HDD upgrade compatibility

Hi everyone, I was looking forward to upgrade my laptop's HDD, it's a satellite a205-s5804. The thing is I don't know much about compatibility issues in a HDD upgrade on a laptop... So I researched a bit and found these:

--- Amazon.com: Hitachi 0A50937 100GB Hard Drive: Electronics

--- Amazon.com: Western Digital 320 GB Scorpio Black SATA 3 Gb/s 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Notebook Hard Drive - WD3200BEKT: Computers & Accessories

--- http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001CO3EKG/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&m=A35DL6C7BAXYRR

So my questions are if would fit the 320 GB disk on my laptop... If doesn't please suggest me another one that would be fully compatible.

If needed more info, ask freely.
Thanks

 

Essentially all laptop hard drive bays are the same size which means odds are any of these drives will fit in ur laptop. The compatibility issue I see is that ur laptop seems to be a SATA 150 or SATA I laptop which means you won't be able to maximize the speeds of the newer drives you posted above as they are SATA 300 or SATA 2.

 

Thanks for the quick reply.

So I wouldn't be able to upgrade my HDD, or I can upgrade it and won't feel the difference in speed??

 

You should be able to upgrade to any SATA device [your laptop looks like SATA I]. You will just not benefit from the speed increases of SATA II [3 Gb/s] and SATA III [6 Gb/s]

Here's your spec sheet: http://cdgenp01.csd.toshiba.com/content/product/pdf_files/detailed_specs/satellite_A205-S5804.pdf


Good luck

 

You can upgrade it but you won't have any performance gain, so your upgrade will be more for storage than performance..Meaning no SSDs or anything fancy, just go with a 750GB WD Scorpio Green, that'll keep you happy..

 

I recently upgraded my u505 from the stock 320GB 5400RPM drive to a Seagate 500GB 7200RPM hybrid drive with 4GB of integrated solid state storage. As I have 6GB of RAM on this x64 Win7 Pro system and typically hibernate, I wasn't sure how much the 4GB storage would help - if at all.

Folks, after a couple boots so the drive could do some learning... either a full boot or return from hibernation takes (subjectively) 1/3 the time. Even if that is a subjective opinion, the difference is significant enough to be real.

Once I'm running, the higher turn speed on the platters helps too when loading bigger software like photoshop or doing full image backups.

 

Same here, I used to have a Seagate Momentus XT and I know of the performance gains, though the issue here isn't the drive, it's the interface which is SATA I..A regular SATA II drive would downgrade to SATA I speeds which mean the user wouldn't benefit from the performance gains of a newer, higher performing HDD/SSD.. Which is why I advice getting a drive for larger storage purposes(750GB Scorpio Green) as supposed to "high performance" drives (Scorpio Black, Momentus XT, SSDs).

 

G'day all

I've just recently upgraded my Toshiba P750 from the OEM 750gb HDD to a Crucial M4 256 SSD and also plugged in a pair of 4gb RAM sticks.

I use this laptop for FSX and Man o man!! what a difference!!

I mounted the original HDD in a housing and USB that to the laptop. Plenty of storage AND blazing fast performance.

Best upgrade I've made and I highly recommend going down the SSD path. Yep, it's a bit pricey per gb but hey....Boot times of 30 secs to desktop, 30 seconds to fire up FSX, 2 secs to get Firefox up! Absolutely brilliant.

Sorry for the oversell....

Joe
Perth Western Australia

 

ok, after all I found in "speccy" a few specs of my HDD:

TOSHIBA MK1246GSX ATA Device
Manufacturer TOSHIBA
Heads 16
Cylinders 16383
SATA type SATA-II 3.0Gb/s
Device type Fixed
ATA Standard ATA8-ACS
LBA Size 48-bit LBA
Power On Count 2429 times
Power On Time 110.8 days
Features S.M.A.R.T., APM, NCQ
Transfer Mode SATA I
Interface SATA
Capacity 117GB
Real size 120,034,123,776 bytes
RAID Type None

So, it means the disk is SATA II and works with the SATA I interface?, and if that is true, will a SATA II 7200 RPM work on my laptop?

I can't afford to buy a SSD, the are still to expensive for so little space..

 

Good find, considering you proved most of us wrong If it is a SATA-II drive in your laptop, then you probably have a SATA-II system [assuming the harddrive in question is the stock drive that came with the laptop].

SATA is neat because regardless of it being SATA-I, II, or III, it should still work in your laptop; only the speed is affected [backwards compatibility]. If you want to be safe, then go with SATA-II.

Any SATA-II drive should work [5400rpm, 7200rpm, SSD, etc..]; [BTW, SATA-II is the same as SATA-300]


Good luck and keep us posted with results.

 

Yes it's the original, so I'll go for sata ii, and 7200 rpm, I have read that those drives don't consume more power than a 5400 rpm drive.

Ok, I'll keep posting my results, thanks everyone for the help!!!!

 

First of all I wanted to thanks everyone for they help, I finally upgrade my HDD from a sata 1 to a sata II with no issues. It works like a charm

So I installed a Scorpio black WD HDD 7200 rpm an 16MB cache sata II, in replacement for a toshiba HDD 5400 rpm and 8MB cache Sata I,

Victory!!!!