DV7-2040US w/ SATA II SSD?

Will the SATA controller in the HP DV7-2040US (Q9000 cpu) autonegotiate successfully with SATA II SSDs? The bang per buck in SATA II SSDs is about 2x that of SATA I SSDs (R/W speed).

 

Check here ( http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/datasheet/316972.pdf ) at pages 193 &194 for the Intel ICH9M-E/M chipset.... if that's what you have? A SATA II SSD with NCQ and 3Gb/s should work fine as long as it meets the SATA II spec... but pay special attention to the following note at the bottom of page 193.

Note:
SATA interface transfer rates are independent of UDMA mode settings. SATA interface transfer rates will operate at the bus’s maximum speed, regardless of the UDMA mode reported by the SATA device or the system BIOS.

I looked into this a bit back for a DV4t removable drive. Haven't done it yet but I'm not anticipating any issues if/when I do.

 

OMD, thanks for the link and comment. I will now pull the trigger on a dv7-2040us with two 120GB SSDs to replace the low end OE HDDs. I'm also opting for 2 sticks of 4GB DDR2. Should be perfect for mixing and editing on long overwater flights where I have AC at the seat.

I'll report back.

Mods, what about turning this into the dv7-2040us owners' lounge, since search didn't produce any hits on that.

 

Sounds like one very nice portable video-editing machine!! Before you purchase your SSD’s you might what to check the hardware forums to see if there is experience there. Seems I remember reading about someone else doing this with a DV7t and having issues with a particular brand of SSD as the second drive. Unfortunately though…. I don’t remember which brand or generation of SSD.

At-any-rate…. I hope the link helped and I look forward to reading about your experience when you get that monster running.

 

After reading this thread ....
http://www.notebookforums.com/thread227270.html
I'm going to save about $650 and go with OE RAM and one SSD . NickWelder got wicked fast benchmarks with that configuration (SATA II SSD, which confirms that the SATA controller autonegotiates ... and how!).

 

indeed..... very fast!!

Oh & just FYI.... but there is a Dv7t owners thread. Check it out. You'll find a boat load of first hand experience there. http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=268054

Good luck with your build and all the best,

Dave

 

My new DV7-2040us arrived from Newegg today, along with an OCZ Summit 120 GB SSD and a Scorpio 7200rpm 160GB HDD. With Vista Home Premium, the WEI was 5.3. After I swapped the drives and loaded Win7 Ultimate x64, the WEI was 5.7, the low score being the graphics adapter. The CPU, memory, and storage were 7.0s (out of 7.9 possible). Win7 installed in less than 15 minutes... I don't know how much less, since it was done when I came to check on it. The weakest major component is the display.... very narrow viewing angle in X and Y directions. It looks great within the narrow view angle, though. It's my first SSD in a notebook (I have slow SSDs in my netbooks, but the OCZ Summit makes those seem like 5400 rpm HDDs.)

Overall... I'm very happy with performance, and glad to get rid of all the crapware that HP installs.

 

Very Very Nice !!

Just to confirm..... you have the SSD running as your BOOT drive and the Scorpio as the secondary? How long does it take to BOOT Windows 7? How do the data transfer rates compare between the drives? Did you use the stock HP memory or did you upgrade that too?

Just wondering

 

Yes, the OCZ Summit SSD is the boot drive. 28 Seconds from power on to Win7 Ultimate x64 login screen. Word 2007 launches in about 2.0 to 2.5 seconds. Word closes instantaneouly, sort of a blur. I have Encarta executable and database on the 7200rpm HDD, and upon launch Encarta splashes instantly, but Encarta itself takes about 5 seconds to "full screen" load. I'm using stock HP RAM, 4GB. Haven't run benchmarks yet. Shutdown is about 7 seconds, unless there's an update to process. Me likee.

 

Nice machine. The Dv4t we have (specs above) takes about 50 sec to the log-in. You nearly cut that time in half. I wonder if that's attributable to the SSD, W7, or a bit a both. At-any-rate..... nice job!!