Official P-7805u Owners Longue.

Thanks TANWare! That worked very well. I must have had a brain fart because I've had to that before for other drivers.

Appreciate your help.

 

I play COD4 @ 1920 X 1200..

Runs flawless..

Using 185 Drivers @ 1750 overclock.

 

Can a larger "gig" wise drive be put in?

 

You can put a second 320 in and configure them to be one 640mb raid array or you can get 500gb drives (5400 rpm currently, 7200rpm should be out any day if they aren't already) for up to 1tb total.

 

Thanks! I went ahead and ordered one! I am ok with computers, but not an expert. Any advice on installing the 2nd hard drive? I want RAID 0, I believe, where data is not mirrored on each drive. Will there be adequate insructions that come with the WD hard drive?

 

There are instructions for setting up RAID in the p-7805u manual. You can also use this guide, which I did and I'm very pleased with the results...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=327669&highlight=p-7811

You also want to be certain that you ordered the exact same size/speed as the drive you already have installed. Even better, the same model.

 

Thanks! So for this to work, data that is on my current hard drive will be deleted and I have to do a system restore, etc.?

 

Yeap! So be sure to create the restore disks before you set up the RAID, if you haven't done so already.

 

I just ordered my 2nd HD 320 7200

NEW - Western Digital Scorpio 320GB SATA 16MB 7200RPM US $84.90
Yesterday dont know what way I am going to configure it?
easier to make it a 620

 

I can also just install it as a 2nd drive with a new drive letter, can't I? In other words, don't use RAID and have it just be a standalone hard drive sitting in my laptop?

 

Yes, you can add it as a second drive.

 

It's obviously much simpler without doing RAID, right? And I won't have to delete what is on my current harddrive, right?

Thanks,

 

Absolutely. When you have it installed, just go into Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management. There you can format your new drive for use.

 

Exactly.

 

Hey everyone. I am still wondering if I have to get the same brand HDD in order to do RAID or will it still work as long it is the same size, speed, and other specs are the same?

 

Why do you ask? Newegg has the exact same drive that is in our sytem now for $90 shipped here http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136280. There are two others with same size, speed, and interface but only $10 cheaper http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822116160 or $20 cheaper http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145228, but wouldn't you pay that for peace of mind? Besides, the latter two have either a different seek time and/or latency time.

 

I didn't realize that the brand of the HDD might cause a problem, so before I got an answer from anyone I ordered the: http://www.newegg.com/Store/BrandSu...bCategory=380&name=Seagate-Laptop-Hard-Drives

Guess I was a little bit anxious!

 

Seagates tend to run a bit hotter then WD's, guess you could give it a shot in RAID though.

 

Oh, I see. Thanks for the info. I will check it out.

 

Does the p-7805u come with a hard drive bracket inside, or does that have to be purchased as well when adding a 2nd hard drive?

 

It comes with the bracket, but no screws. Typically I think people just split the 4 screws up between both... 2 screws in each caddy.

 

Not like HP DV7, Gateway FX comes with an extra HD bracket already installed in the spare hd slot. You will need notebook hd screws (4).

 

That's cool! Most systems like that don't seem to.

 

No problem.
Let me know how it goes with the WD+Seagate combo if you decide to try RAIDing it anyway

 

So 2 screws in each hard drive is ok? Is there some place I can buy screws besides online? Like Walmart or Best Buy or something?

 

Take one to a hardware store and try to match it.

Some PC repair shops will give you some if they have extras.

Two will work when necessary - just do the diagonal corners.

 

I've never bought a laptop hard drive. I have bought desktop hard drives and they've always come with screws.

 

One of the many differences between Desktops and laptops
Most would say its fine with 2 screws.
Meaning, take 2 out of your other hard drive, diagonally.
Like, picture them like this:

x______o
|..........|
|..........|
|..........|
|..........|
o______x

X represents the screws, O's represent empty screw-holes.

 

Ok, I installed the 2nd hard drive and it seems to be doing ok. Initially it made some weird clicking noise, but that seems to have stopped. I did not do RAID and it is installed just as a second lettered drive for my "data" (like pictures, files, etc.). I have noticed that the orange harddrive light by the touch pad seems to be blinking all the time. I don't remember how much it "blinked" previously. Can anyone tell me if it is normal for the light to be constantly blinking indicating that the hard drives are working? Like I said, I don't remember how much it blinked before I installed the 2nd drive. Just looking for a general baseline.

 

I think it's not so much laptop versus desktop disks, it's OEM versus retail-I've never gotten parts or anything with my desktop drives.

 

Clicking noises COULD be bad? I mean depending on how they sound-drives all click and stuff, but if it's loud and grindy-I mean basically if it's dying, you'd normally know the sound is wrong, versus just normal seeking sounds.

Hard drive thrashing can really vary. Could be some scan a program's doing, or optimizations or that kind of thing, plus Vista pre-loads stuff in the background if you have unused RAM left over, so that can be loading away for a while. Right now my system's not really showing any drive activity, but it's been on for an hour, and is all defraged and scaned and all that good stuff.

 

Download nVidia's System Monitor or some other system monitor to watch disk usage. Let your computer run for a while, like an hour or something, without any applications open. If you're still getting high disk usage after that, I'd worry. I do notice a little bit of disk clicking now and then, but I think that's normal.

By the way, does anyone know how to set nVidia System Monitor to bypass UAC and open automatically at startup without permission? It's always blocked even though I have it set to open as administrator.

 

My synaptics touchpad drivers need permission every time they load at startup, which is annoying! The checkbox doesn't actually stop that :-/ (FOr that matter, my network resources like my Exchange account I use from Outlook 2007 don't work either)

 

So far so good however my HDD light is now constantly blinking. It feels like the HDD is running constantly but the CPU usage is very low. I ran the HWMonitor but now it won't show the HDD info anymore. Any ideas why?

 

I did a little checking at my cpu is now fluctuating between 1% and 8% usage constantly. Using the Resource Monitor in Vista, I find that a file in the System Volume Information is writing roughly 400,000,000 b/min continuously. Is this a product of RAID0?

 

Well, this worked before I went to a RAID configuration and had to reinstall the OS. I upgraded to Vista Ultimate and now when I try this that driver is not available in the menu. I've tried to download a standalone driver but Vista keeps telling me I have the most updated versions of the High Def Audio drivers and won't let me install the Conexant ones. Any new ideas?

Thanks.

 

You will need to use the "Have Disk" option and force the driver..... The method I gave is for the default install or if the driver was there before.....

 

What's using the CPU time?

 

Both of you just DISABLE UAC!

Give it a day or two of running, maybe vista is checking it out completely since its just been installed.
And do by constantly do you mean its staying on?
My HDD light blinks for about .1 of a second about every 2 seconds. So when I say blink, I literally mean blink.
That what you mean too?

 

Got it figured out.

Thanks Tan

 

Hee hee. Well I like UAC, and anyway I don't think it's UAC triggering in my case. It's not the most annoying thing ever to have to click this twice every time I boot the system, but still, it's just not remembering the setting

 

Hey. I watched everything in the Task Manager for a while and this is what I saw:

dwm.exe 0-2% which is the desktop manager,
Eset 0-6% which is anti-virus,
sidebar 0-1%, have the performance indicator, calendar, clock, stocks up,
rundll 0-1%
wmiPRVse.exe 0-5%.
All of the above were occasional. The more continuous CPU users were 2 System Svchost.exe processes. Both fluccuated rapidly between 0-7%, one using 140,000k of memory and the other only 2,700k memory.

It just feels like the HDD's are always spinning which I don't remember happening before I stuck the other drive in. I also don't remember the performance indicators in the sidebar continuously showing between 2-10% CPU usage. While all this is going on, the HDD light blinks 1-2 times a second constantly. It doesn't ever seem to want to take a rest.

If I can't figure this out, I will probably undo the RAID config, reformat, and reinstall everything one thing at a time and see if I can figure it out that way. Kinda a pain in the butt since I've put about 100gig worth of programs on in the last 2 days.

Any ideas or help from anyone will be greatly appreciated.

John

 

On another note, has anyone had issues with some of their keyboard keys not being seated properly on the P-7805u?

Also, wasn't this computer supposed to come with 1066mhz ram? I've only got 533mhz ram and don't have my invoice handy to check.

Thanks everyone.

 

Keyboard is fine on mine and it is 533 @ DDR so 1066..............

 

533x2=1066, you're probably seeing the "base clock" of the ram, it does 2 operations per clock cycle for an effective 1066mhz.

 

Okay, yeah, I believe I am. Thanks for the info Big Mike.

 

Everything sounded pretty normal until you got to that. That could be anything. It's probably something that just isn't coded well, but it could even be an infection of some sort. I'd try to track down what's causing that.

 

Might want to d/l and run Process Explorer:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

It provides a bit more information than task manager and facilitates troubleshooting this sort of thing.

 

Hey everyone,

Looks like I nailed down what was wrong. I disabled all the services and was enabling them one by one and it looks like I had a faulty NIC driver. Gonna try the other one that is on my restore disc.

Thanks for the replies.

 

hey guys i just bought my 7805 and its 1440x900 reso but its still beautiful as hell... i have some question, before my fan spins theres little sound like bell *ting.. then the sound disappears is this malfunction? and i didnt get any vista/driver cds that came with the laptop too.. how do i get them
oh and i thought it is suppose to be 350gb.. when i check my hard drive in my computers it says total size 288gb?