Faster HDD

[Sebby]

I'm just wondering if anyone's upgraded to a faster-rotating HDD in their FS (or similar-era) VAIO? I'm sure it's the slow 4,200rpm drive that causing sluggish performance.

[Sebby]

Anyone? :smileygrin:

[rich912]

Hi Sebby,

I can confirm that upgrading to a faster spindle speed will improve performance. I have replaced the original 4,200rpm drive with a Hitachi Travelstar 7200rpm. It has much faster access plus there is no noticeable increase in noise but temperature is marginally higher.

That said sluggish performance can be caused by a number of factors, for example, have you defragmented the hard drive recently and had a look at the services that are running (many of which you probably don’t need). Also increasing system RAM can have a significant effect on performance.

[Sebby]

Hi Rich,

Thanks for your reply.

I keep my computer very clean and tidy, and use Diskeeper 2007, which automatically defrags the hard drive on-the-fly.

I've just ordered a second 512MB RAM module to replace the 256MB module I still have, which'll leave me with a total 1GB RAM (instead of the 768MB that I have at present).

I've been wondering whether I should do the hard drive too; after all, I'm planning on keeping this notebook for quite a while longer, so would really like to get the most out of it (and possible get it running Vista). I just can't help thinking the hard drive is a major bottleneck.

I don't really want to put a 7,200rpm drive in as I think the heat will be bad for component life. I've been looking at the Seagate Momentus 5400.3 100GB. Does anyone have experience of this drive? It's supposed to offer almost 50% better performance than 4,200rpm drives, whilst consuming a similar amount of power.

[Sebby]

Okay guys, I decided to just go for it, so I ordered a Seagate Momentus 5400.3 100GB drive for under £50 delivered; hopefully I'll get a bit for the Toshiba currently in my VAIO, so it won't end up costing too much.

So, with this hard drive (which claims to be 50% faster than most 4,200rpm drive), coupled with 1GB RAM, who thinks it'll run Vista happily (with aero disabled)?

[Sebby]

New hard drive arrived today; hopefully the RAM will come before the weekend so I can do the upgrades then.

I've also ordered some compressed air to clean out the heatsink as the fan seems to be on too much.

I will post back with results.

[Sebby]

Hello from Vista! I couldn't wait until the weekend to do the upgrades. [:">]

I thought that before installing XP, I'd try Vista again. It is unbelievable how much faster Vista, which was painfully slow before, is with 1GB RAM and the new Seagate hard drive. Startup time is very short (around 45 seconds) and there's no more frantic hard disk activity and slow performance while it starts up; it's ready to go within seconds.

So, what I'm saying is that the 215S can most certainly run Vista with these upgrades, and run it really well. Incidentally, I disabled aero and transparency as I don't really want these features anyway, and this will provide a further boost to performance. I don't think the graphics card in this notebook is really up to those advanced features either. But like I say, I'm not bothered for them.

I'm going to go back to XP for the time being, but over the coming months, I'm going to strongly consider purchasing Vista.