maikelekiam

Hi there,

My Laptop's Hard Drive have crashed and I am looking on buying a new one. The problem is that I can not decide which one to buy because I dont know the maximum GB the motherboard accepts.

The laptop I've got is a Toshiba M45-S351 with :

* Intel Pentium® M processor 740 [1.73GHz, 2MB L2 cache,
533MHz FSB] (S351)
* Mobile Intel 915GM Express Chipset
* 512MB (Min)/2048MB (Max with two slots occupied)
PC2700 DDR333 SDRAM 2.5V SODIMM Memory modules
* 100GB (4200RPM), Enhanced IDE (ATA-5) hard disk drive; 9.5mm height

So, basicall, what I need to know is max GB , max RPM and max ATA that I can buy.

Thanks in advance

Maikelekiam

smz

First off the only question you possibly will have to ask and it may not be an issue is capacity and form factor. With that age of laptop being in the Centrino Pentium M time frame, you most certainly will have a PATA based drive. There has never been a limit as far as Speed. Meaning UDMA33 - UDMA133 will work no matter what and downgrade to the fastest speed your motherboard will recognize. Max RPM is also a non factor. 4200RPM is outright slow and you should not replace this drive with anything less than 5400RPM as the cost factor is no longer an issue. You will only find 4200RPM of extremely high capacity drives 200GB and up. As for 7200RPM, they've finally come down in price to be considered a definite choice for someone not in need of an abundance of HD space. I've had the luxury of testing and benchmarking all 3 modern day laptop drive speeds with 4200RPM showing pathetic results. No real room to grow in terms of increased speed where 5400RPM is very consistent and in some cases is as fast as a desktop drive from a computer several years old. As far as 7200RPM, the Dell I tested was equipped with a Hitachi 7200RPM SATA drive and it's results were identical to a SATA I desktop drive of about 1 year old technology. The only desktop solution that would exceed the laptop 7200RPM drives is a newly manufactured SATA II based desktop drive and even so, it does not destroy the competition between the two.

Last question was about motherboard capacity. I think you are past the issue where there was a problem but I will note it here in case it applies. Running XP on a machine with the "designed for xp" logo generally mean what I'm about to note is not applicable.

Over the years there have been many road blocks with capacities of hard drives on native bios releases with drive controllers built onto the motherboard. I won't go into history, only the last notable and sometimes today will still be an issue. If you are running Windows 2000, it is very important to make sure it meets the standard of the 48-bit LBA specs and it's fixable with a quick registry entry.

Nevertheless the cap is 137.6GB if applicable. I believe that is where 48-bit addressing takes over. In short, any drive 120GB and under is safe and sound with no worries. If you have a system that runs two drives and may exceed that 120GB, it does not apply to this config because a "single" drive must exceed the 137.6GB not a combined amount.

With that said, 160GB and up drives will be subject to this limitation in which many cases the manufacturer will release an updated bios that is flashable with your current drive or via floppy. Once this is done you can safely install a 160GB or high drive without an issue. I believe the cap on notebooks is 320GB at this time and there are no roadblocks between 160-320 that I know of.

This is not related to notebooks but for those reading this thread it may be worth pointing out. That if you are running a motherboard with a maker that offers horrible support, there is an easy way around the HD limit without worrying about the bios which is to acquire a PCI/PCI-E controller with PATA and/or SATA support. These cards all have their own bios controllers and do not adhere to anything in your motherboards bios. The only thing you set in your own bios is the boot order or hard drive priority and make sure it is either "bootable addin cards" or it might display the actually card or drive connected to the new card.

I haven't even looked up your laptop yet, but everything applies that is above regardless. I certainly would NOT buy a drive larger than 160GB till it's verified that there is support either stock or via bios upgrade. I will do a quick Google on your model number for and support docs and bios update information addressing this concern.

After Googling, I found Seagate had the best FAQ sheet regarding capacity issues. Please Visit this page by clicking the logo below and read throughly. If any additional questions arise, contact Toshiba as I can't get a straight answer from any of the results I've found. However, this page from Seagate looks very complex. Good Luck!



Have a good Day.
SMZ

__________________
{{{{ Scott - 25+ Years HW & SW Expertise - Dos, Linux, Mac OS X, & Windows }}}}
Abit IP35 / Core 2 Quad Q6600 / APC 650 UPS / Antec 900 ATX w/Antec Trio 550 PS
EVGA GeForce 8400GS w/256MB / 320GB Maxtor SATA II HD / 4GB Corsair CAS4 DDR2
HP Laser P1006 & PS 2610 AIO / D-Link DGL-4500 Router / Dell 24" LCD / Macbook Pro

Blue_Gene

When you do purchase your HD check out Newegg.com, a great site to purchase computer parts from.