300gb 2,5" sata hdd + samsung q35

does this work out?
http://www.alternate.de/html/product/details.html?articleId=203019

fujitsu just released the 300gb hdd! the only problem might be the height - 12,5mm.. does this fit into our q35s?

 

3mm more from the height of the hitachi hdd.... i think that shouldnt be a problem right... maybe you can measure the space urself... at least from the height...

 

I don't think the Q35 can hold a 12.5mm thick HDD (but when I was looking at the R20, I thought there was room in that computer).

However, an alternative is the 250GB 5400rpm Samsung HM250JI HDD which will fit. I've now got one in my X60 plus.

Unfortunately, I am getting a weird data transfer result with a poor performance over the first 50GB. I blame the computer. The attached HDtach plots show: the HM250JI in my 18 month old desktop computer (result as expected), the HM250JI in the X60plus (low transfer rate for the first ~50GB); and for comparison the smaller HM160JI in my X60 plus (nothing unusual). I emailed the problem (with the graphs) to Samsung support and got a reply saying I should phone them, which I haven't yet done. The only way to discover whether other Samsung notebooks will give the same problem is to try. I'm planning to move the HM250JI to the Q70 when it turns up.

John

PS: I just looked again in the Q35's HDD compartment. The 9.5mm HDD is a tight fit and there is definitely no space for a thicker HDD.

PPS: I just checked at alternate.de and the HM250JI is listed and is slightly cheaper than the Fujitsu.

 

thank John for the confirmation... i though there enough room for another 3mm for the HDD... too bad i cant check... my ruby still not here..

 

thanks john.. good advice as always.. i'll go with the 250gb internal and use my existing 100gb as external usb hdd, then i'll get a 2gb ramstick and i'm set

 

Just be forewarned that you might get the strange data transfer problem with a high capacity HDD. I don't think this is anything to do with the brand of the HDD, but may be related to size. It's as if something gets confused above about 200GB. The annoying thing is that the slow area is the part part of the HDD where Windows is normally installed.

The specs for the brand new (yet to arrive) Q70 only mention HDD capacity up to 200GB although Samsung themselves are making larger HDDs.

I'll have to find time to try to talk to technical support about this issuse. I hope they will be interested to solve it rather than hide behind the disk sizes in the published specifications. It's something that the HDD people should be more interested to solve than the support people for the computers.

John

 

i'm a little confused now.. i just ordered a 2,5" sata HDD (western digital, WD2500BEVS (250 GB) AABW12)
now i opened up my q35 and the hdd looks like it's an IDE... i thought the q35 has only a sata connector?!

and how do i get my old hdd out of there?


oh and the name of the hd currently in my q35 is hts541010g9at00 .. i believe AT = pata... damn now i gotta cancel the order
....

ok just cancled my order this sucks... pata! damn.. the biggest pata hdd i could find was a 160gb... why the hell do some q35 have sata and some pata?

edit: probably it's just the cable that connects the hdd to the motherboard... i seriously doubt that there are different motherboards for the q35.. does anybody know more about this whole pata/sata issue? this is terrible for me as i do digital editing and i need alot of diskspace..
edit2: looked around for a converter for 2,5" sata to pata but couldnt find anything.. this sucks

 

Some Q35s come with PATA (IDE) and some with SATA. I don't know why there is the mixture but, as you suggest, it must be a matter of the cable connecting the HDD to the motherboard. Perhaps someone in Samsung technical support will know if there is an easy fix.

One possible reason why Samsung carried on using the PATA interface in the Q35 is that the SATA uses more power that PATA. This is particularly noticeable when the HDD is idle.

As for how to take the HDD out: It is easy.Lift out the front left corner first. The easiest way is to put a smallish screwdriver into the fixing hole on the side of the HDD. You can then lift the corner of the HDD about half way out. Then put the screwdirver under the end to finish lifting out the corner. Once that corner is free, it is easy to move. Be careful in prising off the connector cable.

Just a thought, but if your digital editing includes a lot of reading and writing of big data streams, then you may well find that you can speed up the processing substantially by using two HDDs (ie the internal + an external). This way, the software reads from one HDD and writes to the other which gives a much faster throughput than read/write on one HDD. I've used this technique successfully for some other data processing.

John

 

thanks for your response john...

i already have a 1tb external firewire hd for this purpose..
but i need an internal harddrive that is atleast 250gb because i dont want to carry that big external raid5 hd around(even faster than just one external usb hd), it's like a small barebone pc...

i will call samsung germany on monday and i will tell you the outcome of this conversation, i seriously hope it's only a matter of a cable.. else i'll have to sell this 3 month old laptop.. damn! i really like it

 

You could make an external 250GB 2.5" HDD which you could carry in your pocket. That would give you 250GB on the mode. External 2.5" HDD caddy with SATA are not so easy to find. I know the ICY BOX IB-250StU works with 250GB, but I also have a Transcend SATA caddy (it's actually newer) but it couldn't see all of the 250GB.

John

 

ok samsung doesnt offer a solution to this problem.. sata/pata seems to be a factory option and they dont want to send me that cable
but they gave me the number of their parts service so i might be lucky..

john, can you take a picture of the cable that connects the sata hdd to the controller? probably it's a different controller after all...
maybe you could also figure out a part# or something while you're at it.

thanks!

 

Sorry, I can't help. My Q35 is also PATA. I hope a Q35 owner with SATA will take a look under their HDD cover. What I am doing, to make comparison easier, is to attach photos of the PATA ribbon cable and socket (which looks as if it is sized to fit the PATA cable). Perhaps there is another socket which is not visible for the SATA cable.

John

 

I got SATA on my Q35 setup..
but you need to wait till i come back from work before i can attach some pictures regarding the HDD socket...
but i will attach it later... till then i can't really help with that...

 

thanks slumber! i'm impatently waiting

john, i also thought there might be another socket for the sata hidden somewhere... BUT the ribboncable looks like their own "format"

 

sorry for the delay... didn't found my digital camera last nite...
my friend took it without me knowing... so here i attached the pictures..

 

That looks as if it could be the same socket, so maybe it is a clever cable which converts from PATA to SATA.

John

 

yep. besides that.. my PATA hdd is reported as \dev\sda under unix... sda=sata... hda=pata
so the controller reports the hdd as sata even though its pata, so its probably a controller that can handles sata with a backwards compatability to sata...

lets see if i can order that cable... maybe this has a happy ending after all

 

ok.. just got off the phone with the samsung parts service..
slumber, can you get me the exact model# of your q35 w/ sata?
the phone support needs that inorder to figure out the part# of the sata cable..
the q35 pata-model code is: NP-Q35C005/SEG
it's written on the bottom of your q35..
fyi, such a controller cable costs 25€ + 6€ shipping costs..
not really cheap but worth the trouble i guess

 

sure... my model code is NP-Q35A002/SEG

about the cable... that's really expensive... at least for me

 

I had a long chat yesterday with a Samsung UK support person. While the initial subject was the Q70, we discussed several other issues. I raised this question of two HDD types for the Q35 and he looked something up and said that SATA and PATA had different motherboards. Apparently, they were reluctant to move to SATA on their smaller notebooks because the increased idle power drain of SATA would have a significant effect on the battery life (I think I previously worked out this could be around 15 minutes, so it makes sense).

John

 

i doubt that. that would be too expensive to have 2 different motherboards, just because they lost 15mins of power... redeveloping the motherboard, i think the board was initally designed as sata/pata compatible board.. as said my HDDs report as SATA under linux.

 

I've digging up this old thread because I have just discovered that there is now a 250GB IDE/PATA HDD.

It's the Western Digital WD2500BEVE and it is available in various places including Komplett. This opens up the upgrade opportunities for notebooks such as the Q35 which have the PATA interface. WD seem to have noticed the market opportunity.

People with older notebooks should be forewarned that they may hit a 137GB ceiling but I think we are talking of several years old.

John