W3J - is the HD still PATA only? additional Drive Also?

Want to know if a SATA drive is installable in w3J as well as 2nd HDD slot....if not...is there any intention to make this a future upgrade at ASUS? Thanks.

 

Yeah, it won't be changed to SATA till the Spring when the chipset changes.... and yes, the 2nd HD kit is the same.

 

I thought that it was SATA???

 

I think its the A8js that was changed to SATA.

 

Using Everest Home Edition, it says my W3J has a Serial ATA. THIS ONE specificly. Am I looking at this wrong?

 

The A8js is SATA - the W3j is PATA... to be perfectly honest - the performance difference is close to nill... so it's not a huge deal unless they stop making PATA drives... which they don't seem to be doing. The W3 does have a different type or connection which techically allows for both PATA and SATA drives to be attached via different cables... but they only included the PATA cable here in the US, even on the Core 2 Duo model.. and I don't think they have an SATA drive anywhere in the world for this model.... so, I'd guess what your system is reporting is BS, but then again, why would the system be wrong? Open up the CPU/HDD/RAM cover and check it out.

 

I could have swore that I read somewhere it was sata drives now. Of course now, I can't find where I read it,... I really hope that you are wrong though Justin. I've always been told that the sata is much much faster the pata. I was actually thinking of getting a w3j sometime, but if it's really a pata, maybe I should get the a8js instead.

 

W3J is PATA. I'm very sure of this because I upgraded my W3J's HDD myself to the Seagate perpendicular recording 5400.3 Momentus 160 GB. Why I am very sure? Because the Seagate is definitely a PATA drive.

 

Sorry, I must be reading the wrong line Justin... The link above is the hard drive that came in it though if anyone needs to look for themselves.

Here's a couple pic too...

​

 

Well, I'm not wrong... I seldom am.... especially when I can go out to the warehouse, open up a new W3 and verify it before I click enter on the post

Well, of course SATA has a faster throughput than PATA, but right now, on the notebooks anyway, there isn't much difference to be had in the first place.... it's not the end of the world.... In fact, If you're between the A8 and W3 - pick the A8 for some other reason... but certainly don't pick it because the W3 has a PATA hard drive becasue it's honestly the lamest excuse........ Pick it because it has an unreal graphics card or something.... Given the real performance increase hard drive throughput wise - it's almost like picking the W3 just because it's design is nicer instead of the fact that it's build is by far better...

 

Right.. and that's a PATA cable... Now one thing that the W3 has is a proprietary connection on the motherboard and technically the cable could be made up to accept PATA or SATA.... that was the plan last last year and that cable never surfaced anywhere in terms of ordered shipments - however I did at least see one of the cables. I've got to check which model it is, but they make an SATA cable like that for another model that uses the same size and shape connector on the motherboard.... technically I can't see why it wouldn't work.... I'll see if I can find out which one it was on Monday.

 

Wouldn't they still need a new chipset, since PATA and SATA controllers are not the same?

 

But I think SATA consumes less power and costs less too.

 

Linux also picks up the onboard SATA controller on my W3 during boot... promising stuff.

When hybrid drives and solid state drives become more popular, what are the chances of attaching one to the sata controller on the W3J?

 

My thoughts exactly.

~ Brett

 

I'm not sure about cost since that fluctuates, but SATA HDDs actually use more power than their PATA equivalents.

http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage25.html?modelx=33&model1=422&model2=423&chart=156

I'm not entirely sure why that is, since SATA drives are native now and don't use an extra convertor chip, but they do.

I'm not certain about how ASUS is doing their proprietary cord, but as Jumper mentioned, I don't think connecting a SATA HDD is just as simple as using a different cord. The first SATA HDDs used a dedicated convertor chip to convert the internal PATA signals of the hard drive to SATA signals so that a SATA cable can be used to connect to the motherboard. People report detection of onboard SATA simply because all i945 chipsets have both onboard SATA and PATA controllers. Whether there are physical connectors on the motherboard to connect to HDDs is another question. I suppose if there is a simple proprietary cable that allows use of either PATA or SATA HDDs from the same motherboard connector there must be some type of internal switch that can reroute the motherboard connector signal between the chipset SATA and PATA controllers.

For hybrid HDDs, you should be able to use them on any standard SATA port along with Windows Vista. Otherwise, the market would be very small indeed if it's only limited to the i965 chipset and the ICH8 southbridge and above which was just released a few months ago for desktop and not released yet for mobile. Whether hybrid HDDs will work for the W3J specifically, will depend on whether there is some way to connect SATA HDDs in general, which goes back to the discussion in the paragraph above.

 

hmmm... this is from lspci on my z63a...

Code:

00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) SATA Controller (rev 04)

*stirs pot around a bit*

 

Well I think it's been established the controller exists, we just need some sort of proprietary connector to access it and use an SATA drive. Hehe, all of the component reporting programs must be pretty confused.

~ Brett

 

This is an area where we are going to have to agree to disagree. In terms of actual throughput on a single application there isn't any difference between PATA or SATA -the bottleneck is the physical characteristics of the drive itself and not the controller. But when dealing with multiple applications a SATA drive will be faster since it can do command queuing -in a nutshell the drive can handle multiple requests for reads and writes. A PATA drive is a first come, first served device that will cause applications to stall if more than one program needs access to the disk. For a "power user" a SATA controller is a must have option...

When hybrid drives come out the speed difference in the interfaces will finally be relevant, since the controller will be accessing NAND flash instead of a rotating disk...

 

Wow - - Very good to know. We should definitely start some sort of campaign to urge Asus NA to bring in the proprietary connector which allows for the conversion, assuming it exists, at least by the time Vista and Hybrid hard drives are around. If it doesn't exist, we should try to get them to make it .

~ Brett

 

From what I've seen so far Asus doesn't seem to be releasing any more laptops with PATA controllers in them -all of the refresh models so far have SATA.

 

So the W3J refresh is SATA?

~ Brett

 

I don't think that hybrid HDDs will really make the use of SATA critical over PATA. If I'm not mistaken the fastest NAND flash by Samsung reads at 108MB/s. If they are planning on using a lot of it and selling the drives in volume they probably won't be using the fastest possible NAND chips which means that a PATA interface would still be more than sufficient. Write speed for NAND is still slow though at like 10MB/s.

That's not to say that SATA doesn't have advantages like NCQ as you mentioned. The extra speed of SATA may not be used by the HDD or NAND Flash, but it is useful for the RAM cache since the cache is much faster than even SATA II. Still I wish they would put an effort into making SATA HDDs more power efficient than PATA since that'd definitely be beneficial to notebooks.

 

You'd have to ask one of the resellers -I don't have access to the info that they do. Note: I did say seem to have in my post -I don't know for sure. The A8Js is SATA while the model it replaced, the A8Jm, is PATA.

 

If the difference in price is marginal then drive manufacturers will be using the fastest NAND flash they can get. It will all boil down to marketing -and bigger numbers look better than smaller ones...

 

I guess no one understands that I don't given an answer to a question about a released product until I can go and double check it..... The W3j has a PATA hard drive..... but the notebook has had an SATA controller - as do all of the 945 chipset models....

 

That's what I figured - thanks.

~ Brett

 

Whew!!! I'm glad I didn't buy a SATA hard drive for my soon to be bought W3J!!! I am looking at newegg and I can't seem to find a "PATA" hard drive... The main ones listed for notebooks are ATA-6. Here is a link to the one I want:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822146230

Would this work on the W3J?

 

Yep, PATA was actually named after SATA was created simply to differentiate the two so lots of other names exist for it including ATA and IDE. I see no reason why that drive would not work on a W3J. Just out of curiosity, is this going to be the primary drive or is it going in the bay?

~ Brett

 

It will be the primary drive. I will use the bay mainly for an optical drive, but also for the extra battery. I will most likely sell the 5400 rpm hard drive that comes standard w/ the laptop. I already have a portable USB drive, so no need to buy an external enclosure for the old drive. The place I am buying the lappy is charging $135 extra for the seagate 100gb 7200 rpm hard drive. I might as well buy it on my own and sell the old one. I'll save some money this way.

 

Right, but if you sell the original hard drive - don't bet on keeping your warranty...... technically, it'll be voided if you don't have the original parts - there's a chance it won't be if Asus never notices the hard drive, but is that a chance you want to take?

 

Not a problem at all Pro. My warrenty is through Bto, not Asus. They allow you to change wireless, hard drive, ram, and cpu (with written consent) without voiding their warrenty.

 

No knock on anyone, but anyone can tell you that you're covered by their warranty, but at least with Asus, you have a multi billion dollar company with two decades of business under their belt backing you. What you don't understand is that if anyone changes anything to an ensemble, leagally, all computers need to sell with warranty..... so dealers need to "cover it", however, you do not have Asus' global warranty or support or the obvious backing on the warranty.

So, although I see the point you're making, the reason it isn't Asus' warranty is because your warranty has been voided...... Not sure if that makes sense, but that's part of the problem - it doesn't click with everyone.

But again, I'm not knocking Ed in the least..... gotta do what ya gotta do..... but Asus' warranty is worth about $300-350 easy and you're still paying for that... and then any dealer that modifies the system and resells it is then legally bound to having some sort "warranty", but they'll be doing it without any warranty money...... Asus gets that money and never has to support you..... They get off easy and it's the main reason Asus hasn't cared to pursue dealers who void their warranty -- for the obvious reason states above.

 

Hmmm... You bring up a very interesting point. So ANY modification to an Ensemble lappy voids ASUS warrenty? I want to use the Core 2 Duo, preferable T7600, on the lappy so I guess that even if I bought a lappy w/ the Asus warrenty, I'd loose it b/c I upgraded the CPU/Hard drive/Ram and etc. I know I could probably get away w/ the hard drive upgrade and ram upgrade (by keeping old parts), but could I also do that w/ the CPU? Should I buy the stock Ensemble lappy for the $1799 price, plus the ~$120 for the optical battery, I would have to pay an additional ~$700 to buy a T7600 CPU. This adds up to $2619, plus a possible void of warrenty w/ replacing CPU. I can't sell the parts either because I may need them should I need to send in my lappy to Asus. By having the Bto warrenty (though it may not be as good as Asus), I will spend around ~2500 for the laptop w/ the Core 2 Duo T7600. I will be able to sell the ram and HD for some extra cash and this won't void there warrenty. I believe in the end that going through Bto will pay off. Yes, it would be nice if they did not charge the ~$300 which is used for the ASUS warrenty which we do not get.

 

The thing is, the cpu is under a warranty sticker... so that's out.. but the ram and hard drive aren't and are also cheaper...... ram can just be added and taken out when you get work down....... and a hard drive.. well most people can always use more hard drives for something (external storage, backup... in say a 2nd hard drive kit for a W3).... so that's not a HUGE deal....

You can do the math over and over... and whatever works for you is whatever works. But there is one underlaying issue and I'm going to straight up say this is with anyone voiding Asus' warranty for a situation like this... not to anyone inparticular (if we voided their warranty, I'd include us)..... That is the mere fact of being in business for the course of your warranty... We've been importing Asus' notebooks for more than five and half years now... we don't think that's a long time, but it's at least twice as long as the next company that started........ and there are a handful just into the two year mark...... and everyone else is coming up on a year or just over..... if that long.. Now, mix that with the fact that voiding the warranty with Asus doesn't give us that warranty money to cover possible work - it means that there's nothing backing that warranty...... they may legally have to give you some sort of a warranty, but the fact remains that one motherboard replacement just ate the little profit there was from 10 laptops.... that'll put someone out of business really quick.... and that's the concern... because if they get out of the business because they don't have the funds to push through or are losing money - your warranty with them doesn't mean anything....

But, the cost of the warranty is built into the product from Taiwan... so the US pays for it.... and we pay for it from Asus... they're not meant to be screwed with............ But also, it's an ethical thing because those parts you're switching out need to be sold... and find me one company that will make those modifications who on their custom notebooks have any disclaimer that "they may use parts they were once in an ensemble and tested in Taiwan and pulled out of a warranty voided notebook"..... and I'll find you someone who won't sell a since custom system... but it has to be done because you can't just shelve those parts..