Help V6VA

Bought the V6VA about 1 1/2 years ago. As everybody here suggested, great screen, However I have found it to be incredibly slow. My question is what do you attribute the slowness too. I believe it to be due to the HDD 4200. It has been this way from the start. If this is not the issue, what else could I look for. When I run it side by side vs a 3 year old Dell inspiron 8600 with a 7200 hdd, the dell runs much faster. This is true on start up and surfing the internet. Both computers are used for the same purpose, surfing, word, excel e-mail, nothing that intensive. My daughter constantly complains it is slow when she plays web based games. Any thoughts.

 

Adding a 7200rpm hard drive will make a huge difference. Don't let anyone tell you that they run hotter or give you less battery life. In same cases they run cooler than the slower hard drives.

Hitachi is my brand of choice for hdd, since your laptop is ide, an ide 7200rpm hard drive would be perfect. Take a look for the 7K100 Hitachi drive (80gb and 100Gb)

Seagate also has the 7200.1 in 80gb and 100gb sizes.

 

I have owned both Hitachi 7K100 and Seagate Momentus IDE drives and found that although the Hitachi is a better performer, it's not by much. Seagates are generally cooler though, and since my W3V is a heat monster, I opted for that instead. The Hitachi was constantly around 54-55 degrees on load, whereas the Seagate sits around 49-52 on load. However the max burst speed on HD tune for the Hitachi as 53 MB/sec, the Seagate scored 47MB/sec. It just depends on which you actually prefer but these are negligible differences. Also Seagate's have a 5 year warranty as opposed to Hitachi's 3 year warranty, which was pretty much the deal breaker.

Compared to 5400s and 4200s, these drives are much faster and perform closer to their desktop cousins.

 

What would be a good price and is this something a novice can install?

 

Newegg is a great place (among others) to get HDD's. As for installation, piece of cake - it's only slightly harder than installing RAM.

You'll also need an external enclosure in order to clone the existing 4200 onto the new drive. Cloning tools for their drives can be downloaded from all the manufacturer's websites, or you can use TrueImage or Norton Ghost (has new name now, I forget what it is).

 

I would recommend Paragon's Partition Manager, which can also clone images. I don't recommand Norton Ghost at all, as it hasn't been improved since Symantec purchased it from PowerQuest many years ago. I've had limited success with Acronis TrueImage as there are issues with their cloning system, certain OSes don't clone properly ie; XP SP2 on Dynamic disk.

 

Looked at the seagate website for installation directions, seems a little complicated for a novice, (ie, a lot of down side risk if I screw something up)Not to mention I don't get the cloning business. How long would this take for a computer pro to do, and how much do you think it should/would cost?

 

Changing a harddrive is not difficult at all, there should be a cover with 1-2 screws. Look for an engraved logo or imprint with a cylinder(with a swoosh).


The bottom panel with the large black rubber is the harddrive compartment.

Inside that compartment will be the harddrive,
Unscrew any of the harddrive cage or heatspreaders(if there is one, my W3V doesn't have anything). Since the V6V is IDE there will be a orange ribbon cable with a long(80 pin) black interface adapter connected to the drive. Gently pull that off, and you'l be able to detach the harddrive from your notebook. Also pay attention to your old drive and look for a jumper, and note where it's located as this will need to be applied the same on the new drive. See pic below.



Once your done, reverse the instructions and try booting the machine. Obviously Windows won't boot(since there is nothing on the new drive), so you would need to hit F2 to get into the BIOS. The first screen should already indicate if your new drive has been connected.

 

The complication isn't the drive installation. Any novice would be able to install it. The disk cloning is more complicated, however if you want to do a fresh install(which I would recommend) it will make this whole ordeal easier.

 

Yes, I believe I will have no problem with the physical install. I was worried about the clone or fresh install. Not sure how I would do the fresh install but if I did what happens to all the programs and documents?

 

Fresh install is just what it implies - new, fresh OS and nothing else, but you also need to have the driver disk from Asus for the V6 to get it done as Windows will ask for it. Programs etc all have to be reinstalled, and your documents have to be copies over to the new HDD.

Cloning is straightforward, as long as you follow the directions for the product you're using and you don't enable any options that would erase the original HDD you can always go back to it if the clone fails; however, as you seem quite unsure you might be better off having a local tech shop perform the HDD clone for you. I would think the cost should be less than $50-75 for the service, as long as you provide the HDD, and then you can install the new HDD yourself. Time for a HDD clone depends on how much data is being copied, but should be less than 1-2 hours.

 

Thanks for your help. Happy holiday's

 

OK so I have been a little slow getting around to swapping to a new 7200HD, but I'm ready now, what drive should I get and how do I know it will fit?

 

I will go with Hitachi 7K100 HTS721080G9SA00 2`5 founded here http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145005 or check Google for it. I intend myself for an upgrade sooner or later, as for speed/heat you may read this http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=59053.

PS: could you tell me what BIOS vers. are you running (mine is 0401)? I was looking for a new BIOS on Asus download page and the only vers. available is 0305.

 

The V6 series is EOL for at least a year now. Asus doesn't tend to release any further BIOS updates once that occurs.

 

I know that, the actual BIOS (0400) came factory pre-install in my laptop and it´s no longer on the download page.The only thing that bothers me is the fact that you can't choose to upgrade instead to downgrade to an earlier version.

 

It looks like that HDd is no longer available at newegg. Current drive is 4200 Fuitsu IDE, don't I need to replace it with another IDE. Sorry for newbie question but I'm not sure what will work w/ what. As for the Bios I believe it is 08.00.10 hope that makes sense

 

Yes, you do; SATA won't work in any notebook with IDE interface.

Look for any notebook HDDs @ Newegg with ATA-6 interface.

Sorry, I was confused on what you're wanting to do then, but maybe it's just me this morning... In fact there is a way to force downgrade with a BIOS flash in Asus notebooks that has been discussed in the past, I've just never needed to downgrade so I don't remember what it was.

401 may have been the last BIOS update that Asus did on the final Va systems they shipped out before EOL. If what you wanted to do is go 401->305, search around for it or post a new thread and somebody who remembers the protocol will let you know .

 

This would work?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822146229

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