ssd sata 3 and HP dv9000 laptop

[oldec]

Hi,

I have an OCZ vertex 2 ssd drive on my laptop and was thinking of upgrading to the Agility 3. Would this work OK?

This is my first post so any help would be welcome.

[DMS]

SATA 3 drives are backwards compatible with SATA 2 ports (which I presume the DV9000 has) so there should not be any problems with getting it to work. That said, running a SATA 3 drive through a SATA 2 port will not see massive increases in speed over your Vertex 2. In fact, in real world performance terms, I'm not convinced you will notice much at all.

Here are some benchmarks for various SSDs as part of a review of the Agility 3. Bear in mind that the 240GB version will run a little faster than the 120GB so the results may not mean a great deal depending on what you go for. But, if you compare the Agility 3 running on a 3Gb/s port (SATA 2), the read results are barely an improvement over the F120 (which is very similar to the Vertex 2) although the write speeds are rather higher. Read speeds tend to be more important.

[DMS]

Having had a look at the specs for the DV9000, I'm now a bit confused. It seems to state that the HDD interface is ATA-7 - which is PATA/IDE. That would mean that a SATA drive is not compatible - but seeing as you are already running a Vertex 2 the specs must be wrong. How have you connected the Vertex? Is it just slotted in using the internal connectors or have you had to make any modifications?

[oldec]

Having had a look at the specs for the DV9000, I'm now a bit confused. It seems to state that the HDD interface is ATA-7 - which is PATA/IDE. That would mean that a SATA drive is not compatible - but seeing as you are already running a Vertex 2 the specs must be wrong. How have you connected the Vertex? Is it just slotted in using the internal connectors or have you had to make any modifications?

Thanks for the prompt reply.
The dv9000 was originally from the US and it had two sata drives which I have now removed and replaced with the one Vertex 2. The mainboard is a Quanta 30BD and I am running Windows 7 ultimate with 2gb RAM (Intel Core 2 T5500).

[DMS]

I'm struggling to find any specs for the Quanta board from which you need to ascertain what the HDD interface is. It will be SATA (seeing as you have installed a Vertex 2) but it could be SATA 1 or SATA 2 (it won't be SATA 3). If it is SATA 1, then I doubt there would be any performance increase going from a Vertex 2 to an Agility 3 since the Vertex will, in general, max out the interface.

Do you have any details or specs for the laptop? If not, could you try running the ATTO disc benchmark tool and it should be possible to gauge the interface from the results.

[oldec]

I'm struggling to find any specs for the Quanta board from which you need to ascertain what the HDD interface is. It will be SATA (seeing as you have installed a Vertex 2) but it could be SATA 1 or SATA 2 (it won't be SATA 3). If it is SATA 1, then I doubt there would be any performance increase going from a Vertex 2 to an Agility 3 since the Vertex will, in general, max out the interface.

Do you have any details or specs for the laptop? If not, could you try running the ATTO disc benchmark tool and it should be possible to gauge the interface from the results.

Ran the benchmark but now windows will not read .bmk file

[DMS]

Very strange. I've not got ATTO here and can't remember whether ATTO uses the .bmk file extension. Pre-Vista it was something to do with Windows help files.

Can you recall any of the results from the benchmark? What was the ball park figure for write/read maxing out?

[2o2o]

T5500 processor boards will only be sata 2 at best and the Vertex 2 drives work as good as the Vertex3/Agility3 drives on a sata2 interface. However if you are after the extra storage space anyway it isn't a bad investment they wont plummit in price for a while and have a good 6 years of life in them before they are old (very few PC components get a lifetime like that).

[oldec]

Very strange. I've not got ATTO here and can't remember whether ATTO uses the .bmk file extension. Pre-Vista it was something to do with Windows help files.

Can you recall any of the results from the benchmark? What was the ball park figure for write/read maxing out?

Just done the benchmark again, max write is 91460 and read is 129055.

[oldec]

Hi,

Thanks for info.