I don't have the money to buy a new laptop so that isn't really an option right now but what do you all think about replacing HD? This current one is only 100GB and when you put on a couple games and little things here and there it adds up quick. Anyone replace a HD just to have more space? This laptop is from 2007, with just 2gig of memory and intel Centrino duo core at 2ghz, graphics are a basic nvidia Go 7600.
Laptop HD is easy to replace. Just make sure you download all the drivers from the MFG and put them on a disc or thumbdrive first.
Whats the laptops make & model?
Hp pavillion
dv9000
Sorry for the delay, I've been working thru the weekend on a large video wall install.
What spec's I could find real fast on that model seem to indicate that your Hard Drive bus is a Sata 1, aka Sata 150MB. If that is the case than a larger drive will certainly help you store more, but it will not increase it's speed. You will also likely have to spend quite a bit more for a HD that is compatible. Not many Sata 1's on the market.
Actually there is a second hd slot. Are all laptop hd essentially the same? Ive done a search for model EZ345AV and kept coming up with same 100gig 7200rpm drives. Refurbished for about $27 new twice that
Just like desktop versions laptop HD's are not all the same. But if you can get the same drive for that price then by all means. But if you wanted something other than a 2nd version of the original then search for a laptop Sata 1 or Sata 1.5 Gb/s drive.
Here's a couple options I found real quick:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236288
If all you're looking to do with this laptop is increase the amount of storage, then just buy a new hard drive. It's not rocket science when it comes to SATA drives. All SATA is backward compatible (and was actually designed to be forward compatible as well). I've never had a SATA II drive NOT work on a SATA I bus. Nor have I ever had a SATA III drive NOT work on a SATA II bus. I can't say the same for SATA III over a SATA I bus as I've never tried it, but in theory it should work fine on a SATA I bus. It just means you won't get the full functionality of that revision of SATA.
The biggest thing that each revision of SATA does is double the bandwidth. There are other things that are improved with each revision, but that is the biggest. Here's how it breaks down:
SATA I - 1.5 Gigabits per second bus speed (gigabits, not gigabytes!)
SATA II - 3 Gbps
SATA III - 6 Gbps
There are a couple of issues you'd likely encounter if you bought a SATA III drive for the SATA I bus. First is that the older bus may not properly auto-negotiate the speed, and therefore might not recognize the newer drive. Generally there are jumpers on SATA drives that you can use to force SATA I speed. Before going that route, I would recommend you make sure your BIOS is updated to the latest revision. That will most likely negate the speed auto-negotiate issue.
The second issue you may run into is that if the new drive is too large, it may not be recognized by the older bus. However, SATA I should easily recognize a 1TB or smaller drive, and give you no problems there. Again make sure your BIOS is up to date before you do anything else.
What it comes down to then is price. Decide on a drive size (it sounds like you'd be fine with a 500GB or so drive), and then shop it out. If it happens that a SATA III 500GB drive is cheaper than a 500GB SATA II or SATA I drive, buy it. Most likely it will work fine.
Have a look at this:
Hitachi SATA III 500GB - $59.99
Western Digital Scorpio Blue SATA II 500GB - $59.99
In this case, go with the WD Scorpio drive. I'd say 99.999% chance it will work perfectly (unless the drive is DOA, but that's for another discussion). So for $60 you've just quintupled the hard drive space on the laptop. Just remember that the SATA II drive will be operating at SATA I speeds, so don't expect it to speed up your laptop.
For those curious about SATA compatibility, there's a good description at Wikipedia.
Inclined to double the ram. I attempted to only login to Tor and he comp ran like cold molasses
What operating system are you running Gilby? If it's a 32-bit OS then 3 GB is the max. Actually, I just looked up the spec's and it appears that 2GB is the max memory size for that model.
Sorry Gilby. No can do on ram upgrade.
Running windows 7 64bit
You'd probably do better with XP on 2GB of ram rather than Win7 64bit. I could be wrong on the specs, but thats what I found when I did a search for that model.
I would install Sisoft's Sandra Lite and confirm the details of your computers specs and what the maximum amount of Ram that board can handle.
/agree with B.
The only way I'd say different is if you weren't going to be doing any gaming on it... in which case I'd say put Linux on it. Mint or Ubuntu would make that laptop feel pretty darn snappy. Since you're looking to try and do some gaming on it, I'd agree with B and say put XP on it, even though XP is under a year of official M$ support.
