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    Need some confirmation on hard drive interface

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by brncao, Jun 12, 2008.

  1. brncao

    brncao Notebook Evangelist

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    brncao, Jun 12, 2008
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  2. Jstn7477

    Jstn7477 Sam I Am

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    I have two of the 160GB ones in my laptop and they are SATA I (1.5Gb/s). They work fine in either 1.5 or 3.0Gb/s environments (my laptop's PM965/ICH8M is 3.0), but they only run at 1.5. Dont worry about it, because they are very fast drives with 16MB of cache and you most likely won't notice a difference in speed between 1.5 and 3.0Gb/s SATA interfaces.

    -J.B.
     
    Jstn7477, Jun 12, 2008
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  3. powerpack

    powerpack Notebook Prophet

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    powerpack, Jun 12, 2008
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  4. brncao

    brncao Notebook Evangelist

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    So it's safe to buy?
     
    brncao, Jun 12, 2008
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  5. bigozone

    bigozone JellyRoll touring now

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    yes.. you are fine.. i've put sata 3.0 HDDs in machines that supports only sata 1.5,, i have no doubt that the sata 1.5 will function perfectly fine with the newer sata 3.0 supported chipset
     
    bigozone, Jun 12, 2008
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  6. powerpack

    powerpack Notebook Prophet

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    We call it backwards compatible! Or forward in BigO's case!
     
    powerpack, Jun 12, 2008
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  7. brncao

    brncao Notebook Evangelist

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    Thanks guys!
     
    brncao, Jun 13, 2008
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  8. brncao

    brncao Notebook Evangelist

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    Btw forgot to ask something. Is it possible to access the old drive while running the new drive? This is my first time using 2 drives. How does it work?
     
    brncao, Jun 14, 2008
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  9. K-TRON

    K-TRON Hi, I'm Jimmy Diesel ^_^

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    If your laptop supports two harddrives, you can use both of them. However make sure that you put the new drive in the first harddrive caddy so that it is used for the operating system, and the old drive is in the secondary slot for transferring purposes.

    If your system only has one harddrive caddy, than you will have to buy a usb to sata adaptor so that you can use your old drive externally and transfer the files that way.

    K-TRON
     
    K-TRON, Jun 14, 2008
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  10. brncao

    brncao Notebook Evangelist

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    Luckily I got 2 bays/caddy. I want to start fresh without transferring everything on my old drive to the new drive, but at the same time access the old drive in case I want to pull something out of there. The old drive has a lot of junk and what not. I sometimes get the BSOD.
     
    brncao, Jun 15, 2008
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  11. brncao

    brncao Notebook Evangelist

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    Crap! It's not compatible with my Dell 1720. Guess I'll have to return it. Both my new and old hard drive says SATA, but the connectors are different. I didn't know SATA can have different kinds of connectors. Now that I've learned it the hard way... is there something I can tell which connector type it's using? Guess I can't rely on interface type alone.

    Edit: The Momentus 5400.3 160 GB SATA hard drive is actually PATA (seems like there are different interfaces). I was mislead :(

    The one I bought is SATA.
     
    brncao, Jun 27, 2008
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  12. K-TRON

    K-TRON Hi, I'm Jimmy Diesel ^_^

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    Does your harddrive have a pin/adaptor on it?
    Some harddrives use an adaptor which attaches to the harddrive, which than slides into a connector on the laptop. Check and see if your original drive has an adaptor on it. If it does, all you would need is the proper adaptor and it will work.

    K-TRON
     
    K-TRON, Jun 27, 2008
    #12