How many sata ports

I have the HP Probook 4530s. I cant find out how many sata ports i have. The chipset HM65 can support up to 6 but how many does my laptop have? Can i add some more manually?

 

However many SATA ports you have to start with is all you are going to get. The chipset does support 6, but the laptop was designed only to hold one hard drive and one optical drive and that's all the motherboard was designed to support.

 

All i want is just to enable more than 2 ports on the chipset even if there are no more sata ports on the board.

 

you cant really do that...
on desktops you can have alot of sata ports for more than 1 optical drive/hdd/ssd but on a laptop,its limited

 

Even if you could do that, which you can't, there would be no point. No physical / electrical connections means you can't do squat with those ports.

 

I will be straight with this. I have a B2 chipset. Intel says if only ports and 0 and 1 are enabled the chipset is not considered problematic so under that case HP shipped me a problematic chipset in mid april. I want to prove that the chipset will cause me problems so that i get a replacement. I thought about enabling more ports but you say i am not able. But, if i put the same chipset in another motherboard and another BIOS i could be able to use more ports but HP says they will not assure the stability of the system after changing the system board. But when i bought the machine in the spec it says it has the HM65 chipset which on the manufacturer site says it supports up to 6 ports. Just because HP will use only two does it mean that they can ship me a chipset not designed to be fully used as designed by the manufacturer without my previous knowing? They say about hard drives having less capasity due to system recovery files but what about this?

 

In other words it sounds like you are trying to cause a problem where none exists for your laptop, solely for the purpose to force HP to give you a replacement?

The chipset is built onto the motherboard and is permanently soldered onto it, so you cannot physically take it out and use it in another computer. It isn't like a processor or a hard drive which can usually be swapped out and upgraded. That motherboard and that chipset will forever not be affected by the B2 recall.

The laptop functions as advertised and it could never be used in a way that could cause the chipset from giving you trouble in the way you fear it could, so this will never negatively affect you nor will HP need to do anything about it.

 

Its about principal. Im not trying to cause a problem. I contacted HP and they told me that i could transfer the chipset to another motherboard. I right now dont plan to do that but i dont want to have any problems in the future if me or my friend or in any case the B2 will cause me a problem. If i resell it people may back off because of this issue and not everyone has the ability to understand why he will have no problem with the specific notebook. Do you disagree that consumers should be informed in a page like this (last page) http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/pscm...ProBook_4430s_4530s_Notebook_PC_Datasheet.pdf that the chipset is not designed to support more than 2 ports since the manufactuer claims otherwise?

 

You can't "transfer" chipsets between motherboards. Don't know what HP meant by that. So people would back off if you resell it because they don't understand why the laptop doesn't have problems? Usually people don't want problems with their computers. It seems like you are trying to force one though. I didn't see anything in that last page about the laptop supposedly having 6 SATA ports. Laptop motherboards aren't like desktop motherboards. Each manufacturer takes them and modifies them to fit their model. This can mean disabling features that Intel has in the chipset, as long as they advertise it that way.

Its like you buy a basic model car that was advertised that way, then get mad because your model doesn't have everything that the better model has.

 

In the case your car has not the features described you can return it. HP wont accept the return initially.

If i am trying to force a problem where there really is none why did intel offer a recall to all the problematic chipsets even to those whose motherboards wouldnt use more than 2 ports?

 

For starters, if you are referring to the Sandy Bridge SATA controller recall, it was resolved months ago. In fact by the time Intel had announced the recall, they had already fixed the issue. It was only the original shipment of Sandy Bridge notebooks, desktops and motherboards shipped housed the B2 stepping.

HOWEVER, from what I understand from HP's SOP for Sandy Bridge laptops is to physically check the SATA controller on the motherboard or following their procedures on their website to qualify for an RMA. You cannot use CPU-Z as they will sometimes read motherboard steppings wrong. Also from their site sometimes B3 stepping will read as B2.

In any case, notebooks weren't really affected. Only the SATA 2 ports were. IIRC all SB notebooks should be SATA 3 so you would be unaffected regardless.

 

Right. If you only have two used SATA devices in the laptop (typically hard drive and optical drive), chances are they are ports 0 and 1 and the problematic ports are NOT affected. If you have two drives plus an eSATA port then yes, you would be affected.

In any case HP would know what machines are affected, and very few machines were affected since it was caught within a couple weeks after laptops just started being built with the new chipset.

 

Why do companies include info in their system specifications susch as

The hard drive has 15gb of preocupied space
An update of windows 7 may be required for the full ram to be used by the system
Internet service required
etc..

Arent they obliged to do such thing?

Wasnt i supposed to be able to know that my systems chipset is not designed to support SATA2 ports since that is what the original manufacturer claims? Wasnt i led to believe something like this was fisible? By the chipset of course, not by the system.

What difference does it make since my system wont use the extra ports? I was planning to use the chipset in the future on another board with more SATA ports or even add them or the same board. (believe it or not)

 

So, you bought a system thinking (assuming...) that it would be fit for a different purpose than what it was designed for.

A notebook is a completely self contained unit that is only 'guaranteed' to work as shipped - if it happens to work in any other configuration, well - you're just lucky; but in no way is a manufacturer obligated to make it work as you incorrectly assumed it would.

See:
HP ProBook 4530s Notebook PC specifications - HP Small & Medium Business products


The link above states what is 'guaranteed' to be provided to you. I'm fairly confident that HP did their part 'to the letter of the law'.

The only way you can ask for a replacement (they won't refund it now, I don't believe...) is if the internal HDD and/or the internal optical drive are connected to a SATA2 port. And no, the specifications above are correct is showing that the HDD's of the various capacities available are SATA2 - the port that they're connected to is what we care about here: if it is not a SATA3 port, then they must replace that system for you.

That, I think, is your only chance with getting this system replaced.

Does not matter what the specifications for the chipset used says: HP is not selling you a MB/chipset... they are selling you the complete (customized...) system.

Download a program that will verify the ports that the HDD and the optical drive are connected to. If SATA3 is indicated for both, then try to enjoy your notebook or sell it now (to make the most money back from it).

If the HDD or the optical drive is on a SATA2 connection; then you have a case for asking for a new system (claim that you want to put in a HDD caddy in the optical drive bay if that is the one that is SATA2).

Good luck.

 

Can you explain what you mean by using your chipset on another board, cause I don't believe it. Chipsets are on chips soldered to the motherboard. If you mean you are going to transfer your motherboard to another laptop, you know that's not possible, right? Laptop motherboards are proprietary and only work in the model they were designed for, with the ports the manufacturer enabled. Its not a desktop motherboard. How do you plan on physically adding more SATA ports to the board?

 

Do what things? If the machine as 4GB or more of RAM (or you plan on adding more), then 64-bit Windows is required to make use off all that RAM. You can use the same install key with a 64-bit version of Windows but requires a full reinstall. If you don't want to bother, then get the version of Windows that suits you when you order.

Internet service required is pretty much a given. Windows requires constant updates as does pretty much any software or drivers.

It does support SATA 2. SATA 3 is backwards compatible with SATA 2. Here's the specs for your machine:
HP ProBook 4530s Notebook PC specifications - HP Small & Medium Business products

It contains a single hard drive and a single optical drive. There are no external SATA ports (eSATA). So only the first two ports are utilized (ports 0 and 1) which are SATA 3, and are not affected by the four SATA 2 ports that had the issue. They just exist because it's part of the chipset.

It's kinda like if you bought a car and it had a couple extra wire connectors for your stereo that weren't being used because you didn't get the upgraded radio option on that car. You can't really take those wires and connectors out of the car and use them somewhere else.

 

Good analogy, but maybe look at it like this. He wants to add SATA ports. So its like you want to add another stereo (HDD) to your car, and now you're upset that there not extra wires (SATA ports) to be able to connect another stereo or any place to put it (except caddy where the DVD drive is, which is already wired).

Just cause the car manufacturer said you can upgrade the stereo, doesn't mean they provided the wires for it.

 

The laptop was manufactured so that the optical drive and hard drive *should be* using ports 0 and 1. That is what you need to check.

Ports 0 and 1 are SATA 3 ports that are unaffected by the now resolved recall. They are backwards compatible with SATA 2 so you are able to use SATA 2 hardware no problem.

What is a problem are ports 2, 3, 4, and 5. But you cannot access those. Can't move the chipset to a new board (that's a new one from the idiots at HP let me tell you). Can't do anything that would possibly expose those ports. So it isn't an issue for you.

...and no you cannot remove the chipset and transfer it to another computer. Soldered on. Permanent. No move.

Intel worked with vendors (HP, Dell, etc) to ensure that systems that continued to sell with the B2 chipset (like yours) would never be affected by the bug (a.k.a. only used ports 0 and 1 with no way to use 2, 3, 4 and 5).

Check with Intel RST what ports are being used on your laptop. You probably will see six ports, but four of them cannot be used (as per the whole discussion above). What you are looking for is the optical drive and the hard drive. So long as they are on ports 0 and 1, which they should be, then you are fine. If it's on anything else...well...then you have a legitimate complaint.

Otherwise you're spending too much time worrying about something that can never actually be a problem.