F8SV and HDD upgrade

Hey all,
I'm just wondering...I'm fairly new to the idea of upgrading components on laptops (had my first go at it, installing the 2GB RAM stick from ExcaliberPC on this laptop ), though I'm an old hand at it on desktop systems...

I'm wondering if I'd have much difficulty in upgrading the HDD on this laptop...looking at the Travelstar 7K200... is there generally compatability issues with new HDDs? I'd have gotten the 200GB drive upgrade option anyways, if I hadn't wanted to use the 160GB as an external USB drive

Any suggestions on possible drives? Looking at no less than 200GB drive, preferably 7200 RPM (though low heat and low power consumption), and something easy to install and format and all that jazz. Gonna dual boot vista & XP at some point, and just want to have seperate partitions for those.

As a side note to that... If i have a partition for XP and one for Vista, I want to keep a good chunk of data on seperate partitions, but do I need a seperate partition for Vista and one for XP? (ie: 1 partition Vista install, 1 XP install, 1 Vista data, 1 XP data), or can Vista and XP share the same misc data partition without getting to confused at itself?

Sorry for all the questions! This laptop is my first experience with Vista, so I'm getting used to it still!

Cheers!

 

there usually is no compatibility issues as long as you get a 2.5" sata hd. can't answer your question about dual boot, but will mention that xp might not recognize your sata hd (may have been corrected with sp2) and may require you to do some extra work.

 

Actually, i did have an issue a while back with my desktop and getting XP installed on a Sata drive (i've got an 80 as my primary, 250 as my storage). That problem though was only when I'd bought an AMD chip and motherboard.... as soon as I got an intel chip & motherboard, I had no issues. I'm sure it was motherboard related, I just don't know what feature on the intel one allowed it to recognize the SATA drive to install windows to, when the AMD board didn't...

Thanks for the info though, I'll give it a shot as soon as I can pick up the drive

 

No compat issues, make sure it's SATA and 2.5 inches, from there on it's fine.

I suggest Seagate, in general they are very quiet and relatively power-efficient.

Do NOT install both Windows OS-es on the same partition! They would probably "work" but they would not cooperate properly, I'm very sure about that. (fragmentation; system files; indexing etc. etc.)

To install on SATA drive: either enable for the duration of the install the SATA compatibility mode from BIOS (if the BIOS has such an option); or slipstream SATA drivers on the XP install CD. There are many guides out there, google should help.

 

But of course you can have one data-partition for both systems
(ie: 1 partition Vista install, 1 XP install, 1 data).

therefore it is unimportant wheather 1,2,3 or whatever OS's are working on a single data-partition. they share it like, let's say, flash-drive...

 

Yes, they can have the same data partition.

To be precise: non-OS dependent data should be structured in partition in a non-OS-dependent way. For instance, several examples of valid setups in my opinion.

XP, Vista, Data, Media
Xp, Vista, Data
XP, XP_Apps, Vista, Vista_Apps, Data

(I wouldn't mix the apps if you want to store them on a separate partition from the OS)

 

humangobo...... Yup did this with my F8SV the first day, pop in the drive(make sure you use the bracket the current drive is in) and as said before change the SATA mode in the BIOS. Installed XP with no issues, as always you will need to track down some drivers post install. I bought a fujitsu 100gb at newegg some months back.

If using 3Gb of RAM, don't fret if your 8600 is not recognized in XP. Just have to go to 2Gb.

As for dual boot.... unless you REALLY need the convenience... keep them on seperate drives or consider using a VMware like product, Microsofts Virtual PC2007 is free and can run within Vista. Just because dual booting "can" be done, doesn't make it right, especially if one of the OS's gets corrupt to the point of wiping.

 

weird, it wasn't keeping me informed of posts to this topic...

Thanks for all the info guys!!

And actually EBE, i can see the confusion with my post, but I wasn't asking about installing OS' to the same partition (fully intend to do seperate partitions there ), but rather just where all the other stuff is stored... ie: I want to have maybe 1 50 GB Vista Partition, 1 50 GB XP partition, and the other, however large it may be, as where I store all the other crap (games, documents, etc...). Don't even think I need to partitions for the OS' to be that big, but I'll work it out.

now my only wonder is for such things as installed apps... some programs like Quickbooks for my accounting, I'll install just on one OS, like Vista... but for other things like games such as Bioshock or Oblivion, though I'd prefer to have faster performance, I don't necessarily want to just dictate XP as my gaming OS and Vista as my productivity...want to be able to share some app usage. So I'm wondering, will I have to do a seperate install for both OS' in order for them both to be usable, or should I just stick to running games with XP, and other apps with Vista? Just wondering about shareability of programs.

Thanks all for the great information so far! Goin out today to grab a 200GB drive since I see it in stock at my shop i frequent

I'll let you know how it goes!