Sony TZ Owners - Is it worth upgrading the hard drive?

I purchased a white Sony Vaio VGN-TZ31MN yesterday on fleabay. It was sent right away so should arrive tomorrow.

I'm going to test it for a few days to see how quick it is however I am considering upgrading the hard drive. The default drive is a 100GB 1.8" Toshiba (I believe this is the 40GB version of it). It's probably enough storage for me as I have a 230GB 2.5" external hard drive and a 32GB USB flash drive too, however the 4200 RPM and 2MB cache seems a bit slow.

Have any TZ owners here replaced the hard drive with a faster SSD? If so, have you noticed a huge difference in performance? (would also be interested to know what adaptors I need to buy in order to connect the drive)

A 64GB Kingston SSD costs about £115 and if I'm able to get £40-£50 for the 100GB I'm replacing, it isn't a big expense (though the 128gb for £199 might be more practical).

Replacing the DVD Drive

I read the thread about swapping the DVD writer for a hard drive. I don't think I'd use the DVD drive that much however it would be handy on the odd occasion for watching a film etc, though I have an external usb DVD drive anyways so it's not a huge problem.

Has anyone done this? The 2.5" hybrid drives are pretty cheap and offer a lot of storage and speeds close to SSD performance. Though, not sure if it's worth removing the hard drive, particularly as I have an external drive for movies,music, files etc.

Battery

Have any TZ owners who replaced their HDD with an SDD noticed an increase in battery performance?

I'm thinking of replacing the battery anyway. I owned a Sony Vgn-tx2xp a few years ago and in the end the battery went dead due to usage. It's doubtful I'll get the 7 hours quoted battery life with a 2 year old laptop so replacing it could be worthwhile.

Does anyone know what part number it is for the battery? I can't seem to find a battery for a TZ31mn anywhere.


Thanks,
Kevin

 

Wasn't there a big TZ recall?

Sony recalling VAIO TZ models due to overheating risk (Update: now official for US) -- Engadget

 

yeah I was aware of that. I'm not sure when the laptop I purchased was built (as it was the older ones which were affected). The laptop is apparently working fine (will test it tomorrow when it arrives) so I assume it was one of the laptops which wasn't affected (if not, it will be getting returned).

 

I recommend that you take a look at this thread if you haven't done so already. Performance is going to be pretty uniform for all core 2 core ulv laptops.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...orage/531052-1-8-zif-pata-ssds-available.html

I also recommend that you take a look at this thread
http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/534634-vaio-tz-guide-ssd-install-upgrade.html

I've upgraded a core 2 duo ULV U7600 laptop to an SSD drive. As you may have discovered by now the standard drive is very slow. It is around 1.30-2 mins to boot and with an SSD you might be able to half that. Getting an SSD makes a marked difference in boot up times and just general responsiveness. Saving a large file to a 1.8 4,200rpm is not something that i would like to do. This feeling of responsiveness is not that noticeable in Vista but it is in W7 and XP.
The 1.8 drives are fairly low power anyway so battery life gains might not be marked.

Check in the device manager as to what drive you have. It's likely to be a zif drive and so you'll have a pretty good selection of drives and no adapter would be needed.

 

Thanks for the advice Rachel. It has Windows 7 installed. The speed isn't as bad as I thought it would be though I have turned off most of the performance settings (e.g. aero, gadgets etc) in order to speed things up.

Booting is relatively slow though. I've not transferred large files as yet though I don't imagine that it would be quick.

Would be interested in how faster 1.8" drives perform as although I want faster boot times and responsiveness, I would sacrifice some of it for storage. Do they even make 1.8" drives at 7200 rpm? I know Toshiba make 250gb external 1.8" drives but I'm not sure how fast they are or even if they are compatible (i.e. could you take the drive out of the enclosure and use it).

 

Performance is a bit better with the mechanical drive when fully tweaked.
The access times with SSD's are just a lot faster even though the read and writes of 1.8 zif/pata ssd's are not the fastest. The access times will lead to an increase in response times which you will notice.

This is a HD Tune of 1.8 Photofast 128GB


Compared to a zif 1.8 4200 HD.


No 1.8 7200 rpm drives are made. There is 5400 zif drive but performance is barely better than the 4200 drive.
There are some 1.8 240GB zif drives but they won't work in laptops.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...stall-new-hard-drive-sony-tz-help-please.html

 

Thanks Rachel. I will look into getting a pata ssd. Looks like it could be worth it.

 

If it weren't for the stock SSD that came with my TZ, this would be an almost unusable computer.

 

I recently got a refund on an acer 1825T that was broke. That was obviously speedier due to 4gb of ram, however the tz isn't as slow as i thought it would be. It manages youtube videos, iplayer and photoshop ok; which is enough for me as primarily it's going to get used about the house and when travelling etc.

An SSD would certainly speed things up though

 

I wrote the TZ UDMA5 guide. Even if you find speeds liveable now, you won't for long. At some point you will want to punch babies in the face. You might want to hold off on an SSD, or not. NAND prices seem stubbornly high right now. I got a 64GB Vertex cheaper in December than current market price. Pretty sure there's a big NAND maker that's about to dump chips? 128GB would be so much nicer to have if you can afford it, but it doesn't make sense at current prices. It's more than the entire rest of your laptop!

You need a special conversion kit that is no longer made and was really expensive even when it was made. Forget it. I wanted a 32GB + 750GB system. Kept waiting for box makers to make something good. Bought a Mac because PC insists on being stubbornly stupid.

2.5" hybrid won't fit without the conversion kit.

I used the energy wasting Renice K3VLAR standard (in yellow on Nando4's page). I recall he said that he got better battery life with one of the green versions. I noticed a slight drop in battery life after I put in the SSD. Can't explain it.

Just sold my TZ and extended battery on ebay. There are a couple used ones around. Originals go for a million bucks. "New" batteries are mostly Chinese and will give you grief on the VAIO. The TZ will recognize it as "non-Sony" and will shutdown your machine. Apparently, you can bypass this warning, but some users have not been successful and report that it's not worth it in the end. YMMV.

VGP-BPX11 (extended) and VGP-BPL11 (standard). You can get the standard brand new at discount electronics in Texas. Try google shopping for the part number. Around $80 I recall.

 

Also, regarding the TZ recall, I just sent mine in last December (2010) for repair. They fixed it (or so they say). Machine seemed cooler after I got it, though it could be placebo. No charge. You should definitely call them.

SSD with ZIF socket is a specialty item. With NAND supply low right now, it's hard to find one of these even if you have money to spare. My Digital Discount is all out of everything. The KEVLAR-E seems like a good deal.

$140 for 60GB isn't too much of a premium, given the odd socket and 1.8" size. Only problem is, they're out of stock.

 

Many thanks for your response sugarking Much appreciated.

haha I'm not punching babies as yet but I haven't really tested it yet. The speed doesn't actually seem to be a major problem just now though it could be in the future once I have installed more programs etc.

I'm happy to hold off for the time being for the SSD drive (at least until the speed becomes a major issue). The one thing I did notice was the noise of the hard drive - I had it on next to my 27" imac. That was silent, the tz was quite noisy in comparison.

Thanks for providing the battery part numbers. The extended battery is about £150 here in the UK brand new. The standard is a bit cheaper though and seems decent value.

 

There's mine. Had over 80% charge on it. Would've sold you mine for about 30 quid. Oh well.

Here's new a standard for 40 quid.

 

I bought a Renice K3VLAR E for my father in laws Revision A Macbook Air 80GB (which, like the TZ, also requires ZIF PATA 1.8inch drives). Since I'm in Ireland I ordered it through alibaba.com for a similar price. The "non-E" verison of this drive can cause wake / boot problems with some laptops which is why I specifically went for this version. Performance was cracking compared to the old 4,200rpm drive; startup in particular.

Storage is only 60GB (for the $140 model), but the great thing was Renice also bundled an extremely slim PATA USB enclosure, so now he has a tiny external hard drive for storing movies and the like. Sweet setup. I recommend the Renice drive!

 

I got the Runcore 128GB ZIF SSD for my Vaio TZ from memoryc.com. It worked like a beauty, and was real good on W7. Screen cracked so upgraded to Z13, but still miss the TZ.