HPdv9000-2 hard drives- questions

you can replace either drive no problem, dont know how they ship the dual drive setup if its raided or not. either way a solution still exists! so dont worry

Yes u must use SATA drives! problem is that they dont yet come in the sizes that pata drives do and (generally) the larger they are, the slower they are but not always.

Have u considered an external usb/firewire harddrive.
The are considerably cheaper and the sky is the limit as far as size, AND u can plug your drive into any computer to watch ur Porn errr video files!

I have a question, if I buy a dv9000t computer with only one hard drive, can i buy a second one of a newegg it'll be SATA obviously but would that work? Or is there some kind of module I need?

the drives come with no raid, just two drives like you would find in a desk top. I have 2x100gb drives for a total of 200 gb. the operating system is only on one of the drives, adn i dont see why you wouldnt be able to switch out the blank drive. you would just need to unscrew a small door on the bottom of the laptop to remove and replace it. shouldnt be to hard. They even label the doors os you know which pne is in which door.

So can I buy one drive from HP and then buy a second from Newegg?

you might just need to get a hard drive caddy is all.

How much would one of these Hard Drive Caddys cost? And where could I get one?

60$
from HP only
And if you purchase the laptop with only 1 drive it is required to install a 2nd drive regardless of were u buy it from. its just an adapter so that HP can force u to buy it and make a sh!t load of money on a part that costs less than 50 cents to make.

do you have a link to the part from HP? i just ordered my dv9000t with one 120gb drive so that i can upgrade to dual drives later when they come down in price a bit more. i know i'm gonna need this drive installation kit before i'll be able to upgrade so i want to get the caddy/connector adapter kit now. if you could help us out with a link it (since i can't seem to find it in the HP parts shop) i'm sure we'd all be appreciative.

Part Number: 434106-001
Hard Drive Mounting Kit

Be careful!!! the first one they sent me had the right sleeve(metal casing) but the plastic adapter to connect the data+power into the laptop was the wrong one!!! I had to jump thru many hoops, and many complaints to get the correct one sent out to me.

The plastic adapter for my unit plugs into the drive and adapts 90 degrees down into the laptop. The one they sent me was more like an extension that went str8 across. I didnt realize it was incorrect untill the final step of installation of putting the drive into the bay and it didnt go in correctly.....

So to be one the safe side, open up the drive bay that already contains a drive and verify/swap the platic adapter piece just to be sure. Otherwise by the time u get the hdd to go in it and find its the wrong adapter u'll be outside your return/complaint/u sent me the wrong part window.

Man it was such a pain too cuz all the paperwork had the right numbers, so HP insisted it was correct!!! except it wasnt!!!

Well they sent me out another one overnighted, got it, it was the correct part, installed and birds sang......

Be warned though, HP expects you to raid the drives or just use it as a secondary storage device because the bios has no option to boot from the 2nd hdd. I had to use a bootloader to be able to boot from the different drives....doh

I have to dv9000t
I purchased it with one 100G 7200rpm drive. I also purcchased the hard drive caddy (very important, as it has the proper connection to the motherboard). I then purchased a 160gb 2.5" sata drive from Newegg. It works great. The caddy comes with screws to attach the drive to the caddy. The caddy is held down by the screws that fasten the laptop's hard drive cover (just pub the cover on, and screw it down). The only problem with installing it was that you have to insert the two tabs on one side of the caddy into the slots in the computer (lets say "on the left"), and then push the caddy's connector ("on the right") directly down into the connector on the motherboard.

my girlfriend has a similar, albeit single hard drive, HP laptop so i know what the caddy and adapter look like and what it's function is. my only question is where did you buy the drive installation kit with the adapter? how about a price and link? if anyone has a link to where we could buy the kit for $60 as previously stated that would rock... thanks

ahh... didn't know about that site and i was having a lot of problems with the main HP parts page. turns out the kit is only $39 which is several times cheaper than i found it for on a few other sites. thanks.

- Hard drive mounting bracket kit (#434106-001) $39

Anyone know if I can put RAID in this thing! I just got it and it's sweet. I also want to use my Broadcom N card but it stops it in the bios and says it doesn't support it. ANy Ideas? I already updated the bios. Thanks

Yes u can raid it, the wireless card issue is interesting tho

What steps do you take to RAID it? I can't find the RAID creation screen like in AW's and so forth. Please tell and thanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm new to RAID. What are the benefits?

There is a program called Intel Matrix Storage Manager that u run from Windows presumably as I have not done it. Also I believe there are raid options in the bios that must be set Im pretty sure, the bios options dont make/maintain the raid just allow it to happen....