead of a faster SSD. It might also be helpful for owners not familiar with the use of backup, cloning, and partitioning software, to study the various threads in these Fora on SSD and HDD replacement, and the making/restoring of backups and clones, before proceeding further.

You will need two items of software to assist with the changeover – software to partition the new SSD into two partitions e.g. Partition Magic, and software to backup the content of the existing two SSDs to some “holding” media like an SDHC card or an external HDD – e.g. Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost. The following notes assume the use of Acronis software.

1. Backup the two old drives, 4G and 8G, to a suitable sized SD card or USB drive - I used Acronis True Image 10 Home to make backups of drives C and D, but other backup/cloning software is also usable.
2. Physically remove the old 8G SSD - only two little screws hold it down. Access is obtained after first removal of two screws securing the bottom plate and removal of the bottom plate - (Note: these screws are longer than those holding down the SSD to be removed)
3. Fit new fast MLC SSD or even a fast SLC SSD (but these are expensive), inserting it at an angle into the connector, and replace the two short holding down screws - the new SSD will eventually show in the BIOS as “IDE Slave” and in the Secondary IDE Channel in XP's Device Manager as “Device 1”. The Transfer Mode should show as “Ultra DMA Mode 5” in Device Manager, and should stay at this setting.
4. Restore backup of C to partition 1 of new drive, and backup of D to partition 2 of new drive - you may need help from partitioning software.
5. Basically you need to expand the old C content into a larger sized partition on the new SSD, and make it bootable, and expand the old D content into a second partition on the new SSD - this mirrors the original arrangement installed by Asus.
6. Note: Using Acronis 10 software for the backup and restores it was necessary in a separate action to restore to the new C partition the MBR and track 0 after restoration of the old C content to the new C partition - Acronis is apparently unable to do both in one operation. Other backup or cloning software might work differently. It is important, however done, that drive/partition “C” is rendered bootable.
7. Alter boot drive in BIOS to boot from new faster SSD, and disable old 4G SSD in the BIOS before your first time boot of the new arrangement. (Note: To disable the 4G SSD in the BIOS go to advanced/IDE configuration/IDE Master - click on this and change it from”Auto” to “Not installed”, then go to “Exit” and save this new BIOS configuration.)
8. Re-boot Eee and the 2 partitions of new drive should take drive letters C and D, and should boot and run correctly
9. Retain backups of C and D previously made in case required further. I have used a backup-and-restore method here to enable retention of copies of the original system - however it may also possible to clone C and D content straight from the original SSDs to the new large SSD.
10. When XP is running OK from the new drive, you can re-enable 4G SSD if you wish - but for now it is recommended that it is left disabled in the BIOS, and also is disabled in XP's Device Manager/Disk drives - right click on drive description (ASUS-PHISON SSD), and select “disable”. The old 4G drive can be further disabled by using partitioning software to de-format it into “unallocated” space.
11. Others doing similar changes involving fitting of a new HDD to a zif connector have recommended physical removal of the old SSD drive C, but this involves an almost complete dismantle of the model 901 to get to the 4G SSD - see elsewhere or YouTube for instructional video on how to do this.
12. It is recommended further that you get software which checks the read and write performance of your newly installed SSD, and check the performance against data published in threads herein. Try ATTO disk benchmark or similar software. You should expect to get a write speed of around 40,000 MB/sec. and a read speed around 80,000 MB/sec., with a Runcore SSD, which is considerablly faster than the Asus installed original SSDs.

( Author danmdan, Dan Mitchell - E.&O.E.)