Possible Breakthrough SATA HDD in Older TB's

As far as anyone knows there is no way to use a SATA HDD in an older laptop.

Maybe there is....

If you are willing to give up the wireless card in the Mini PCI slot.

http://buy.advantech.com/MIO-3140/MIO-3140/model-MIO-3140-00A1E.htm

This is a MiniPCI based SATA 1 controller. I have no idea if it will work but I thought one of you skilled hackers who are so inclined might give it a shot.

The price according to that website is $67. I also found them at price blaze for $102.
http://priceblaze.com/Product.aspx?ref=1&rfid=901748&q=

A few thoughts:

1) This would of course require that you move your 802.11 to one of the PCMCIA slots which might be a non starter for some.
2) I can't figure out what kind of cabling to the HDD is required, if it uses standard SATA connections and cables, then there may not be enough room to mount them.
3) Another potential problem is getting power to the drive.

If this works then it would open up the door for installing Dual HDD's as the controller offers two ports.

 

I would be almost certain you would not be able to boot your primary drive with that. If all you want is the extra storage you would be better off tapping into one of the internal USB 2.0 ports but where to put the drive/s?

 

I think it would be possible to place your additional HDD in the Media Drive Bay. It would be sort of like an Opti Bay for macs, as seen here: http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/index.html

 

Interesting, especially if you used a SSD and modified the CD drive caddy one might be able to make it work, but the problem is that as tough-to-go stated there is not a way to get it to boot.

 

From what I can see in the pictures, these boards will provide SATA signaling, but where will you get power from?

 

The throughput on minipci i think is only around 133.33 MB/s... you would be shooting yourself in the foot even if you could hook up and boot off of a SATA laptop hard drive as the throughput on those are 1,500MB/s...

 

By the way, there was an earlier thread about a SATA to PATA adapter board. When I tested it in a W5, it worked just fine. That is to say, I ran a SATA drive in a system designed with a PATA interface. The only problem was that I could not close the cover. So, if your system could accept the added length...

 

There have been several knowledgeable posts about this as well as the 3-4 people before that tried this. Not to say that it cannot be done... But it was generally deemed that it would not work as well as std equipment.