N56VZ SSD Hard Drive

Does anyone know if the N56VZ will take a 7mm SSD? Specifically, the Samsung 830. Purchased it for the UX32VD but felt it was really too slow a a bit small for my needs. Purchased the N56VZ and love it. Don't really find the HD too slow but I got the SSD for such a deal, it would be a shame to return.

Thanks for your thoughts.

 

Sorry to pester but would anyone know whether a 7mm SSD will require shims in the N56VZ or would it fit into the available space. Thanks

 

Never mind. Popped the bottom off this evening and see that the chassis should hold the 7mm SSD just fine. Hope this helps someone else, too.

 

Was it easy to replace the HDD with the SSD? Not like taking apart a macbook, right? Were you able to use the include copy of Win7 with new drive?

 

It required removing a total of 5 screws (one on the laptop bottom and four holding the SSD chassis) and could not have been easier. 7mm SSD fit the chassis perfectly but you do have the additional depth if needed.

I used an existing SP1 DVD to install Win7, downloaded drivers to an SD card and activated using the Product Key on the bottom of the laptop. Screaming fast now. Only drawback is that the Video score in Windows Experience dropped from 7.2 to 6.7.

I've installed the Intel and Nvidia drivers but there must be some setting(s) that require tweaking.

 

Good. You find the answer. It shall work.

 

I just purchased an N56VZ and was thinking about swapping in a SSD. Do you know if it voids the warranty? Also, is it worth doing a clean windows install or just using the ASUS recovery disks that I created? I dont want to take a hit on Video performance...

 

Sorry for going slightly off topic but it seams like a relevant thread to post, I just bought a n56vz and I'm waiting for it in the mail, won't have money for another SSD now but I have 2 TB 7200RPM drives in my PC and a 120GB SSD, do you guys reccomend I move the SSD over to the laptop and either make an external with a case from the laptop HDD or move it to the Disk bay? Should I just leave the laptop with the 5400 rpm drive for 3 or so months until I get another SSD? What would you guys do?

Thanks

 

Depends on how comfortable you are doing a fresh install. It's pretty easy to do with the drivers and so on if you have the driver disc. But getting all the new updates and so on takes forever.

But use the ssd for the boot-drive, and then add the other drive in the optical bay, if you want to do that. No point using the ssd as backup.

@stp84: Does not void the warranty, and is completely safe and very easy to do. It's honestly not that convenient to use the recovery discs, since it takes up some extra space. That you really can't spare on an ssd. You don't get a hit on performance. The windows index just runs on the integrated graphics and an early driver of some sort. It goes up again after the nvidia/intel updates.

 

Taking apart a mac is easier than an asus (contrary to popular beliefs)

 

So I can put the SSD in and install windows from a disk and download drivers ?

 

Hey guys,

Is it possible to install an SSD in place of the optical drive right out of the box, or does one need something like this Caddy Bay for N56VZ to make it work?

 

^yeah, you need a caddy, or some way to link the connector. Not good to leave it unsecured in the chassis, though. So you need a caddy.

Mm. You can follow the guide in my sig, or one of the others on the site. There's a link to places you can download windows installs, that kind of thing.

Oh, sure. You have one or two screws to get off the service hatch on an asus. And on a mac you have to take off the loose parts, 12 screws in different sizes, and then pry off the chassis, which isn't exactly easy - before you get to the hdd bay. Easy peasy..

 

I wouldn't take it apart for experience sake but replacing the HDD with an SSD on the N56VZ could not have been easier; one screw at the bottom of the laptop, slide off the cover, remove four screws holding the chassis, pop out the HDD, unscrew and then screw in the SSD. If it look 5 minutes that was a lot.

 

http://www.notebookcheck.net/typo3temp/pics/d36ff279cb.jpg
looks really easy.
And once I tried to check on a power button in an old macbook i can't think anything is worse...

 

Hello to everyone. I've just bought an Asus N56VZ and I'm really satisfied of it.
I've got a question: I wanna change the HDD with a SSD with this dimensions: 70.61mm (W) x 100.58mm (D) x 9.91mm (H), would it be a problem ?

 

Shouldn't be a problem. It still conforms to the 2.5" standard more or less - chances are the differences in the drive you listed dimensions for v.s. the drive you currently have are only within hundredths of an inch.

 

Thank you.

 

Hi!
I have bought SATA caddy for my OCZ Agility 3 SSD and installed it in place of DVD drive on my N56VZ. I successfully installed windows 7, but I'm having strange problems. After I restart Windows my SSD is not recognized. It is not shown in Esc boot menu and I cannot boot Windows. Same thing happens when waking laptop from sleep, windows are still active but they become unresponsive and soon crash. The solution is to completely power off laptop. Afterwards it detects SSD and boots normally. I tried to put it in place of standard HDD and laptop always recognized it (but for the sake of cooling and shock proofing, I want to leave HDD there).

Does anyone have any ideas?

P.S. Already tried: BIOS update, switch from AHCI to IDE mode, boot priority change. However nothing helped.

 

Have you tried a firmware update? Also, I think these drives (or at least the Crucial M4 has this) have a "garbage collection cleanup" that's inherent and works in the background; it's intended to repair bad cells on it's own during idle.

Try updating the firmware, and if that doesn't work, boot the laptop with the drive installed, load the BIOS setup, and then leave the system running in the BIOS screen for 6-8 hours.

Let us know what happens from there.

 

Your problem is probably due to the incompatibility of the caddy
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/709678-n56vz-fails-sleep-shutdown.html

 

Ah yes, I almost forgot about the SATA diagnostic pin and ground signal pin. That could also be the problem, OP. The modification could be challenging though, so if you don't have the tools nor experience - and don't know anyone that does - then you may be better off getting a different caddy if it's the same problem as elenax posted.

 

Forgot to mention it, SSD was on latest firmware. Problem was not fixed after keeping BIOS on.
In the end, I put internal HDD in caddy and SSD in its place and now everything works perfectly.

Except quiet squeak noise when HDD is starting, probably it moves a bit when spinning up.

Maybe caddy was not built for high speed SSDs.

 

The optical drive SATA connection is almost always SATA 3 Gbps, so regardless of the caddy, SSD in the optical bay is not ideal for performance. HDD in optical bay doesn't matter so much, as platter drives will not saturate SATA 6 Gbps bandwidth anyway.

 

I've been looking at the N56 recently myself, what ssd would you recommend? What particular brands, specs etc. would be best and compatible with windows 8 and ubuntu?

 

I have intel SSD 330, works correctly with Win8

 

@prostar: ..actually, it seems that pretty much all pcs made with a70 or pm76 or higher motherboards have two sata3 connectors. Some of the older motherboards also have that. So I'd... guess most if not all of the laptops on the market now really have sata 3 connectors, but either have forced bios settings that set "gen1" or sata 150mb/s, or use cables with connectors that physically set "compatibility mode".

I mean, the sata controller is integrated on the motherboard, makes no sense to force lower speeds unless you wanted to.. you know.. save 1w on the draw on the powersupply

Or do you know of examples where the connectors have actually burned out when running on higher bandwidth? Since higher voltage, that sort of thing..?

There's really no significant difference between the drives nowadays. Even the "slow" drives are massively faster than most raid stripes, and the controllers don't introduce any strange latency issues, data loss situations, or anything like that. It's more about how some drives are made on smaller nm production to decrease cost, have better power-usage, higher sustained reads and writes, etc.

So it's not like there is no difference between a Corsair Neutron and an intel ssd. But I suppose it might not really be significant, or as important as what the baseline ssds will offer compared to an hdd.

And like people mention above, the n56vz can run "sata3"/sata 600mb/s on either port. As long as the dock/caddy doesn't have it's own controller, or force some compatibility settings. (Honestly didn't think there was something like that on sata, since it's written to be backwards compatible, but apparently there is after all.. learn something new every day, right..).

 

It's fair to say that sATA hardware failure rates are quite low as it is. Since the transmitter drives the transmit pins only at the specified differential voltage (1.5v, at least in SATA 1.5 Gbps), I really doubt there's a big concern over voltage.

 

Um, well, there's this.. thing.. with some of these motherboards from a year back or so. Not completely sure how real it is, but I heard about people worrying about the powersupply if running two "sata3" devices on the same "port-pair".

That would stem from... theoretically.. from manufacturers using one single sata3 port for both onboard devices on the sata ports, because one sata2/3 hdd can easily multiplex with one sata1 device with no performance issues. And without increasing voltage constantly. Voltage is variable, 300-600mv, and the law of.. things.. means that watt-drain is on average not as high as it can be. And the transistors would then.. theoretically.. not need to be very high quality to function perfectly fine for any amount of tests.

So you could imagine laptop manufacturers picking off the second sata port, using only the first - and then suddenly getting burnt contacts when having two sata3 devices, since they then could potentially draw as much power as possible constantly.

And then continue to do that after the hardware issue has been resolved, because bios-tweaking is some sort of arcane art that no laptop-manufacturers know. And they would very likely not change a hardware design, and double the sata pairs in use, because that is complex and for next revisions, etc., etc.

..possibly?