couple questions about my e1505 notebook

Since my notebook is using an sata hard drive, should there be a sata port so I can access sata external desktop drives? Also how can I find out what my drives burning speeds are? All it states is 8X DVD+/-RW Drive on the invoice.

 

No, there is no external SATA port. It won't supply enough power to run a desktop drive. If you want to access desktop drives, get an SATA enclosure that has USB2 connections. 8X is your max DVD burn speed... otherwise, you can figure out the model in the Device Manager and google for it, or your burning software should be able to tell you the upper limits the drive reports for itself.

 

i was thinking of just plugging in the drive cable from an sata hard drive directly into my notebook but i guess that's not possible

i'm supposed to have a dual layer dvd drive/cd burner all in one

i tried burning a cd but for some reason using sonic i could only burn it at 10x max?

 

What cd/dvd drive do you have?

The 8X is the maximum speed of the drive, but that does not mean it will always burn at that speed. Because of the design of laptops, it is rare that you will reach maximum speed. Generally it depends on what type of media you are burning, software, etc. Most of us average out at 4-6x burning MP3's.

 

sony q-58a

what is the 1394 port on my notebook?

so basically there's no way for me to directly connect an sata desktop hard drive to my notebook?

 

You could get an expresscard sata adapter to connect to a desktop sata drive, but you'll still need a way to power said drive. You can buy enclosures for desktop drives that have e-sata, and get an expresscard e-sata adapter. Cooldrives.com is a good place to look for that sort of thing.

The 1394 port is also known as firewire 400. It is an alternative to usb that you'll usually only see on external hard drive enclosures and digital video cameras.

 

looks like i'm going to have to buy an external enclosure to troubleshoot my desktop drive

thanks

 

archaic:
Check what type of Firewire you have. There are two types the old ones run at 400kbs same as the new USB 2.0 speed and the new Firewire ( i think its 'b' type) runs at 800kbs that is double the speed of usb 2.0. So when shopping for External drive enclosure check that the enclosure supports both Firewire (800) and USB 2.0 ports. Since most laptops have only 1 Firewire port and 3 or 4 USB2 ports so you wanna have the enclosure that supports both type of ports.