Hitachi 7200 rpm HD upgrade - results

Hello all,

I received my 100 GB 7K100 hitachi travelstar HD yesterday and installed it this evening. I used xxclone to clone my foot dragging 4200 rpm toshiba to the 7K100 using a USB connection. The results are impressive! My basic tests included:

hd tach - toshiba 4200 / hitachi 7200 rpm

Burst - 24.5* / 94.9 mb/s - 287% faster
Avg read - 23.3 / 42.3 mb/s - 81.5% faster
Random access 18.6 / 15.5 ms - 16.7% Faster
cpu utilisation - 0% / 5%

*possibly in error

SiSoft Sandra 4200 / 7200 rpm

Read - 27 mb/s / 48 mb/s
Random Access - 18 ms /16 ms

Start CPU - 4200 / 7200 rpm

Start laptop until desktop opened :
0:58 / 0:43 min - 25.9% faster

Start laptop until hourglass gone:
1:23 / 1:03 min - 24.1% faster

These startup tests can be subjective though, but the difference is clear

Gaming: Half Life 2 -
open game
1:40 / 0:52 min - 48% faster

Load saved game
0:38 / 0:24 min - 36% faster

Overall the drive performs much quicker in all regards, sometimes substantially better! Half-life 2 loading times were up to twice as fast, and gameplay was substntally smoothed out. The previous stutter during high intensity moments had all but disappeared, a problem that was not GPU related. I suspect adding another 1GB of ram will speed things up even more, but my limited budget won't allow it just yet. Besides, it will be another nice little boost in performance later on when the new difference becomes the norm.

Hope this is useful!

 

I thought I'd write a quick step-by-step guide for anyone else hoping to do the same.

How to Upgrade Your Laptop HD Using Your USB Connection

First off, I take no responsibility whatsoever for any messed up hardware etc. This worked great for me, and will most likely for you too, but any time you add components to your notebook you involve some risk. Make certain you have clean (grease free) hands and are well grounded before touching any components. Reground yourself frequently throughout. This is a simple procedure, but if you are not completely certain let someone more experience take care of it for you. That said, there should be no reason why almost anyone couldn’t do this.

There are many reasons why someone may want to replace their current notebook HD; in my case, it was speed. My 4200 rpm hard drive was a major bottleneck in the performance of an otherwise decent system. So, once I had the spare cash, I purchased a hitachi 7K100 7200 rpm drive.

Two important points: first, make certain you purchase a 2.5" HD, not a 3.5" or rare 2" drive. I'm sure most of you are well aware of this, but double check before purchasing just in case! Also, be certain to note the interface type before purchase; my laptop uses an ata/ide connection, however most newer notebooks use a SATA connection. Be absolutely sure of this before ordering, they are definitely not compatible!

In addition to purchasing a new HD, you'll need to purchase a 2.5" external HD enclosure. Be sure it has a USB external interface - I'm not sure of the compatibility of IEEE1394 with most cloning programs. You don't need anything fancy as the 2.5" HDs don't seem to generate nearly as much heat as the 3.5" units (from personal experience). I purchased a Sabrent model for $10 that worked flawlessly, and seems secure enough. There are a large variety available, purchase whatever your budget suits.

Next, you'll need to buy/download a cloning program that supports USB transfer to an external drive. Supposedly Norton Ghost and the Acronis equivalent are fine pieces of software. I'm on a budget, and used the freeware xxclone. I don’t believe there are many/any other free software cloning packages that allow USB transfer.

http://www.xxclone.com/

This software did the trick just fine, is quite user friendly, and quick. Took me just under an hour, but I only had about 40 GB of data. Your experiences may vary.

So to recap, you need three things: the hard drive, a hard drive enclosure, and cloning software suitable for USB transfer.
Okay, enough background, here are the steps:


1.) Load the xxclone software. Ground yourself, then mount the HD into the external enclosure. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions – usually quite simple.

2.) Plug the now assembled external HD into the USB ports of the notebook. If it has a split USB cable designed to plug two male ends into the notebook, do so. The last thing you need is the chance of an underpowered USB device corrupting your transfer.

3.) Load xxclone. You’ll see a menu that notes the source and target drive. Ignore this for a moment, and instead click on the “diskmgmt” button. This loads the windows disk manager. At the bottom you’ll see it note all attached disk drives. Disk 0 should be your system drive (C:\). The HD connected by USB should appear as disk 1, an unpartitioned drive.

4.) Select disk 1, and select the “Action” tab at the very top. Select “All Tasks”, and choose the option to initialise the disk. Then select from the same menu to partition the drive. Choose the default selections, and partition to the full extent of capacity. Select a letter for it – a must! This will allow you to format the drive at the same time. Do so as NTFS, wait a few minutes. DO NOT do a quick format – it won’t find errors.

5.) After the disk is formatted, you may need configure it to ensure it can be accessed properly. According to Microsoft you must “…reconfigure the drive so that it is not optimized for quick removal. To do so:
1. Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then click Manage.
2. Under Storage, click Disk Management.
3. In the lower portion of the right pane, right-click Disk number (where number is the number of the hard disk that you want to optimize, for example, Disk 1), and then click Properties.
4. Click the Policies tab, click Optimize for performance, and then click OK.
5. If you are prompted to restart the computer, quit all running programs, and then click Yes.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;329971

6.) The previous steps should have prepared the disk and made it accessible to accept the cloning. Close the disk manager and restore the xxclone window. Ensure the disk to be cloned appears under the source volume (most likely the C:\ drive). Select the new drive from the target volume selector; if it does not appear, try rebooting the system. With the new drive selected, it is just a matter transferring the data. Under the Operation Mode window, place a check beside “Back up the entire volume by copying all the files from scratch”. Then click on start and double check it is correct before clicking yes to continue. Put your feet up and relax for a bit.

7.) When the volume has finished copying, you need to now make the new volume bootable. The xxclone program probably closed itself. Reopen the program and make certain the proper source and target drives are selected. Then select the tab “cool tools”. Choose “Make Bootable”, and place a check before all three items before continuing. This takes only a few seconds.

8.) Ground yourself, shut down the computer and remove your hard drive - up to you to find out how, usually very simple. In most cases this involves opening a covering, sliding the old HD back from the connector, and removing. It probably has a bracket that must be unscrewed and added to the new HD. Remove the new hard drive from the external enclosure and attach to bracket and before placing into the notebook. Be certain it is solidly connected/in place, then replace cover.

9.) Fire the notebook up and watch it fly. XXclone will bring up a little message noting a successful cloning, and windows will verify the new hardware. Make certain everything seems okay, and test a few programs. You MAY need to manually transfer a few files. Supposedly outlook.pst won’t be copied. I don’t know, don’t use it.

10.) Put the old HD into the enclosure, and see the nice little portable storage unit you have. Very useful.

11.) Enjoy!!!

 

BTW, some or all of this may change significantly if you have multiple partitions. xxclone will only clone one partition at a time. Be sure to add the bootability components to the partition with the operating system.

 

will xxclone let you clone to a partition that is less than the full size of the new drive? I want to upgrade from a 40GB 5400RPM drive to an 80 or 100GB 7200RPM drive, and leave space for a Linux install at the same time.

 

I believe so, but to be honest I did not look into it much because it wasn't relevant to my situation. Check out the website, they have more info on the capabilities of the product. As well, check out the forum at

http://groups.google.com/group/xxclone

Good luck.