notebook SATA drives?

[Andrew Hamilton]

Do 2.5" SATA drives have the same interface as 3.5" drives?

If you want to upgrade your notebook's hard drive, and the notebook
does not have a second drive bay, how do you do it?

Thanks

-AH

 

[mscotgrove]

Do 2.5" SATA drives have the same interface as 3.5" drives?

Yes

If you want to upgrade your notebook's hard drive, and the notebook
does not have a second drive bay, how do you do it?

External USB enclosure

 

[Arno Wagner]

Yes

External USB enclosure

Andrew:
Another consideration would be to purchase an ExpressCard with an eSATA port
so that you could connect a SATA external HDD to that device. See, for
example, http://www.meritline.com/1x-e-sata2-port-pcmcia-expresscard.htm

This assumes, of course, that your notebook is equipped with an ExpressCard
slot. If it has the older CardBus (PCMCIA) slot then you would need the
latter type of device. They come with both a "normal" SATA port as well as
an eSATA port. Do a Google search on "Cardbus with SATA port" for various
models.

The great advantage of the SATA interface over the USB interface is data
transfer speed. Considerably superior to USB. Also, (at least in theory)
with the ExpressCard device, the external SATA HDD connected to that device
is bootable assuming the drive contains a bootable OS obtained via a
disk-cloning program such as the Acronis or Casper programs. We're still
experimenting with that aspect. But we have never been able to achieve
"bootability" with the CardBus device.
Anna

There is one more advantage to eSATA: You can query the SMART attributes
and run SMART selftests. To me that is worth the extra cost of getting
combined USB+eSATA enclosures, with USB for conveniennce.

Arno