P-7801u accepts a second internal HD?

Do Gateway P-7801u accepts a second internal SATA hard drive?

 

Yes. All of the FX lineup since the P-6831FX (perhaps even before) have had a second empty SATA HD bay. The frame is already there but no screws. Many just steal two screws from the first HD....

FYI... Many of the questions you will have about this machine have already been answered as the system has remained virtually unchanged for five revisions (6831/6860/7811/7801/7805, with 7808 on the way). The primary difference has been a die-shrunk GPU and a faster FSB since 7811 (also the loss of Bluetooth, but that is fixable) with various screen resolutions available.

 

Yes, yes they do. And soon the 500gb 7200rpm western digital will be mine
bwah hahaha haha

 

Thanks guys! Does it still a good laptop for games?

BTW, does it have SATA II (3GB/s) capability?

 

yep its still a good laptop for games. The second hard drive will heat the palm rest up a degree or two more, but nothing that will hurt anything or be uncomfortable.

SATA2, but only the fastest of SSD's in a RAID (or THE fastest SSD's) will ever come close to reaching the bandwidth

 

I'm considering a SSD drive, perhaps an Intel X25-E, as the primary disk.

Anyone have an opinion about using a SSD in a laptop?

 

Then yes that will rock and be one of the most powerful upgrades you can do to your system (the other being an t9800).

iaTa had on in his 6831 and loved it. I'm waiting a bit longer until i adopt them due to size limitations (256 is a minimum drive i consider and i'm waiting for a 500gb to come out for sub 1000 dollars) But if you get a good drive. Intel/Samsung/Mtron then yeah its an amazing upgrade.

If you get the cheaper MLC drives then its hit or miss. With the correct tweaking you can have an amazing experience, but sometimes its just a drive that transfers sequential files fast and SUCKS on the random writes that start the stuttering process

 

I've found the SSD below at Newegg with 175MB/s & 100MB/s (read & write) for a good price. Does it really deliver that performance?

Patriot PE32GS25SSDR 2.5" 32GB SATA II Internal Solid state disk (SSD) - Retail

 

My question:

Could you install this in a P7805u with the HDD that's already in there at
RAID 0?

I'd format the hdd and install vista x64 on the SSD.

Anyone try this?

 

No on the RAID. It has to have the same hard-drive size and speed.

 

Not likely, and the small file (4kb and under) random write performance stinks. I'd avoid that one.

Are you talking with the SSD he posted? You COULD but it'd be a REALLY bad idea. You want matching drives for RAID0, otherwise you're getting the worst aspects of each drive multiplied together (smallest size x2, slowest speeds x2 etc). Matching drives are the only way to get good performance and not run into issues. As I said that drive isn't that great, but if you got a decent SSD you'd be better off to install the SSD as the primary disk and use your existing disk for data storage like music, games, pics, video etc.

 

Thanks Big Mike! Can you suggest a SSD with good read and write performance?

I've just received an answer from Gateway Customer Service I copy below. I really hate that kind of service. Does anyone had any issues with Gateway service? This would be my first buy from them.

 

I actually LOL'ed at the " You cannot install additional internal hard drive in your notebook computer" comment.

Why would it have a second hard drive bay if you couldnt put in a second hard drive

Basically ignore EVERYTHING that gateway customer service tells you. I guess thay can sell these computers so cheaply because they hire trained monkeys to run their customer service.

 

Rofl.

I contacted gateway and their basic employes.. let's just say I had to talk to the supervisor to get halfway decent answers.

 

So would you do the SSD / Current drive.

Or SSD/SSD RAID 0

 

Honestly, right at this moment I'd either get a matching WD Scorpio drive and RAID those, or wait a little while longer for better SSD drives. The only good ones right now cost a fortune and the cheap ones require major tweaking that is kinda complicated to even work right. There are some pretty good candidates coming down the line in the next couple of months but I think the jury is still out on too many of them to snap one up right now.

 

^^ yep.

The 256gb Samsungs that is currently Dell Exclusive are rocking... but you cant get them anywhere.

Intels are great as well but the prices is still a bit high for thier capacity (though amazing IOPS and perfect for server applications)

The Titan/Apex cheap solutions seem to work so far, but as yet no one has filled the drive and seen what happens to the speed (most think it will crash to abyssmal levels) Though the Price per GB/Speed is quite nice and a Raid of them would make a VERY snappy machine.

I'm just getting the 500gb 7200RPM western Digital drives as soon as they hit the market and waiting for a 250-500gb samsung drive to get to the sub 500 dollar range. At that point i'll probably swap over to SSD

 

I have that drive in my 7811, when the drive is empty...it achieves about 135mb/s average read speed. But when it has a lot of data, it drops to 105mb/s...but still, that is very fast, and it has almost no access time (0.1ms). I uses it for gaming, and I don't have to worry about random rewrites. If I am not mistaken, the 30mb/s drop has to do with ECC.

 

I'm using the 32GB Patriot SSD also. DEFINITELY an upgrade from the 320GB 7200rpm Hitachi that was in here before, XP is crazy fast and 7 is as fast as ill ever need it to be.

 

So dumb question...does having your OS on a seperate hard drive from all your games and files increase the performance of your machine?

 

Yes, storing all your crap on a seperate hard drive will increase operating system performance.

 

Gotcha. So now...I got a 320 7200 WD Scorpio laying around...was gonna put it in the PS3 but never got around to it. Should I use it or the 320 that came standard with the P-7801u to store my OS? Also...there seems to be some bloatware that I don't want on the machine...I don't have a Vista64 disk...so I guess I can't wipe this hard drive?

 

You can uninstall the stuff that you're never going to use through Programs and Features in control panel. Personally I hate vista and setup my p7801 with dual boot XP 32bit and 7 64bit. If you don't have a disk I don't think you can reinstall the OS.

Are you sure its a 320 7200 WD Scorpio that came WITH your P7801u? Mine is a Hitachi 7200 rpm 320 GB Sata drive..

I wouldn't bother moving everything to another 320 7200 that came with the pc. If you want to put the operating system on a different drive, buy a SSD. Then use the higher capacity drive for your storage.

 

Sorry, I meant the Hitachi Travelstar came with the laptop!

The Scorpio is something I purchased on the side to upgrade my PS3...but I never used it! Free second hard drive!! Well...kinda...

Pretty much all games will run on both Vista and XP right? That's something I might consider...otherwise I'll probably just take your advice and delete the unused crap!

Is adding a hard drive complicated? I'm not hugely computer savvy...still learning!

 

As far as the compatibility on Vista and XP, it depends on the manufacturer. Some don't support Vista, some do.

Adding a second hard drive is not complicated. You need a small phillips screwdriver with a tiny head to unscrew 4 screws (They don't come out, they only loosen, the screws stay in the cover). Then you can use the phillips head or even easier with a flathead screwdriver to pop the cover off. Then you push out the 1st hard drive, and then push out the 2nd hard drive bay. Take 2 screws from the first hard drive (I took out the one farthest from the sata power/data connections on top and the opposite one on the bottom of the other side). Then place your new hard drive in the empty bay the you pulled out, screw in identical to the other hard drive using the 2 screws you just removed, and pop them both back in (In the same places). Put the cover back in and screw the 4 screws back in. If all you're doing is using the 2nd drive for storage, power the laptop back in. Vista will boot, and install drivers for your new hard drive. You may need to restart. Then go to the start menu, right click on Computer, and go to Manage. Then click Disk Management, you should see an empty disk (Probably Disk1?) With Unallocated Space. Then you right click and Im pretty sure you'll have the option for New Simple Volume. You select the drive letter you want and the size you want to use and then it does a quick format and that's it. It will show the drive now and you can start moving crap onto that drive.

 

Thanks bud I'm now running both hard drives!! I'm about to move everything over to the second drive and see how my load times and overall performance is doing! I appreciate all the help!

 

Good news guys! It seems that SanDisk G3 SSD (MLC) is gonna deliver almost the same (20% less) performance than Intel X25-E SSD (SLC) but 5 times cheaper.

SanDisk Unleashes World’s Fastest MLC Solid-State Drive (SSD) Family