Gateway FX - P-7805u And SSD Upgrade

[shata]

Hello i was wondering what do i have to look for connector wise for ssd upgrade on this laptop i know very little about this stuff. I was wondering if someone can point me in the right direction on newegg for this laptop.
Thanks
mike

 

[frozenlead]

An SSD interface wise is no different than a hard disk. They make SSD's that are SATA and IDE. Here's a search of 2.5" drives...
http/www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2013240636+1421330854&Configurator=&Subcategory=636&description=&Ntk=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=

 

[shata]

Oh thanks for that link, i looked around and all i saw was the P-7805 gateway was a SATA Hardrive so is there different types like for desktops? I even looked on gateways website but they didn't specify The sata type.
I was also looking at this, http/www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136314

 

[frozenlead]

Generally the only difference between desktop drives and notebooks drives are:

1. Power requirements
2. Size
3. RPM

Obiviously notebook drives run on less juice than desktop disks. Also obviously, they're smaller. What may not be so obvious is that they run at slower speeds to conserve power - most desktop drives run at 7200RPM...in the notebook world, such speed is high performance...the mainstream notebook has a 5400RPM disk.

The interface is the same for SATA - you can plug a notebook SATA disk into a desktop. For IDE notebook drives, the pinout is the same config, but the connector is smaller, so you require an adapter to change the size (but there's no logic involved).

That disk is one of the few 500GB notebook models, and is fairly good.

 

[shata]

Alright thanks for the reply, i was just slightly confused/scared to by the wrong harddrive so this one and all others are just sata thats great.
thanks For the help.

 

[jmsigler2]

Your question is a bit dated now, but I thought I would still comment. I have a Gateway P-7805u laptop which came with the lower resolution screen (1440x900); early models released with the higher-end resolution screen (1920x1200 WUXGA).

My Gateway P-7805u FX came factory installed with one Seagate Momentus 7200.3 ST9320421AS 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA II (3.0Gb/s) drive. There are two drive bays on the underside of the computer; so you have a number of options.

Options:
1.) You can add an additional SATA drive which can be a Hard Disk Drive (HDD), a Solid State Drive (SSD), or a Hybrid Hard Drive (HHD) also known as a Hybrid Hard Disk Drive (H-HDD). This additional drive can be a different manufacturer, size/capacity, spin rate (RPM), cache size. It is unclear to me if the system is backward compatible to SATA I (1.5Gb/s) drives; otherwise, you should be fine.
2.) You can replace the existing drive with two larger capacity drives; with two drives, an option should become available in the BIOS to enable RAID 0/1 support. If RAID support is desired, drives should have the same form factor, redundant drives of the same manufacturer with the same capacity, same spin rate, same cache size, and even better same firmware. Drives with different RPM specifications or cache sizes can or will lead to unpredictable results. My understanding is that drives placed in a RAID configuration with different capacities will caused system to configure RAID to the smaller capacity of the two drives.

Recommendations:
1.) As of this writing, I have found that you can buy 7200rpm HDD drives in 500GB and 750GB capacities.
2.) You can find 10,000rpm HDD drives up to 500rpm capacities.
3.) You can find SSD drives up to 500GB capacities.
4.) You can find 7200rpm HHD/H-HDD drives up to 500GB capacities. Once you compare cost versus performance, you might find this choice the best as I did. This 7200rpm HHD drive can achieve greater performance than a 10,000rpm HHD.

Seagate Momentus XT (HHD) - 500GB HDD with 4GB SSD Adaptive (Cache) Memory (Estimated Price: $120.00 US)
http/www.google.com/products/catalog?q=Seagate+momentus+XT+500GB&um=1&ie=UTF-8&cid=13025157019588466692&ei=Mnk2TdfvHsPflgfGk9zOAg&sa=X&oi=product_catalog_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CF0Q8wIwAA#scoring=tp

References:
1. http/hubpages.com/hub/External-Harddrives-Disassembled
Spin Rates of drives vary from 4800, to 5400, to 7200, to 10,000 revolutions per minutes (RPM)
2. http/answermoz.com/open-question-gateway-p7805u-fx-value-for-money/
3. http/www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5210433&pagenumber=0&RSort=1&csid=ITD&recordsPerPage=10&body=REVIEWS
4. http/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_drive

 

[jmsigler2]

SSD Options for Gateway P-7805u FX

Some additional things to consider in looking at SSD hard drives:

Multicard Reader - Solid State Digital Memory Cards (ie. Secure Digital (SD) Cards)

This unit comes with a multicard reader. You can create something similar to the hybrid hard drive concept with the use of a digit memory card, for example an SD Card. If you research this you will discover that SD Memory Cards come in different sizes or capacities. These SD cards come in three capacity catagories, standard capacity, high capacity, an some new capacity formatted under Window 7. Check this out on Wikipedia. I have discovered that the SD port on this unit is at least a high capacity port. Standard Capacity cards are officially from 0 to 2GB and unofficially from 2 to 4GB. High Capacity SD cards are from 4GB to 32 GB. And, what I think is labeled as Extended Capacity SD cards are from 32GB to some very large number. Current market devices are at least to 64GB SD cards now. Another point is that these cards vary in speed. The high the memory speed the higher the cost, obviously. The concept of speed is in multiples like CD ROM drives. I believe this is tied to some media frame rate for video, possibly similar to CD or DVD ROM drives. Cards with a certain multiple are labeled as belonging to a certain class. My understanding is that class 4 may be the lowest class you want to look at for full motion video. The movie industry I believe places full motion video at 32 frames per second. I think class 4 cards are about 30 frames a second. So, I would go with class 5 or better. But, I am oblivious to what resolution screen this standard is tied to. So, I need more research and understanding myself. I believe I have heard of class 10 SD cards. These cards are usuable, of course, are additonal solid state hard drives. But, you can create a cache on them using Ready Boost. Go to properties for the drive and you will find the Ready Boost option in Windows. Set a cache size for the drive. This become adaptive program memory cache storage; in other words, this SD will works in parallel with your regular hard disk drives. The most often used programs will be stored in the cache. The access times and load times could be much faster than your regular hard drive. But, this is relative, depending on the performance of your regulars hard drives and the class of SD Card memory that you have. This concept is similar to what Seagate did with integrating SSD memory straight into the new Momentus XT drives. If you already true Hybrid Hard Drives or true full SSD drives, this path may be mute. The access time for solid state memory, as I have read, is about 1ms. SATA II hard drives are higher than this Some argue that if you have significant RAM in your computer, and you do not boot up very often most programs you use will already be in RAM. Large graphics programs or games may have code that extends beyond the capacity of your RAM, so that is where you might see the most benefit, in addition to quick cold program loads from disk.

Internal PCI-e Mini Card Slot

Two PCI-e Internal Mini Cards Slots are available in this unit. One is occupied by the Intel 5100 Wireless PCI-e which, as an Intel 4 Series card, can be upgraded to an Intel 5150 for broadband, but as well to the Intel 5300/5350 will a little extra work. The other slot is free. You could shoot for a bluetooth card, TV Card, Direct Wi-Fi (something from Intel similar to bluetooth), and an SSD hard drive. The SSD option here is very cool. You can use your two standard hard drive bays for regular hard drives, and get a third drive such as a 64GB SSD PCI-e internal mini card. I read that some PCI-e cards are half height cards and some are full height cards. My guess is that PCI-e internal mini cards would be full height mini cards. Even at 64GB of SSD memory as a hard drive, I would be very happy. But, at 128GB or 256GB, I would be overjoyed; and these are similar to capacities you can also find for the external PCI express port on this unit. The downside to USB to external USB drives and PCI Express Cards is that you can more easily lose them, and they are more prone to theft; but they are also more flexible to moving information from one computer to another. I also believe, but double-check, that you can modify the BIOS and choose to BOOT from an SSD device such as the PCI-e internal mini SSD card. My choice my be to put Linux on this card. I am sure that many versions of Linux or Unix could fly on this SSD disk. It could also make nice space for a nice high-speed Virtual Machine (VM), maybe two. In fact, running a server as a VM might end up being my path if I go this direction.

Anyway, I hope this enlightens you on the multitude of options you have available for adding SSD hard drive space or cache memory to your computer.

Have a great day!

James