slow slow slow fast fast fast (help if you have a moment!)

Howdy, i think i'm doing pretty well with my rubbish olf toughbook, yesterday i left it downstairs and watched a video file on it through my home network on my big screen tv downstairs. I'm pretty happy with this! My only real issue is that sometimes it lags a bit, i guess the information ont he external drive has to go through the pc and out of the usb cardbus, through the lan adapter and then upstairs and it obviously struggles a little sometimes.

With 160mb of ram in (the max allowed on this machine) i'm trying to think of other ways to speed it up a little since i'm pretty sure i can't change the processor (soldered to the mb right?). For what it's worth i have never seen my ram usage go above 100mb so i'm happy enough the ram is at the right level for my needs anyway.

The one thing i can think of is a new hdd, the one i have at the minute is a 4gb 4200rpm drive and while space isn't a problem i get the feeling the speed is. Perhaps i should be looking for a 7200rpm drive though in IDE these seem hard to come by. Would a 5400rpm drive make much difference? Any other ideas on how to drag the most performance from my poor machine?!

Cheers for reading
Michael

 

I would say that defenantly yes....a hard drive upgrade would improve the situation....7200's are out there just a little hard to find.

 

Michael,
A good alternative to the 7200rpm ATA drives is the Samsung Spin Point 5400rpm drives. They are single platter and almost as fast as the 7200rpm drives.
LWOS,
Is that SATA drive for the CF-29? Check again on the CF-29 hard drive requirements, they are ATA. Out of the "Sandbox" yet?
CAP

 

You always have good advice cap! I did a search on google and found loads of different models which is a little confusing but i think they do a 40gb model in this range which is the cheapest and probably the one i'll look for on ebay! Didn't notice it say single platter anywhere though, are all the spinright drives single platter?

Cheers to you pal!

 

It's the SAMSUNG HM160HC
A Single platter makes this one of the quietest 160 gb 5400 rpm 2.5 ata laptop drives around.
It has low power consumption and excellent performance competing head to head with some 7200rpm drives.

Alex

 

Michael,
You are looking for a "M" series Samsung Spinpoint ATA drive. There are a lot of 160gb ones out there. They are pretty cheap, but if you dig a little you can probably get a smaller one real cheap.
CAP

 

LOL yup...I found that if I trim the HDD caddy down on the end and re-route the HDD cable I can fit a SATA controler/addapter in the bay. I will have more info soon. I am still working on the heater though.....hmmm..

 

This was attempted in the past, without success

I am happy that you are working on it , its been quiet around here lately for Toughbook modifications

Alex

 

£45.57 spent on the HM160HC - more than i wanted to spend and more storage than i'll probably need but at least i can try my hand at dual booting now - fingers crossed i get a little extra speed out of the old toughbook now. if it gets rid of the lag from streaming files from the external hdds through my home network then it'll be worth the money.

Such a shame i can't just buy a new motherboard/cpu for this laptop, it would be awesome if i could use it for more than what i am.

 

I've always been told that USB ethernet adapters are a last-choice kind of thing, because going through USB chokes the speed considerably. Perhaps a cheap cardbus 10/100 ethernet card would help at least a bit?

 

rick will be happy with me, i used his guide and installed the new disk and got an image of my win2k on it without posting annoying topics on here!

i see a definite inprovement in speed but i still get a big of lag when streaming video from my externals and i'm guessing it's because of the usb lan adapter going through the card bus. i would put it straight into the pc but the card bus uses the usb port on the cf-27 for power - is there an adapter i can buy to plug the usb card into a power socket so it doesn't use the laptops only usb port? i can't use my wireless card while the card bus is in for reasons i'm unsure of so wireless is out of the question sadly. thoughts guys?

thanks for the hdd recomendation, it seems to be a good disk.

 

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/UK-Home-Wall-..._MP3_Player_Accessories?hash=item140291255230

awesome - found one of these in my drawer from a travel adapter kit i had, tried it and it worked a charm - with the usb lan adapter direct into the laptop, there is now no lag when watching videos on my home network - no lag at all.

I'm pretty amazed at what i can do on this laptop with such low specs - even the internet is running faster now i have the quicker hdd... can only get streaming audio to work, no streaming video like youtube but i don't use it for that - just browsing this website and listening to radio feeds from my home town when i get homesick!

 

I was thinking more along the lines of this 10/100 card, but if you found something that works for you, well that's good too.