Hard Drive for Toshiba Satellite 1805-S253

I did the first thing, and it made no difference.

That thread looks promising, as the chipset (ALI M5229) is exactly what I have on my laptop. Perhaps that is the culprit.

 

Do you have the chipset drivers for your notebook ?
Try reinstalling the chipset driver....

Have you updated to the latest BIOS version ?
And can you upload a screenshot of HD Tune with the new drive in ?

 

For fun, or out of madness, I installed the ALi UltraIDE driver on my current small hard drive, and it didn't destroy anything. I will try to get it onto the new one.

 

I've not been able to find Toshiba chipset drivers. I'm going to put windows XP back onto the new drive, and then install the latest ALI chipset driver and see if that makes a difference.

Once all that is done, I'll do the HD Tune screenshot.

 

Which HDD did you buy ?

I think that either the IDE Controller (pre-historic) or the BIOS (last updated - 2002) does not support 48-bit Logical Block Addressing....

(And install SP1 or greater)

 

Hey, while my XP cd is doing it's thing to the new drive, I'm wondering: couldn't I use my Ubuntu CD to increase the size of the partition once this is all done?

 

Partition Resizing ? How will that help ?

 

I bought the samsung Hm160HC.

I've looked at newer Toshiba bios' and they don't address larger hard drives, and they do slow down my processor to fix an overheating problem I don't have.

We have SP3. I'm hoping when this is all done, it was the old ALI IDE controller.

 

The first time I did this, when I copied over the image from my old drive, it forced the new drive to be a 30 GB partition. So, assuming the new drive works correctly this time, when I'm all done, it's going to be 30 GB again, instead of the larger size.

 

The ALI chipset update fixed the problem. I don't have a screenshot from the HD TUNE I ran, but the maximum transfer was over 30, and the minimum was as well, until HD TUNE tried to access the part of the driver over 137GB.

I'm using Acronis Migrate Easy to move the contents of the old drive to the new drive now. It looks like it won't make the new partition only 30GB.

 

See if you can get that drive replaced for the 80GB one, HM80HC.

 

Why? Do you think I would get better performance?

 

Well, you can make a single 137 or 130GB partition and use the drive. Or you can exchange it for the cheaper 80GB one.

What mode is the drive in, UDMA 4 or 5 ? 30MB/s Max is pretty low, for the HM160HC.

 

I dont think he will need to swap the drive. The drive running at even 30mb/sec is guaranteed to be running better than the drive before the samsung.
The system is old, and for it to run the HM160HC is awesome. Do you have any benchies of the other drive for comparison?

I hope you decide to keep the drive, it is really a good drive. Plus if you ever find another ide laptop which can use ata 5, 6 or 7 drives, the samsung drive will shine with its 52mb/sec

K-TRON

 

There's a HD TUNE benchmark for the original drive at the beginning of this thread. The new one is definitely working better than the old one. Acronis Migrate Easy is slow, but that's probably due to copying the old drive via USB. This laptop only has USB 1.1.

Ktron, thanks for all the help. Unless something weird happens at this point, I am definitely keeping the new drive.

I'll post new HD TUNE benchmarks, and I'll check on the UDMA, once everything is copied over.

 

The old drive has been cloned to the new one, the new one is working quite well in the old laptop, and here are the latest HD TUNE screenshots. The transfer rate is doubled, and the CPU usage is halved.

 

So, you're using only 30GB or the whole 160GB on the new HDD ?

 

According to windows, the whole 149... but yes, the whole thing, not just 30GB.

 

Why not just make a single partition of 130GB or so and leave the rest as unallocated, because whenever windows will access the last 10-12GB or so, it will stall.

 

I certainly don't object to that idea. Is there a way to do it without purchasing a program that I will only use once?

Nevermind, someone has already recommended Gparted. Now that I have some blank CDs, I will make one and see how it looks.

Hah, this old laptop can't run it. On to other options.

 

I am glad the drive is finally working at decent speeds for you. 39mb/sec is definitely a huge performance jump from the last drive.
Now we just need to get your drive partitioned so it only uses the speed of the drive the system can recognize.
You may want to try this software out. I have never used it, so I dont know if it will work or not:
http://www.partition-tool.com/

this may also work:
http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/how-do-i-resize-windows-partition-with-open-source-software.html

I think you can use Knoppix to resize the partition without the intent of installing another operating system

K-TRON

 

Would you recommend making the partition smaller, or turning it into two partitions, maybe of equal size?

Your first recommendation, "EASEUS Partition Manager 2.0 Home Edition", works very well, BTW.

 

I would say, either ditch the last 23gb and make a 137gb partiton, or make a 137gb partition and a 23gb partition. The system has an LBA issue, so it cant see more than 137Gb. You can use the 23 gb partition for back up files, or anotehr operating system, if you desired.

K-TRON

 

Yeah, you an try what K-Tron said ^. Make a 130GB partititon, and the rest 19GB in a separate partititon.
Do the above using GParted.

 

Well, the new drive is spectacular. Thank you for all your assistance and advice. Essentially, XP had to be tricked into thinking the new drive is a SCSI drive in order to work correctly. This seems to have removed the "standby" option, but I can live with that small loss in order to add some life to this old laptop.

 

the standy option is usually dependant on the proper drivers installed. If you do not have the appropriate graphics drivers installed, standy-by will not work.

Check your vidoe drivers, and see if they are installed. If they are not, than that is why stand-by is not working.

K-TRON

 

Hi Cslepage, you may be interested in my similar story on K-Tron's thread on the HM160HC.
forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=264209&page=4

I have this drive on a 2003 HP ze5375us laptop with ALi M5229 driver. To get the maximum performance from this Samsung drive, the answer for me was to use Samsung's ESTOOL to change the drive's advertised size from 160 to 137gb. The bios likes it then and won't force PIO mode. That and using the pc's original ALi M5229 driver gave the fastest results. Plus you don't have the downsides of that ALi UltraIDE driver.

If you are still using the ALi Ultra IDE driver, you can get your standby option back with this:

v4.008
Release Notice:
1. In Win2000/XP, Standby and Hibernation can be enabled by following steps.
(1) Run "regedit.exe"
(2) Click on
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services/alihdd/Parameters/PnpInterface/5
And "Edit->Rename" to change Name from 5 to 1
(3) "Restart" system to take effect.


Many thanks again to K-Tron for turning me on to this drive. My laptop is Soooo much faster!
Allen Ahl

 

What's the best/safest method to get rid of the ALi UltraIDE driver? Should I do the ESTOOL first, and then attempt to remove the ALi UltraIDE driver?

 

And, can I use the ESTOOLS to "resize" the drive without losing my information that is on it?

 

Would I use "target size" to make the change?

 

Hi Cslepage. Let me repost a part of the message I posted at
forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=264209&page=4
Check it out if you haven't.

<<
---------------------------
Now here’s the twist that I’ve settled on because I didn’t like the drives being emulated as scsi – (for instance SeaTools could no longer interrogate the hard drive). My thinking was if I could make the pc detect the Samsung drive as under 137GB everything would be fine except for throwing away some capacity.
So…
I made an Acronis image for safe keeping.
I made a Samsung ESTOOL boot diskette. samsung.com/global/business/hdd/support/utilities/ES_Tool.html

I uninstalled the Ali Ultra IDE Controller and the pc reverted back to the original Ali M5229 driver. And the hard drive reverted to PIO mode.

I booted into the Samsung ESTOOL utility.
This will allow you to change the size by “Set Max Address” (but risk data loss).
I changed the Target LBA
From: 312581808 (152627mb)
To: 268435000 (131071mb)
Processed the change and removed the diskette.

I booted into Windows ok, it saw the drive as 137gb, but was in PIO mode. So I uninstalled the Primary IDE Channel in device manager and rebooted twice and Windows now detected and installed the hard drive in mode UDMA5 –yeah!

The best part is that HDtune shows the drive operating even faster with less cpu load than with the Ali UltraIDE driver.
>>​

The ALi Ultra IDE driver can be remove from Control Panel - Add/Remove Programs. I did that first and rebooted before using ESTOOL.

The ESTOOL notes say that changing the size like this can corrupt your data but it did not for me... Probably because all my data was within the first 120gb and I shrunk from 160 to 137 gb. I did that by setting the "Target LBA" which also updates the Target Size. You have to select "Process" after setting the size. In any case I had made an Acronis image first.

Note - the picture you posted shows a higher capacity drive than the Samsung HM160HC.
-Allen-

 

Thanks, man, I've made an ESTOOL CD rom and printed your most recent post. I believe I will turn this into a Friday night/weekend project. First thing, I will have to see if my copy of Acronis will still work, as I'm past the initial testing period of time.

 

Ok, good luck, backup, and be careful. For me it was well worth forfeiting the 23 GB. By the way, I am using a free older version of Acronis True Image 8.0 Personal that I downloaded, registered, and installed earlier this month.

see: allacronis.com/personal.php

Also, I needed this patch for free Acronis True Image 8.0 Personal:
install Acronis SnapAPISetup.msi
This solved Acronis error after updating to ALi UltraIDE driver 4.0.0.8
E000101F4: Acronis True Image has not found any hard disk drives.

Download from:
download.acronis.com/support/SnapAPI_l_s_e.zip

Referenced here:
wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=216767&highlight=E000101F4

 

Thanks, I downloaded the version of true image you recommended and made an image. I've used the ESTOOLs to reduce the size of the HD. However, Windows XP locks up when I try to uninstall the ALi UltraIDE driver. I guess if all else fails, I could reinstall XP.

 

Here are the screenshots after making the HD adjustments.

I wonder if UDMA 4 is the best I can do on this old laptop?

 

Hi Cslepage. I wonder if your "C" partition size has anything to do with your trouble. From the image you attached it looks like the drive is now set to 137gb but the C partition size reads bigger. On mine, I had made a 120gb "C" partition all along. I think you might be able to reduce C to 137gb or less by doing either:

1. Restore your Acronis image to the now 137gb drive (maybe it will auto shrink it)
2. use a program like - EASEUS Partition Manager Home Edition V2.1

I wish I knew what to suggest on uninstalling ALi Ultra IDE driver. For me the drive is faster without it.

Attached is HDTune info and device manager for my drive now.
-Allen-

 

Here is an EASEUS screenshot.

I was able to get rid of the ALi UltraIDE driver ultimately by renaming it and repairing XP using my XP cd.

So you think if I uses EASEUS to make the windows partition smaller than 137GB, the drive will run better?

 

Making the partition smaller yielded the same HDTUNE results, but, those results are a definite improvement over the first test results using the ultra ide driver. So, I absolutely thank you for your suggestion. Most likely, as this is a Toshiba Satellite 1805-S253, UDMA 4 is the best it will do.

 

Hey, that's great!
You absolutely needed to get the partition size fixed. It cannot be larger than the drive size and was an anomoly the way it was.
So you can compare, I'll attach my EASEUS screen shot.

One last thing, if you haven't already tried, is to go into device manager, right-click on the Primary IDE Channel, and choose Uninstall (see my previous post, last pic attachment for the location).
Then reboot to let Windows reinstall it. It may redetect it as a hardware change and prompt you to reboot a second time. Give it a little time to do that. This might get your drive into udma 5 mode.

-Allen-

 

Is there a solid state hard drive that would work in a Satellite 1805-S253?