HP Pavilion DV6000 Laptop Hard Drive

[apyankeefan]

Hey Guys..I have an HP Pavilion dv6000 with a 120GB hard drive in it.
I am starting to do a little music recording, and my hard drive isn't
fast enough. 7200 rpm's is the recommended speed for what I am trying
to do. Does anyone know if I can add a second hard drive to my laptop?
Or can I just use the one..I know I have the option of replacing the
existing one in the computer now..but it would be nice if I could just
add another! Thanks..any help is appreciated!

Allen

 

[kony]

Hey Guys..I have an HP Pavilion dv6000 with a 120GB hard drive in it.
I am starting to do a little music recording, and my hard drive isn't
fast enough.

What kind of recording? Something advanced with several
tracks or just 2 channel stereo/etc? You might benchmark
your drive to see what it's capable of.

7200 rpm's is the recommended speed for what I am trying
to do. Does anyone know if I can add a second hard drive to my laptop?
Or can I just use the one..I know I have the option of replacing the
existing one in the computer now..but it would be nice if I could just
add another! Thanks..any help is appreciated!

Allen

If the specs don't mention it, you probably can't add a
second hard drive. They don't generally have a 2nd bay for
one, though sometimes an optical drive caddy can be replaced
with one for a hard drive. Check your notebook manual, it
will tell you if this is the case. Otherwise it is most
likely you have to replace the current drive.

If you were trying to concurrently use the system for
something else while recording the music, that might be a
different problem of concurrent access to the HDD, and in
that case if you determine the data rate you need you might
compare that against what you could get from a USB external
drive, IF having it external is an option.

Also you don't mention the total size of the music files,
but if they'd fit on a USB thumbdrive (or SD flash card if
you had a slot, then it might be handier to keep in the
notebook all the time) at a reasonable price-point, that too
could be an option... though as I mentioned above we don't
know enough about your needs, nor what your recording
application is capable of or how much spare CPU time your
use allows, as it could even be possible to record to a
compressed format in realtime to reduce the data rate
written to the drive, a lossless compression format if it
needs to be. For example,
http://flac.sourceforge.net/

 

[Paul]

Hey Guys..I have an HP Pavilion dv6000 with a 120GB hard drive in it.
I am starting to do a little music recording, and my hard drive isn't
fast enough. 7200 rpm's is the recommended speed for what I am trying
to do. Does anyone know if I can add a second hard drive to my laptop?
Or can I just use the one..I know I have the option of replacing the
existing one in the computer now..but it would be nice if I could just
add another! Thanks..any help is appreciated!

Allen

You're in luck. You have an Expresscard slot.

In terms of transfer rate and performance, from top down, the
options would be ESATA, Firewire800, Firewire400, USB2, and there
is also Gigabit Ethernet to a NAS box, but that could be relatively
slow compared to local storage. (A lot of NAS boxes for home use,
suck.)

This plugs into your Expresscard slot, and gives two ESATA ports.
That interface standard, is the same one the disk drive uses. It
will run the disk at full rate, with none of the overheads of the
other standards. Chip used is SIL3132. AFAIK, the SIL3132 even
supports port multiplier boxes, so you could control more drives
with a $100 port multiplier box connected to this.

BYTECC BT- ECES2 SATAII ExpressCard 2 x SATA - Retail $27
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16839229001

This is an example of an external SATA hard drive enclosure.
It is hard to find enclosures that are kind to hard drives,
and Newegg doesn't have anything better than this one for
a SATA only enclosure. (SATA only, means that you're talking
directly to the drive, and not to an adapter chip inside the
enclosure.)

"PPA 1936 Aluminum 3.5" SATA External Enclosure - Retail" $24
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817155223

You can find a lot more enclosures, that offer both ESATA and
USB interfaces on the back. This one is an example. One person's
review claims 51.8MB/sec on the ESATA interface, so I don't know
if that is flowing through an internal adapter chip, or is
getting to access the drive directly. They measured the USB
option and got about 15MB/sec. Both numbers are a little on the
low side, where ESATA sustained should be media limited at
60-70MB/sec, and USB2 protocol overhead limited to around
the 30-35MB/sec mark.

Mapower Map-AE31FSCSJ-01-H-0 Aluminum 3.5" Black USB 2.0 & eSATA External $36
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817387029

Finding a SATA drive to put in the enclosure, should be relatively
painless.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148262

Paul

 

[CBFalconer]

What kind of recording? Something advanced with several
tracks or just 2 channel stereo/etc? You might benchmark
your drive to see what it's capable of.

If "other things" are the problem, you might consider a more
efficient OS. Installing Ubuntu is quick, free, and easy. Try
ubuntu.com.

 

[apyankeefan]

You're in luck. You have an Expresscard slot.

In terms of transfer rate and performance, from top down, the
options would be ESATA, Firewire800, Firewire400, USB2, and there
is also Gigabit Ethernet to a NAS box, but that could be relatively
slow compared to local storage. (A lot of NAS boxes for home use,
suck.)

This plugs into your Expresscard slot, and gives two ESATA ports.
That interface standard, is the same one the disk drive uses. It
will run the disk at full rate, with none of the overheads of the
other standards. Chip used is SIL3132. AFAIK, the SIL3132 even
supports port multiplier boxes, so you could control more drives
with a $100 port multiplier box connected to this.

BYTECC BT- ECES2 SATAII ExpressCard 2 x SATA - Retail $27http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16839229001

This is an example of an external SATA hard drive enclosure.
It is hard to find enclosures that are kind to hard drives,
and Newegg doesn't have anything better than this one for
a SATA only enclosure. (SATA only, means that you're talking
directly to the drive, and not to an adapter chip inside the
enclosure.)

"PPA 1936 Aluminum 3.5" SATA External Enclosure - Retail" $24http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817155223

You can find a lot more enclosures, that offer both ESATA and
USB interfaces on the back. This one is an example. One person's
review claims 51.8MB/sec on the ESATA interface, so I don't know
if that is flowing through an internal adapter chip, or is
getting to access the drive directly. They measured the USB
option and got about 15MB/sec. Both numbers are a little on the
low side, where ESATA sustained should be media limited at
60-70MB/sec, and USB2 protocol overhead limited to around
the 30-35MB/sec mark.

Mapower Map-AE31FSCSJ-01-H-0 Aluminum 3.5" Black USB 2.0 & eSATA External $36http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817387029

Finding a SATA drive to put in the enclosure, should be relatively
painless.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148262

Paul

Thanks for all the help..I really appreciate it! I'll look into it
some more..thanks again!

Allen

 

[kony]

If "other things" are the problem, you might consider a more
efficient OS. Installing Ubuntu is quick, free, and easy. Try
ubuntu.com.

Unfortunately with a laptop the drivers might be more of a
problem. It's also doubtful any OS change will matter so
long as the system isn't concurrently being used for
something else, as a singular task straight audio write to
the HDD is pretty much HDD limited unless there is some
compression of the audio data but on the other hand if the
HDD is the bottleneck then using some spare CPU cycles to
compress the data could be the ideal *free* solution to the
problem, as well as not taking up so much HDD space to store
it all.

 

[Plato]

Hey Guys..I have an HP Pavilion dv6000 with a 120GB hard drive in it.
I am starting to do a little music recording, and my hard drive isn't
fast enough. 7200 rpm's is the recommended speed for what I am trying
to do. Does anyone know if I can add a second hard drive to my laptop?
Or can I just use the one..I know I have the option of replacing the
existing one in the computer now..but it would be nice if I could just
add another! Thanks..any help is appreciated!

Laptops are ALWAYS slower than desktops.