Initial review RunCore 2.5 Inch Pro IV SATA SSD

I've gotten a lucky break, and won a RunCore 2.5 Inch Pro IV SATA SSD from MyDigitalDiscount. It arrived just the other day, and this morning I finally had the time to unpack it and form my first impressions.

Initial assessment was very favorable - the packaging is sturdy, yet not impossible to open. Thank you for not using a f---ing blister pack runCore!

Opening the package simply acts to assert that my initial assessment indeed was correct - this is a very well thought out and put together piece of kit. You'll get the following:
- the 2.5" SSD
- a aluminum enclosure to allow you to use it as an external drive
- two screwdrivers
- a USB cable
- two stickers for bragging rights

In the package I received from MDD I also found a nice RunCore tshirt, but somehow I don't think thats part of the standard kit.

Since my beloved 701 4G does not come with room or connectors for a second SSD, my plan is to use the RunCore as an external drive for now. Later - when I'm done traveling abroad - it will end up either as the primary drive in a newer Eee or as the system drive in my desktop. This means that it'll for now have to live in the enclosure.

The enclosure consists of two aluminum half shells, held together by a plastic hoop piece. Inside the hoop there is just enough room for the drive and the supplied PCB - but a snug fit here is good since it means there is no way the drive will disconnect from the PCB and cause problems. Once the hoop was in place, it was a simple matter to fix the alluminum shell to the hoop with the supplied screws and the smaller of the two screwdrivers.

This is the one point where the kit fails somewhat - the smallest screwdriver is a little large for the very tiny screws that comes with the enclosure, meaning you risk stripping the heads if you're not careful. A very minor niggle, but the only one I found so far.


The drive was recognized both by my Eee and my desktop with no trouble. It has some software on it to help you migrate an exiting installation, but that is Windows Only... but a Linux user can manage much the same with a few simple commands in the terminal.


Since I havn't had much time to play around with it et, I can't say much for it's speed and such yet - but I can say as much that it's faster than ye old external drive for moving between directories, pulling up movies and playing them.
And now: pictures!

Hints, tips and tricks part six

Yet again, more hints, tips and tricks I've picked up so far:

I can't get out of Advanced Mode / I can't get back to Easy Mode

• The "brute force and ignorance" way is to do a F9 Restore - however this will lose all your changes and settings.
• A subtler way is to run the personalization applet - open a console and use the command /opt/xandros/bin/password_dialog This ought to give you the option to choose between Easy Mode and Advanced Mode as your Login Mode.
• Or you can replace the startsimple.sh and startfull.sh scripts with unmodified copies. This should as far as I understand make the Eee boot into Easy Mode with the option of using the shut down dialog to go to advanced mode. You can find unmodified copies of the two scripts right here.

I want (software) to start when my Eee boots

• Open a terminal (Ctrl+Alt+t), type sudo kwrite /etc/alternatives/x-session-manager and hit enter.
• Add (software) & to the end of the file. In other words, if you want FireFox to start when your Eee boots, add firefox & to the end of the file.
• Save the file, exit KWrite, and exit the console by typing exit and hit enter.
• Reboot and enjoy.