*HP HDX DRAGON Owners Lounge, Part 1*

just reading the reviews on the samsung you post here. do you have issues with poweron/power off cycles? or loud noise problems?

before you stated WD for #1...would you recommend the blue series for better reliability or is the green better? I really would probably get some use out of it, I know i said archive, but I kind of meant long term storage, not accessing it once in awhile. sorry for any confustion and thanks for any responses anyone.

 

Oh really? Crap haven't tried blu-ray yet...hmmm...I guess I will have to go for the PowerDVD 9 software then....

 

They'll take 500GB 2.5" for sure, 5400rpm or 7200. Can't see why they wouldn't take a 640GB. They say 500GB since it was the max size when the enclosures entered the market.

(There are no 750 - 1 TB HDD in 2.5" form factor AFAIK.)

The enclosures don't require an AC adapter but come with one anyway. They work as either eSATA or USB mode. When in eSATA mode, you can use USB to power the device since eSATA does not power HDDs. If you don't have a spare USB port, then you can plug the drive into the AC adapter when in eSATA mode. USB mode is plug and play - no A/C adapter required.

 

No, I don't have either of those issues.

I would go with the Blue series then if you are going for long term storage. While Green is good, I trust Blue a little bit more.

 

How long have you had the dual boot set up for?

 

Technically that's untrue. While there are 2.5" drives at both 750GB and 1TB, their thickness is more than 9.5mm (Western Digital came out with both in June of this year). So the biggest drive that would fit in the enclosure you have is the 640GB. It will fit because it can fit the PS3, and that only takes the 2.5" drives that are 9.5mm.

 

I'm looking forward to going fully with Windows 7. I'm having problems bringing up folders. Like when I double click on Computer it takes a while now to do so, and I believe it started doing this after I installed service pack 2. I was talking about the Matrox storage manager, I thought you said that was the problem I was having.

 

Dominick 7 - I think you mean the Intel Matrix Storage Driver, not Matrox. I think that's what confused 2.0

 

Yep, that's correct. I knew about the 12.5mm, 2.5" HDDs but didn't bother to clarify or mention since they likely wouldn't fit in the HDX or in many external 2.5" enclosures. Didn't want to complicate matters with my speculations.

Opening up the RocketFish enclosure, there may be enough room to accommodate a 12.5mm height 2.5". But no guarantees.

I figure, get or rec what is known to work. I made a mistake based on bad info when I bought an eSATA enclosure in the early days of HDX ownership. It only worked with 5400 RPM drives (SATA I) and not 7200rpm (SATA II) drives. I still use that particular enclosure but only in USB mode.

The RocketFish enclosures work with everything I've thrown at it.

 

this is good to know, despite a lot of bad reviews. oh decisions decisions. any recommendations for a good 500gb? what about the preenclosed wd passport or whatever they call it in 500gb flavor? is it better to buy the drive and enclosure separately?

on the eSata note, 2.0, are you able to run esata well with this external you have and the hdx and have you run esata with usb? from what i understand you are saying you can run it with 2 usb 2.0 ports, correct? does it come with one of those dual usb cables?

lastly...do you have any issues with the drive going to sleep or freezing after awhile. i have this problem with one of my external 3.5". after awhile of transferring files....it seems to lockup or freeze, and i have to disconnect the usb cable and reconnect it.

 

Right, Matrix. Don't know why I didn't make the connection. Thanks Remy.

Yeah, it might be an issue.

You can try the following:

Install SP38088 - Intel Matrix storage manager.

When Done installing, Under IDE ATA/ATAPI COntrollers

Click on 82801 HEM/HBM SATA AHCI contoller
Click on unistall & check delete box.

Reboot.

Check Write cache on drives under policies.

Reboot.

If ACHI - 2829 doesn't show up, reinstall Intel chipset driver. (SP 36881)

You should have (2) ATA chan 0, (2) ATA chan 1, ATA Chan 2, ICH8M SATA AHCI controller 2829
ICH8M Ultra ATA Storage Controller - 2850

If IDE channels come up, uninstall them, check delete box, then reboot.

 

I have 5 of these Rocketfish enclosures.

They work perfectly in eSATA mode. No sleep/wake issues or freezing at all. In that mode you can use 1 USB port and the eSATA port. USB is what powers it. Or you can just use the ESATA cable and the A/C adapter and no USB.

Or you can use them in just USB mode which only requires 1 USB port.

I leave one of them in eSATA mode, plugged in (eSATA, usb port) all the time. I use it like a 3rd HDD. I store my Acronis images on it among other things.

Drive recommendation? Western Digital or Seagate. Never had an issue with either. But if you're looking for speed, the Seagate 7200rpm 500gb fits the bill.

 

Well i am aiming to test the waters on that 12.5mm fitting the Dragon. I figure if it doesn't work, I can throw the drive in my server. I did take the liberty of measuring the drive bays in the HDX. They are about 12.48mm (that's without a drive caddy and up to just below where the back panel snaps into place at). So I think it will barely fit. Once i get one and test it, I will def post my results here.

 

wow love to see the results.

 

thanks. i wasn't thinking before, usb and esata works for esata. thanks. i'm leaning towards a 2.5" now

 

2.0, will only 5400rpm 2.5" drives be powered with 1 usb port? can you link me to a good seagate as you mentioned and a western digital 500gb 2.5" drive?

thank you.

EDIT: let me know about this...all i could find quickly
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136314

it doesn't have much cache though.

 

They all have the same power requirements. So 1 USB post will power 1 drive. Same for 7200 RPMs.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148374

Same one Dominick7 has.

Review of it: http://hardwarelogic.com/articles.php?id=5558&singlepage=1

Here's the other, but 5400 rpm:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148371

Here's a review of that drive from this forum:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=307430

 

My bad, you're right. That's what I meant.

 

Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor
Brief Description
Download and run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor to see if your PC is ready for Windows 7. It scans your hardware, devices, and installed programs for known compatibility issues, gives you guidance on how to resolve potential issues found, and recommends what to do before you upgrade.
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...90-7659-4BD9-9E51-2497C146AF15&displaylang=en
P.S. Before you begin: Be sure to plug in and turn on any USB devices or other devices, such as printers, external hard disks, and scanners, that you regularly use with the PC you're checking.

 

Thanks I'll try this. One other thing I was wondering was when you do 3DMark is it normal that when the desert landscape comes up is it supposed to go to like 1-2 frames per second? I wonder if this has to do with how it no longer allows anything to come from the VGA or even possibly HDMI port.. And USED to allow the QUickDock to work via 1080p/1080i to broadcast via the Expansion port..but then suddenly stopped, and messed up the driver/GPU resolution..

 

thanks 2.0.

hey dominick, how have your drives been. i was about to hit the button to buy it, but read at least on amazon, that there have been major issues with this drive, clunking noise, etc. did you ever have any issues?

thanks.

EDIT: lots of freezing and clicking and failing a couple months in argghh. i appreciate all your guys help. i could understand a few reviews like this, but there are scores of the same exact issues on newegg reviews.

just looking for a nice reliable drive. maybe this one is it...maybe dominick, you got lucky??

 

Yeah, that's the CPU part of the test. Normal for notebook CPUs of the HDX to only do 1-2 frames/sec during.

As for your GPU/quickdock issues... don't know what happened. Need more details.

Ever try a OS reinstall on another drive? Just to rule out hardware issues.

 

Sometimes, you have to roll the dice. And the odds are about rolling a snake eyes that you'll get a bum drive.

I've never had a notebook HDD go bad on me in my computing lifetime. And that goes back ~20 years.

(Right, good guess. I was born with a silver computer in my mouth. True story.)

I've had/have Hitachi, Fujitsu, Western Digital and Seagate.

 

Hi,

I come back to you because sometimes when I switch on my computer, the screen freezes on Win 7 Pro loading and I must let my finger 5 sec. on the power button to restart my computer.

Did you know where comes this bug ?

Have a good night.

Thanks

P6

 

USB flash drives fail more frequently.

 

I had that problem too. Installed Intel Matrix Storage driver and fixed the problem.
Grtz

 

Never had noises, clicking, clunking or crunking. Nope. They're sober and quiet. I'm getting freezing, but I think it's related to Firefox, and the Matrix thingy. When I see if the Matrix thing works I'll post it to let you know. It reports the hard drive works properly and was working before Service Pack 2 so I figure it's not the drive.

 

I dualboot since i have my HDX (1,5 year) XP and Vista untill W7 RC came out. Since W7 RC i dualbooted XP, Vista and W7 RC. Now XP and W7 RTM.

I never changed the XP install since the first day. Just installed Vista in the second partition and W7 RC in the third. On the day W7 RTM came out i formated the Vista and W7 RC partition and installed W7 RTM on the second partition. There are still then some entries in the bootmanager from the old installations. I delete them with EasyBCD


I want the WD 1GB drive (WD10TEVT) in my HDX and i think there is enough space. I measured the space in the HDX with a calliper. If it will not fit i will modify the cover. There is enough space under the HDX because of the rubber feed's. The only thing i don't know is if the SATA and power conector will fit - if not i need a short cable.

 

2.0 where are the policies you're talking about?


EDIT: Nevermind I found it.

 

Should eSATA be just plug and play? Last time i tried my Akasa caddy with eSATA the drive didnt appear at all in Vista (i'm on W7 Pro x64 now).

 

Depends on the chipset used in the eSATA enclosure. Some are not compatible with the silicon image chipset in the HDX.

I forget offhand which ones are not.

Compatible chipsets:
Silicon image
JMicron
Marvell
Initio

 

Hmm done a bit of Googling and i cant find out anything about what my enclosure chipset would be. Its an Akasa Integral P2NES.

 

iTunes is one of the worst bloatware applications one can ever install on a Windows machine (it even adds itself to Office Outlook, interferes with optical drive filters, adds a bunch of unnecessary services such as Bonjour without user's permission* and makes Windows 7 less secure by reimplementing autorun within iTunes). Deserves a full, clean install to get rid of it fully (by the less techie among us who can't manually repair all the damage caused by iTunes)

*not all users have an ipod or iphone--Apple shouldn't assume this by default.

http://blogs.pcmag.com/securitywatch/2009/11/itunes_turns_the_volume_down_o.php

 

ah yes, that was another question i had, 2. is the enlosure you linked plug n play in the sense that i do not have to turn off the computer to dismount it (not sure if there is another sense, but just in case )

i was looking at the western digital passport elite...very sleek looking thing, because it has hardware encryption, but i wonder if that is actually on the hard drive or the enclosure. also, sucky thing is IF for whatever reason i wanted to take out the drive, i guess i'd have to break it. plus it does not have esata, so i like the enclosure you gave and a separate bare drive.

how big is the thing, 2? would you say it's slim?

 

I have seen one of those before. There is a trick to getting the screws out, but it is not made to let you remove the hard drive easily. I had to break one apart before and when I looked at it again, I saw how to get it open without breaking it. It would have still been a pain in the though.

 

thanks remy. i thought you mentioned that here too, once. anyway this so far may be the best deal yet. a little more than i expected but with addition of a 750gb black drive. see below
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Combo...mbo.292369&cm_mmc=AFC-DealNews-_-NA-_-NA-_-NA

should i jump on this and get the enclosures?

 

I say yes.

 

thanks. before i do...anyone have any coupon codes for newegg. i know i asked before but....

they have coupon codes for specific items, but wondering if anyone had a percent or dollar or some such coupon off kind of thing?

although the 640gb drive is only 8mb cache and 5400rpm, it's versatile enough that i can put it in the lappy if i ever wanted to. plus for some reason, the reviews on it seemed to beat the seagate 7200.4 drive.

anyway...

 

Seems to work ok now so far! Thank you!

EDIT: WOw Firefox doesn't seem to be giving me the same problem like it was before! I'll give it a day though.

DOUBLE EDIT: THIS THING IS FLYING FAST! FEELS ALMOST LIKE NEW THANKS 2.0!

About the Quickdock, all I know is I bought like 5 of them, only one worked for a week with video only via component (no audio via SPDIF), and I'd know this because I'd stream it via Slingbox and watch what's on my desktop on there. Then it started doing repeated looped images within Slingbox as I streamed it. Then at the end of the week it clunked out, the GPU driver crashed/stopped working, the images went to the lowest resolution, the driver recovered, but the QuickDock no longer worked. I tried lowering the resolution, that and nothing else has worked. Did the GPU put a cap or limit on what can be streamed and it shut something down? No idea what the problem is with it. Neither does HP, who many times couldn't even find it in their system..an item that was there only a little over a year ago. Any suggestions greatly appreciated.


DV7: It seems to be working fine so far now that Matrix manager is fixed.

 

You mean the RocketFish enclosure? Yes, it's plug and play. Simply pull out the eSATA cable or USB cable. Just don't do it while it is writing, or you may corrupt the data you were writing to it.

In USB mode, you can use "safely remove hardware."

The Rocketfish is very slim. 5/8" of an inch thick, 3 3/8" w x 5 1/4" long. Easy to access the drive. Case is aluminum with a plastic cover that locks to the case.

The passport Elite is nice kit. Slightly smaller than the RocketFish. But if you're going to be transferring large files or a large amount of files, eSATA is about 2.5-3 times faster than USB. Nice to have when you need it. USB means you just have to go do something else and come back. No biggie.

BTW, encrytption is via software.

 

thanks. hey remy, that enclosure you linked before, i was wondering about what 2.0 said, would plugging in the esata and usb work for running that drive?

if not, is it because it has to power the drive and fan? how's the power brick look like on it?

 

Haha, yeah, you're telling me. I have a theory why it was programmed like that:

So folks will think their PC is so buggy that they just have to go out and get a MAC.



I have itunes installed on one of my DV5T's. I just use it to load and playlist manage music on my Ipod Nano. I also have RIO music manager for my RIO player installed on that too. Use the RIO for jogging - it's bloody mil-spec. Don't think the Ipod could stand up to the rigors of blood, sweat and tears.

 

thanks yes the rocketfish. i am sold on it. cheapest i can find NEW, is $15 on ebay, which isn't bad at all. I see there are a ton of used ones there.

esata i'm sold as you said. it's deceptive because they say it's hardware encryption (mind you i noticed 2 flavors of the passport elite. they have a newer looking style with light bars along the side as below
old style
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Passport-Elite-Portable/dp/B001MQ9S2C/ref=pd_sim_e_3

new style
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Western+Digital+-+My+Passport+Elite+500GB+External+USB+2.0+Portable+Hard+Drive+-+Black/9498484.p?skuId=9498484&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=9498484&ref=06&loc=01&id=1218115078405

doesn't matter cuz i think i'm going with the combo.

with the esata, how come you can just unplug it, and with usb you have to go safely remove (or can you as i have but rarely do...just unplug usb as well safely..without first clicking safely remove hardware)?

 

Wouldn't you know it, it's Jmicron.

See the pic here:

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Akasa/integral_P2NES/3.html

This particular chip, JM20337, can only use 4200&5400 RPM drives in eSATA mode. What's more, it's known to work best with 5400RPM Samsung drives. I've run a 5400RPM, 250GB Western Digital in an enclosure with JM20337 in eSATA mode, no problem.

 

Yeah, but the new style is pretty sweet looking. The Rocketfish is utilitarian and plain. Though, the Rocketfish is two tone black/silver like the HDX. Rocketfish comes with 2 covers.

You don't have to safely remove with USB. It's just good practice. I've popped it out a number of times without safely removing with no ill effects. Only do it when you're not writing to it and you won't have a problem. If you accidently do, the next time you plug it in, it will likely prompt you to run a scan to correct any file errors.

As to why you can just pop out an eSATA while it's on... dunno?

Kidding. The Silicon Image eSATA chipset inside the HDX supports hotplugging.

 

what a joker ya the rocket case is the best option in this case and that combo deal i guess is what i'm going to go for...just looking for any more deals for that/those drives...i think that's the best so far though.

thanks.

 

I have never tried the eSATA port. Now I am wondering the same thing. But I am thinking that it needs the power brick for the fan and the drive.

It's looks like your standard power brick for a small appliance. It's about the same size and voltage as one for a router. So it's not big at all.

 

i have seen fanless 3.5" enclosures. all of them are powered with an adaptor. i imagine that the larger drive takes more power/voltage or whatever??? 2, can chime in here soon i'm sure

no matter. i'm going by your advice. it seems like a monster of a case, but seems the best cooled that i've ever seen.

 

My tip for iPod user is Helium Music Manager. The only thing i don't know is if you can update an iPod firmware without iTunes.

 

2.0 your a diamond!
tbh i dont know what speed HDD is in it, its a 120Gb Seagate....i'll crack the top off tonight and find out.
All i know is once i found out the eSATA wasnt recognised i tried the USB and the drive went a bit screwy....Storage management in W7 asked me to initialize it again but when i tried it said "waiting for the drive" or "it cannot initialize it". I left it unplugged for a few hours and tried it again and it read the drive so i formatted it and starting copying some data to it but it locked up. Not sure if i've done something to the drive or the enclosure now.
It was working fine prior to messing with eSATA.

This brings me onto another subject, SSD's!!
I'm hovering over the buy button for a Crucial 64Gb SSD....has anyone used one in the HDX and is it just plug and play?
In device manager it says something about the "SATA AHCI" driver so i think on that front i'm ok.....i had read something about enabling AHCI in the bios when fitting them but not sure i can or need to on the HDX.

EDIT

And the 160Gb 5400rpm Fujitsu i'd remove to fit the SSD i can try in my Akasa caddy to see if eSATA works!