HP Pavillion dv9500 Hard Drive Replacment

Hi all,

I have an old HP Pavillion dv9500 that recently had the HDD begin to fail. I'm noticing markedly poorer performance and after running some checks and repairs, have a bunch of unrecoverable and corrupted sectors. I'm looking to replace the primary drive which can be found here:
Newegg.com - Hitachi GST Travelstar 7K100 HTS721010G9SA00 (0A25016) 100GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 1.5Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive
The page there clearly says that the drive is a SATA 1.5 connection but when I reviewed page 113 of the Maintenance and Service Manual
(located here: http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01951704.pdf)
I noticed it said the interface type is ATA-7.

I presume that my MoBo model would come in handy as well. It is a Quanta 30cb.

My question then is what type of HDD interface am I limited to? Can I use a SATA connection or do I need a ATA-7 connection? And if I can use SATA, what generation am I limited to?

Thanks for any and all help.

 

take your hdd out of the laptop, if it has lots of needles, it's ata, if it has smaller, L shaped connector it's sata.

 

I pulled the drive and took a look at the connection. See the pictures below:





As far as I can tell, I got the model number correct on the drive but the one I linked above doesn't have the same connection. I'm going to guess that's the ATA-7 connector. However, it clearly says SATA in the first picture so I'm still a bit confused. While I'm pretty convinced that this MoBo missed the boat by one technology generation, I'm just looking for someone who actually knows what they're looking at to confirm that this is the ATA-7.

 

That's an adapter connected to the drive. Wiggle it off.

Remove all 4 screws on the side of the caddy to remove the drive from the caddy. Then you will see that it's just an adapter that is on the SATA connector on the drive. You will need this adapter for the new drive you get.

 

Ah, that would make sense. I haven't had the time to pull the drive out and confirm this but it seems very likely given that searching the model number and the drive sticker both say it's SATA. Correct me if i'm wrong, but wouldn't using this adapter throttle down the transfer rate of the hard drive?

 

Nope, wouldn't have any effect on transfer rate since all it does is redirect the contacts to fit a particular form factor/connector.

 

I've been reading some other posts and then took a look at a PATA to SATA converter off NewEgg. If i'm not mistake, the output speed of the hard drive will be limited by the PATA technology to 133MB/s because of the way the signal is sent due to the signal being split so many times and being required to arrive at the destination simultaneously. So if the PATA configuration is part of the converter (which obviously it is), it is subject to the same issues.

Newegg.com - SYBA SD-ADA50016 SATA to IDE (IDE to SATA) Bi-Directional Adapter

 

It should be a SATA drive in there with a SATA bus.

My HDX 9000 was made in the same year as your DV9500 and it has a SATA bus for the HDDs but has a PATA bus for the optical.

My HDX is also listed as having a ATA-7 interface type. Same with my DV5. But they both are SATA drives with a SATA connector that merely converts it to the board's connector.

Here's your service manual: http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01951704.pdf

In the spec section of that manual, it lists it as ATA-7. But so does mine for both the HDX and the DV5. And if you google the part number for any drive, they all list as SATA drives. You can find the part numbers on pages 51-52 of that service manual.

If you get a chance over the weekend, remove the connector from the drive and take a pic of the drive's connector end and upload it so we can together arrive at a final confirmation. You shouldn't need to do anything except buy a new SATA drive. Also SATA II drives will work as well as SATA III as they are backward compatible to SATA I specs. They will just be capped off at 1.5 Gbps transfer speeds. But I have SATA II SSD's in both that get about 200(write)-275(read) MB/s transfer speeds.

 

First off, thank you for all the help and patience 2.0™. I'm sure it's frustrating trying prove something to someone who's still trying to wrap their head around the issue. I probably could have saved us both a lot of headache if I'd just fiddled with it a bit more completely the first time I pulled it out.

I pulled the bad drive for retirement yesterday after cloning it to my secondary (Clonezilla works great by the way). I removed the connector only to realize that not only is my HDD a SATA drive, it's definitely not a ATA-7 connection. A closer inspection revealed that the male end and has the same number of pins as the male SATA; it appears that it's an adapter, not a converter.



Obviously, the SATA connection is oriented such that pins are hidden (though slightly visible through the plastic) but you know what SATA looks like.

Any SATA HDD or SDD will work which is great because PATA drives are more expensive than they need to be ($120 for 80Gb, hell no). Seams that your write/read speeds are over the benchmark which is interesting. If I'm not mistaken, SATA Gen 1 runs at 150 Mb/s.

 

Excellent. Glad that is all sorted out.

What size HDD are you looking to get and what brand? I've had exceptional luck with Western Digital's Black series. I use them for archival and large file transfers and haven't had one fail on me yet. Oldest is 5 years. I own about 14 of them. All 500GB, 7200RPM except for the latest at 750GB, 7200PM.

 

Well, I've been reading reviews and looking at some options and I think I'm going to go with Hitachi again (HGST). The two that originally came with the computer have survived more than i ever imagined they would (been down the stairs unassisted and even helped put a hole in my wall courtesy of a bad toss onto the bed. I also have a friend who dealt in hardware for a number of years and he said that their quality has gone up a lot since the early 2000's. I've heard a lot of horror stories about all of the brands failing prematurely so I'm not putting a massive amount of faith in the reviews though I am using them as a reference. Plus the one in the link below is at a heavy discount which is very enticing.

Newegg.com - HGST 0A78743 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

It's only a 16mb cache but as far as I know, I won't really notice a performance increase from 16 to 32 with what I use the computer for which is mostly gaming. It's SATA Gen 2 which will bottleneck to Gen 1 speeds but that's OK. Spool speed is 7200" and the dimensions match the old HDD. Seems like a solid buy. Any thoughts?

 

I have no experiences with that particular drive so I can't advise. I haven't had a harddrive fail on me in over 20 years of using them. That's either because I'm just born lucky or have bought the most reliable brands.

But the price of that drive sure is nice.