Hard Drive for Toshiba Satellite 1805-S253

I have inherited a Toshiba Satellite 1805-S253, and I'm considering replacing the hard drive with the hopes doing so will make it run a bit faster. Newegg.com has ATA-6 drives for sale-- will these work in this laptop, or do I need to look elsewhere for a different ATA interface, like ATA-4?

 

Your laptop does use the ATA interface.
Your laptop is on the older side, so I do not know if it will have an LBA issue with drives larger than 137GB.

What will be helpful, is if you download hdtune. Than run a benchmark of the drive, and post an image here
also upload an image of the info tab.
In there it will say what speed the ata hub in the laptop is.

Here is my review of the Samsung HM160HC, which is the fastest drive for the ATA interface.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=264209

It is compared to a few other ATA drives I have, and it really is fast.

K-TRON

 

Here you go.

Would the two HM models found here

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ... 50001077 1035907889&name=SAMSUNG&Order=PRICE

be comparable to what you reviewed, which sounds like what I am looking for?

 

Your system supports ATA 100 (UDMA mode 5)
That means that you can upgrade to any drive you like which uses the ATA interface.
If your system only supported ata 4, than the system would bottleneck most of teh drives you install.

You should go for the Hm160HC, as it is the only single platter high density drive made for the interface.
The ones you linked to are no good.

The Hm121hc has limited head movement, which will make it slower than the Hm160hc.
The otehr drives on that page are either two platter low density drives or a single head drive, which are not as fast.

I bought my Hm160HC here:
http://www.lagoom.com/Samsung_Spinpoint_M5_160GB_2_5/HM160HC/partinfo-id-578898.html

It is cheaper than the drives on newegg and its faster

I had the 40gb model of that Hitachi drive in my laptop and I upgraded to the Hm160HC and the difference in speed was night and day.
Your drive does 15mb/sec, and the Hm160HC does 52mb/sec, which is like 3.5x the speed

K-TRON

 

Do you believe my system will be able to use the entire 160 GB?

 

Oh, what would you recommend to clone my existing drive?

 

Acronis True Image. If you search this forum you might find some instructions.

 

Thank you! I've located a 15 day trial version. I guess the challenge now is going to be finding a home to copy that image to, where I'll be able to copy it to the new drive. Seeing as I have only about 10 GB of info on the old drive, it might be easier to start fresh.

K-Tron, I ordered the drive from the online store you mentioned.

 

Great to here. Sorry I didnt respond earlier I was having troubles with my computer yesterday and that occupied my time.

Acronis True Image is a great piece of software, it works very well, even though its a trial.

As far as the LBA goes, your system will not recognize the full 160Gb. You will have to partition the drive for it to see that much space.

The drive will work, you will just have to create a partition on the drive so that the system can use the harddrive.

K-TRON

 

Will Acronis allow me save the image to the hard drive on my main computer over my network, and then put the image on the new drive over the network?

I should be able to just make two partitions, right?

Have you heard of or used a a drive imaging program called PING?

And thank you for the advice and information. I believe this is going to make a big difference on this laptop. I pledged to keep it going as long as I could, as it belonged to my Dad before he passed away a little over six years ago.

Is there such a thing as an external video card for a laptop, to bypass the internal one?

 

Here is a helpful video on imaging:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6214653231740717890&ei=_7bmSISDMZOwrAK17uT8BA&q=acronis+true+image&vt=lf&hl=en

You can make two partitions if you like. The drive will format to 149GB, so you can make two 75gb partitions if you like.

I have never heard of PING, so I dont know if it is good or bad
The acronis trueimage trial works very well. I have only used it once on a friends computer, and I must say its pretty good.

I am sorry to hear of your dads passing. God Bless and good luck with that laptop. I am sure it reminds you of him.

The drive will increase performance substantially, in terms of loading files, so you should be able to get a bunch more years of use out of it.

There are external video cards, but I do not know if their are any out which are really worth it. The Asus XG station I believe only works through expresscard, but unfortunately your laptop does not have that port.

You may be able to upgrade the memory as well, and maybe even the processor, but that is all.

Good luck,

K-TRON

 

I installed the recommended image software on the laptop and created a backup image in a folder on my main PC. If I understand correctly, once I get the new laptop harddrive, I can install it in the laptop, partition it, install Windows, and then copy the image onto the new drive, effectively bringing back every program and file just as it was?

 

yup, thats pretty much it. Its fairly simple

K-TRON

 

You don't have to install Windows on it or partition it. Just use the bootable CD that you can make with Acronis to boot your laptop. Then copy the image from your main PC to your laptop.

 

Question: how will I transfer the image from my PC to my laptop while the laptop is booted up using the Acronis CD? Will I be able to access my network while using the bootable CD? I guess I need to create the bootable CD and see what my options are.

 

Forgot about that. An external hard drive would be the easiest solution, if you have one.

Or buy a $10 enclosure for your old harddrive, and make an external from it.

 

Something like this?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182143

 

Yes, or even cheaper http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...092 1053807124 1054107130 4024&name=$0 - $105

 

But my old WD external hard drive which is residing in my wife's office could be recognized by the Acronis bootable CD, outside of windows? If so, that would be my cheapest option.

 

Yes, Acronis bootable CD can recognize USB drives outside windows.

 

I ordered this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817145752

I figure I can keep using the old 2.5 hard drive as a back up drive for the new one, once I transfer the image over.

 

Hmm.. which one of these panels on the bottom houses the hard drive? The manual that came with the computer does not say.

EDIT: I found some pictures here which should apply to the 1805 as well.

http://www.irisvista.com/tech/laptops/Toshiba1800/satellite1800_1.htm

 

you should not have to take out more than 2-4 screws to get the harddrive out.
The harddrive is almost always located on a corner of the laptop, so that the drive can be very easily removed.
Check under a few panels if you cannot find the harddrive.

K-TRON

 

I was able to install the new hard drive without any issues. The external case for the old drive hasn't arrived yet, so I'm letting my XP Pro CD partition, format, and install XP on the new drive, so I can install Acronis and copy the image over. From what I understand, I'll need to either let Acronis copy the image from the network, or I could put it on the second partition of the new hard drive and install it from there.

 

I finally got XP installed and Acronis installed. I'm transferring the image I made to the E drive (the second half of the new hard drive). However, the new hard drive is running in PIO mode instead of DMA, and everything seems REALLY slow.

 

You need to go into device manager and delete the harddrive driver.
Do this, and that will disable PIO mode, forcing the drive to use the much faster DMA modes.

The tab you are looking for is called "IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers"
than right click the "primary ide channel"
If their is an option in the advanced settings tab to change the drive to DMA mode, than make the change their.
If their is no setting, simply uninstall the driver, and windows will automatically configure the drive as DMA.

K-TRON

 

The option in advanced settings was "dma if possible" so I've chosen the "uninstall" route. Laptop is rebooting as I type.

Acronis forced the new C drive to be partitioned the same size as the old one, 30GB. Any suggestions on how to increase the C drive without losing the data?

 

You should be able to use Gpart or partition magic to increase the size of the partition on your drive.

Let us know if the drive is running any better in DMA mode

K-TRON

 

The primary IDE is still "pio mode", the secondary ide is "ultra dma mode 2."

 

try reinstalling your chipset drivers and than selecting the option for DMA usage.

Is the primary ide your harddrive, or the optical drive

download hdtune, and go into the info tab to verify what DMA/PIO your drive is running in.

K-TRON

 

According to HD Tune, "active: UDMA Mode 4 (ultra ata/66)

 

I don't know which is primary IDE. I would have thought the HD would be the primary, but I don't see any means to absolutely say so.

 

Your system is kinda old, so the maximum harddrive interface may be UDMA 4
Still UDMA 66 should limit the drive speed to 66mb/sec, or about 55mb/sec cause of overflow, so the drive should be running pretty fast still in UDMA 4 mode

Is the drive running slow?

Run a hdtune benchmark, the drive should be performing around 52mb/sec.
Go into the settings and select 8mb files from the "block file" pull down, and than select accurate for the benchmark settings.


You may want to check in the BIOS if there are any UDMA settings you can configure for the harddrive.
You can check whether the optical drive or the harddrive is set to primary in the Bios.


K-TRON

 

HD Tune: SAMSUNG HM160HC Benchmark

Transfer Rate Minimum : 1.1 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Maximum : 1.2 MB/sec
Transfer Rate Average : 1.2 MB/sec
Access Time : 19.0 ms
Burst Rate : 1.2 MB/sec
CPU Usage : 87.5%

 

hmm, yeah their is definitely a driver issue.
The drive should be performing much better.
It seems like the drive is still in PIO mode because the cpu usage is so high.
Have you tried reinstalling the chipset drivers?
If you did not, go to the control panel, and go to "add new hardware" Than select search or whatever, and see if it scans and finds your harddrive. It should pick up teh drive and install the appropriate driver for it.

K-TRON

 

The BIOS says the HDD is primary IDE, CD ROM is secondary. "Hard Disk Mode" is "enhanced IDE (normal)".

There is an option called "device configuration" that can either be "all devices" or "os configuration." Could this make any difference?

 

I have no clue what setting device configuration will do, if you change the setting.
Can you highlight the drive in the Bios?
If you can, try pressing enter when you highlight the drive.
That should give you more information on the drive.

You may have to try the add new hardware ordeal. I am sorry you are having problems, we will help you sort everything out.

K-TRON

 

"Add new hardware" does not find any new hardware.

The bios doesn't mention the drive by name, like the bios on my much newer PC. It gives me two options for the hard drive, enhanced IDE or standard ide.

 

Did you try selecting the option : "Yes, I have already connected the hardware"
Than scroll down the list and select the drive, and see if it is there

If it is there, go back to device manager, and go to the harddrive, and than go to properties.
Than select "roll back driver" or update driver, and hopefully that helps.

I am running out of ideas. I PM'ed a few harddrive enthusiasts to post here, so when they log on to nbr they should be able to give you some more advice.

K-TRON

 

I'm wondering if this is a windows issue, as it took a VERY long time to install windows XP onto the new hard drive. Maybe I need to pull the drive out and put it back in, or something like that.

 

Try it.

Other things you could try:
-check the jumper setting on the Samsung drive, is it jumpered as master?
-format it using a different file system: fat 32.
-search the forums because we've had similar issues posted.

 

I tried it and it didn't change anything. Bah.

While the diagram shows a place for a jumper, the drive did not come with one.

I may try that fat 32 idea. Thank you.

 

are you using XP service pack 1, Service pack 2 or service pack 3?

Fat 32 works better on older systems, so I guess you can try that.

no jumper came with my HM160HC, so you may want to grab a jumper from a standard desktop drive and try using that with the harddrive to manually set it to run as Master

K-TRON

 

Service pack 3.

I just found a jumper and will try that.

 

http://downloadcenter.samsung.com/c...419200552031_2.5_Install_Gudie_ENG_200704.pdf

Am I imagining things, or does this say to not use a jumper if it is a master?

 

And to make things better, my XP cd does not offer FAT32 as an option, only NTFS.

 

Looking at the label on the drive, to set the drive as master, requires no pin.
I know you can install XP as fat 32.
I think the only way to do it, is to install windows 2000 in fat 32, and than upgrade to XP with the xp cd.
Their may be another way to do this, but I am unsure of any other way.

K-TRON

 

Alas, I do not have windows 2000, so that's not an option.

I just put the old hard drive back in and the transfer mode is ultra dma 4.

I'm wondering if this is just a case of hardware being too new for the laptop.

If you see my samsung drive on ebay, then you'll know the answer was "yes."

 

I think there is hope, dont give up yet. I had a decent drive in an old pentium 2 laptop, and it worked, but I had windows 2000 installed on it.
Hopefully others will chime in, I feel bad recommending a drive, and than it not working properly.

K-TRON

 

Have you tried uninstalling "Primary IDE Channel" in the device manager? And then reboot.

Other wise, have a look in this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=287626&highlight=PIO+mode