NotebookForums.com › Forums › Notebook Manufacturers › Sony Forums › Sony Notebooks › PCG-FRV25 upgrade
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

PCG-FRV25 upgrade

post #1 of 10
11/17/08 at 6:39pm
Thread Starter 
My Sister-in-law has this Sony Laptop. 512 MB 40GB hard drive 2.6 GHZ

She wants it to "run faster"

I added memory to the max of 1 GB, and replaced the Hitachi 40GB HDD with a 160 GB Hitachi drive. I used a software package I have used before (Acronis True Image Home Edition) to move the data from old to new.

The performance of the new disk is awful. I was wondering if there are any known incompatibilities with newer disk drives and this older Sony laptop....

Thanks for your time

Woody
Reply
Reply
post #2 of 10
11/18/08 at 12:21pm
Tried to clean up strtup processes and services? Can you also expand the disk performance issues that you are having?

cheers ...
Reply
Reply
post #3 of 10
11/18/08 at 3:15pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by qhn View Post
Tried to clean up strtup processes and services? Can you also expand the disk performance issues that you are having?

cheers ...
I have not tried to change any of the start up processes or services yet. I was trying to get a feel for how the hardware changes have affected the base line system. That is when I ran across this disk performance issue. I am wondering if the HDTACH program I am using is valid, and so will be looking for a different tool. I was going to include a screen shot but am unable to attach it to this reply.

40 GB Hatichi
Random Access 19.9 MS
CPU Utilization 2% (+/- 2%)
Ave Read 20.5 MS
Burst 80.3 mb/s
Seq. read 26.6 14.2 MB/s depending on size of read

160 GB Hatichi

Random Access 25.8 (larger disk, so not un-reasonable)
CPU Utilization 0 % (+/- 2%)
Ave Read 1.3 MS
Burst 1.3 mb/s
Seq. read 1.3-1.6 MB/s depending on size of read


Woody
Reply
Reply
post #4 of 10
11/22/08 at 6:57pm
What are the RPMs on both drives?

cheers ...
Reply
Reply
post #5 of 10
11/23/08 at 5:24pm
Thread Starter 

drive speeds

Quote:
Originally Posted by qhn View Post
What are the RPMs on both drives?

cheers ...
old drive is 4200 new drive is 5400
Reply
Reply
post #6 of 10
11/24/08 at 2:53am
How about partitioning the new drive into 2, one up to 120, the rest for the other?

cheers ...
Reply
Reply
post #7 of 10
11/25/08 at 1:50pm
Thread Starter 

eureka I found it....

Quote:
Originally Posted by qhn View Post
How about partitioning the new drive into 2, one up to 120, the rest for the other?

cheers ...
The Acronis software I used to copy old--> New replicated the existing partitions, proportionally. the new disk is cut up into 3 'chunks'. an 18gb recovery partition, a "C" partition of about 60 GB and a "D" partition of about 75 GB.

It appears to me that windows is setting this drive to PIO mode. The drivers do this after encountering errors or time-outs. I just don't know what trouble it is having.

mike

Late Breaking News;

After I found that the DMA mode was stuck on PIO, I 'googled' that and found lots of good info about this well known problem (but not by me...<sigh>

http://wwwcsif.cs.ucdavis.edu/~leeey/a7a266/

is a great link to a new set of drivers for the ALI M5229 IDE chipset. After installing the latest BIOS form Sony, and this set of drivers, all is right in the world

The new drives is running at:

Seq write 32.35 MB/S (CPU 8%)
Seq Read 49.5 MB/s (CPU 4%)
BUff Write 72.71 MB/S (CPU 9%)
Buff read 87.81 MB/S (CPU 11%)
Rand. Read 42.0 MB/S (CPU 42%)

Random Access time is 17.7 average read 34.7 MB/S

YAYAYAYAYAYAYA

Mike
Reply
Reply
post #8 of 10
11/25/08 at 10:33pm
^° cool

cheers ...
Reply
Reply
post #9 of 10
2/26/09 at 1:23am
Hi Woody99,
First of all thanks for helpful post and links to the files. After going thru your post I decided to buy a larger disk 250GB WD2500BEVE for my old Sony PCG-FRV25 laptop. After installing, the BIOS reports the size of the HDD as 137GB (Not 250GB). I believe i have to update the BIOS. In your post you have mentioned "After installing the latest BIOS form Sony, and this set of drivers, all is right in the world". Do you have the same BIOS file ? How did you obtain from Sony ? You can send the BIOS file to sambeetm@yahoo.com.

Thanks,
Sambeet
Reply
Reply
post #10 of 10
2/26/09 at 12:29pm
Tried this?

http://esupport.sony.com/US/perl/swu...d=1025&os_id=7

cheers ...
Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Sony Notebooks
NotebookForums.com › Forums › Notebook Manufacturers › Sony Forums › Sony Notebooks › PCG-FRV25 upgrade