Saturday, 28 May 2022

Notes on upgrading the IDE2 (Primary Slave) SSD of the Asus EEE PC 901 mSATA to SATA Mini PCIE

The most easy way to upgrade the darn slow 8/16GB SSD on the IDE2 of the 901 is to get an  "mSATA to mini PCIe" and of course an mSATA SSD something like this (make sure it is for SSD not an adapter for WiFi/GPS etc card)

 
 The problem is that by installing this adapter you will "lose" the internal SSD (IDE1, aka Primary Master) and every time you boot the EEE PC you will see a message to press F1 as the Primary Master is "missing". There are two ways to bypass this :

1. The best one is to isolate some pins on the adapter - by using Kapton or very thin sticky tape - as per instructions on this site : https://apavlov.ru/zamena-ssd-v-asus-eee-pc-901/  , by doing this then the IDE1 will be active again.

2. The other way is to enable the "Boot Booster" on the BIOS, this option can be enabled if you setup a small eg 8MB partition on IDE2 SSD and setup it as "EF" (EFI type)  , this wont bring back the internal SSD but will bypass the F1 error.
 
BTW: Don't even think to replace the primary SSD or even the secondary one with an mSATA without using an adapter! They are NOT COMPATIBLE, please note that some mSATA SSDs are being sold as "mSATA miniPCIe" , total BS...



Left: mSATA , Right: the original mini-PCIe SSD