E machines 6805/6807 questions and hard drive RPM poll - Page 3

I too have the Hitachi 4200RPM 8MB cache: IC25N060ATMR04-0 when I purchased the machine this morning at BB. Oh well, the machine still rocks...if there was any way to get the resoultion up to WSXGA, this machine would be unbeatable..and hell, it already kinda is

I upgraded to a gig of ram. It isn't too hard, long as you have a bit of manual dexterity, and the right tools.

I used a credit card to unlatch the far side of the sodimm, worked perfect. :-)

hehehe, 7200rpm drive, gig of ram, I'm not exactly running 'stock' anymore.

Wow - did the google / device manager thingy -

I have Hitchi DK23FA-60

60GB 5400rpm Hitachi/IBM TravelStar 2.5 Inch, 8Mb
Hitachi 60Gb, 2.5" Mobile Drive, 5400rpm, ATA100, 8Mb Cache, 9.5mm High

nice?

Them's the berries... enjoy (butts head into wall while looking at "retired" 4200 RPM drive in drawer!!) that speedy little sucker .

You lucky booger.

I had the 2mb cache 4200 rpm model. So I bought a 7200rpm 8mb unit and the old slow model is now an external backup in one of the small cases from NewEgg.com.

Tallan,
Might I suggest getting one of the VERY small external enclosures from Newegg (around 20 bucks). I got stuck with the same sucky 2mb/4200rpm drive as you and just upgraded to the 7200/8mb model

where did you get that info razor?

Razor,
I got the same exact hard drive. I hate to burst your bubble but when I googled it I found it to be 4200 rpm 2 mb cache.

The DK23FB-60 is the one that is 5400. If you got some other info let me know, but look at this link (russian site)

http://62.118.250.25/spectrum/hdd5.htm

thatch

Well, I am not sure what to believe now. I googled DK23FA-60, as rendered in my device manager for the drive, and came up with Many conflicting results.

However, I did hit this forum/thread, which yeilded some better info:

Excerpted from http://forums.anandtech.com/messagev...36&STARTPAGE=3

Using HD Tach 2.70:

I have an M6805 with the 4200 rpm Hitachi drive. It shows up under device manager as HITACHI_DK23FA-60. Using HD Tach 2.70 I got the following results:

Random Access Time: 19.6 ms
Read Burst Speed: 88.7 MB/s
Read Speed: max 31.3 MB/s, min 16.8 MB/s, avg 24.8 MB/s
CPU Utilization: 33.4% (wow, seems high)

Could someone post similar benchmark results for the 5400 rpm drive and (pretty please) the 7200 rpm 7K60 "upgrade" drive?

Random Access Time: 18.3 ms
Read Burst Speed: 90.3 MB/s
Read Speed: max 33.6 MB/s, min 17.4 MB/s, avg 25.8 MB/s
CPU Utilization: 37.2%
5400 RPM drive

That's quite interesting. I calculated the percentage of change from our values.

Performance change from 4200 rpm to 5400 rpm drive:
Random Access Time: -6.63%
Read Burst Speed: +1.80%
Read Speed: max +7.35%, min +3.57%, avg +4.03%
CPU Utilization: +11.4%

The 5400 rpm drive makes nice gains but uses a touche more CPU. The access time seems most significant because it is probably perceived as responsiveness more than any other factor. Assuming the improvement is linerar to a 7200 rpm drive, access time could then drop as low as 16.4 ms. Wonder if that is worth the required $226 over at zipzoomfly for the 7K60.

Hitachi 7k60(emachines m6805)

Random Access Time 16ms
Read Burst Speed 91.6MB/s
Read speed -
maximum 42.6MB/s
minimum 16.0MB/s
average 31.4MB/s

CPU utilization: 24.1%

Those numbers for the 7K60 are somewhat disappointing--I am expecting a 7K60 in tomorrow via UPS. Still, the gap between your 7K60 numbers and the 5400 rpm drive is quite large when compared to the 5400 vs. 4200 rpm drive...I think it is a worthwhile upgrade.

Hope that helps. And thanks for the heads up.

I can confirm your findings with the exception of the cache - everywhere I look I see 8mb for the model.

One link to rule them all

specs from hitachi:

http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/4k80/4k80.htm

You are right about the cache, im glad i was wrong about that one. of course i wish i was wrong about the speed too. oh well, notebook still rocks. interesting stuff on the hard drive performance. i think i will wait a bit before upgrading to 7200. have fun with the laptop razor.

thatch

hey guys, this laptop looks like a hell of a beast for the money, is the rebate still going on and also how is the battery life?

I don't know about the rebate - check BB & CC Web sites - but battery life on my 6807 wireless enabled surfing, e-mailing, no CD or DVD access is an honest 3 hours with the screen turned down two or three clicks. More than happy with that .

let me also say...

that the rebate I found on the 6805 was in the local store - heck for that matter their website didn't even mention them carrying the 6805 - just the 6807.

I would check locally if you have a chance.

Yes, I am very happy with the lappie thus far - mostly because I spent about half of what I was prepared to have to spend to get one of the others I was considering.

Still no deal pixels on mine...

RaZ

I've got a 4200 hitachi also...but not for long :]

ey i was wondering.... if i buy a new HDD and insert it in the laptop ,

1)how would i load my Old os and files back????
2) would a norton ghost image do???
3) would it automatically load everything and act like a bootable image on a new HDD ??
4) how would it work??? when i insert the cd with the norton ghost image on it what would happen????

thanks much

wazzup,

I just upgraded to one of those 50GB 7200 RPM 16MB buffer hard drives. I wanted to clone the whole drive (about 35GB) so I didn't want to make an image onto CD's. I bought a USB enclosure for the old drive but put the new one inside first to clone through the USB port.

1) I used PowerQuest Drive Image to do the cloning. The only obstacle I ran into was that Drive Image didn't want to clone to a smaller drive. I had to resize the old disk's partition so that it was smaller than 50GB. It won't be a problem if your new drive is bigger that your old one.

2) I tried Norton Ghost, but it just didn't want to work. It was supposed to work with USB, but it absolutely would NOT see the USB drive. I wasted a lot of time until I tried Drive Image. Drive Image will do all of the cloning in Windows; Ghost always wanted to boot into DOS to do it's thing.

3) After cloning and removing the new drive from the enclosure and installing it in the laptop, it took a few (maybe 30) seconds longer to boot for the FIRST time. After the first time it acts exactly like the original drive, only faster. Everything was the same; you wouldn't even know it was a new drive.

4) If you have an enclosure for the drive to directly clone, you can just let Drive Image make the clone. They are pretty cheap and it's a good place to put the original drive.

hmmmmmmmm but like if i wanna avoid using usb ports,etc......

Could i clone the entire old HDD by using norton ghost and then burn it to a CD ( which would be bootable ofcourse ) and then load the image on my new hdd????? is that how it would work..?? I dont wanna bother connecting the old drive to the usb port, etc , etc


Thanks for the reply

CHeers