I want to warn you all before you make the same stupid mistake as I did….

The HITACHI C4K60 SLIM 60GB doesn’t fit in my Sony PCG-TR1MP. It connects with a ‘ZIF’ connector instead of a normal IDE one.

So for everybody that is going to use this superguide (I really felt very confortable and happy before I discovered the strange connector :oops:), be sure to order the NON-SLIM C4K60!!!

By the way, my old harddrive still works, I only have to hit the startbutton 10-20 times before it starts rotating! I worked with this pc almost every day since end 2003. Not too bad I thought.

Good luck all!
Martine

[quote author=“postm”]I want to warn you all before you make the same stupid mistake as I did….

I’ve edited the original post to warn about that - many thanks.

Chris

This surely is a great post, thanks for that. I’ve been very satisfied with my TR3-P/japanese for almost three years now. Lately the harddisk has been causing lot of trouble and finally stopped working with horrible sound. So I’m pretty sure it’s time for me too to replace it.

Does anyone have experience for changing TR-series harddrive that is bought from Japan? I hope they are identical to ones common on this site, except the kayboard layout and the OS language. According to BIOS my HD is Hitachi so I’m going for 40GB or 60GB of C4K60(yes, has to be non-slim), but it’s so silly that for the same price of 40GB you could get 300GB HD for desktop, but I guess it’s useless to complain about it. Ours is so silent and light weight, right? :wink:

[quote author=“Ogis81”]Does anyone have experience for changing TR-series harddrive that is bought from Japan?

No, but i will within the next weeks. My VAIO is from japan, too. And my HDD is in bad condition as well. So I ordered 40GB Toshiba-HDD via eBay. But it’s the worst ebay-seller ever. I’m still waiting for my 115 Euro-Device.
My Device is from Toshiba (MK4004GAH) I replace it with MK4006GAH.

I’ll post some experiences after opening my TR for the first time!

Hi,

I found two MK8007GAH on chinese EBAY.

Date of offer: 11/20/06:

http://cgi.ebay.de/IBMx60-SONYtx17-1-8-80G-MK8007GAH_W0QQitemZ280044220140QQihZ018QQcategoryZ95402QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem

they are about 150 Euro /178 Euro including shipping without import tax. As they are in Germany not availible at all this seems pretty good…esp. compared to some offers on some websites in USA (650 US Dollar)

I ordered one but the guy in China is not too good in english but finally I figured out what he wants and I transfered the money by bank transfer. Now I am here an waiting for my baby.

It should word in my TR5MP…..

By the way. I bought a 160 GB Seagate harddisk yesterday for my PCG-Z1XMP. It´s a 1.5 Ghz Vaio. It just recognices 128 GB on the drive. Shit…

First try after disassembling the notebook I cloned the drive with auto-resize using Acronis Trueimage. The partitions form the old 60 GB drive (still fitted in the notebook) and the new 160 GB drive on a USB-IDE-Bridge copyed very well. Then I put the new drive in the Notebook an it booted very well seeing both partitions with the right size of 80 GB.

BUT…..thenI decided to install Mac OS X 1.4.7 for X86 on the harddrive as well. I tried to resize the partition size with Acronis Disk Director 10 Boot-CD and after freeing up about 35 GB of space it let me just add a new partition with 15 GB. Shit….the bios now did its job.
I put the HD out again and created a new partition in the previously created empty space. Worked very well. Then I MacOS was again seeing just 15 GB.

Mac-OS installed fine but wouldn´t start. The Bootloader was not working.
I installed Acronis Bootmanager and it saw both OS. Just WIn XP was to start. Mac OS refused every attempt. Bored from this I decided to
deleted the Mac-Partition with Windows Partitionmanager and created a new NTFS-Partition. As before expected, it had just 15 GB. But the windos did not want to start anymore. Every attempt like fixboot, fixmbr and so on did not work. Even reinstalling the currupted Bootmanager from Acronis failed.

The final work-around was to delete all data on the 160 GB drive and copy all data when the new big drive was fitted in the notebook. Of course I lost about 32 GB of space on the drive but everything works now. Booting, Multiboot, Partition-Resize, OS X and of course Windows XP.

I hope my TR will not make that much trouble.

Christoph

Sweety, nice job

I’m about to order my Hitachi HD for TR3/P. [TRAVELSTAR C4K60 40GB ATA6 1.8IN 4200RPM 2MB 08K1530 IN for 112 euros @ Finland]  Non-ZIF connector(Interface ATA-6) and non-slim model should do it, right?

This seems to be a good price. Order and let us know what “problems” you had and how you solved it.

Christoph

Is this still the case? I really would like to get something much larger than just 60gb, especially when I’m seeing several notebook hard drives coming out at like 120gb (can’t remember if they’re even Toshiba or Hitachi drives).

BTW, I have the Hitachi brand in my TR3A.

Is this still the case? I really would like to get something much larger than just 60gb, especially when I’m seeing several notebook hard drives coming out at like 120gb (can’t remember if they’re even Toshiba or Hitachi drives).

BTW, I have the Hitachi brand in my TR3A.

I afraid it is. I also tried to find bigger ones, but no. And in Finland I can’t get more than 40Gb versions. They have 60Gb only with SLIM-model, which according to this forum, isn’t supported. So I have to pay 112 euros to replace the broken 40Gb one - of course I wanted to update it to 60Gb or more at the same time…

So why is 60gb the biggest hard drive you can get for this? Is it because the BIOS doesn’t recognize anything bigger than that? If I can’t get a bigger hard drive I may consider selling this laptop. I love it but I need more space.

[quote author=“dustrho”]So why is 60gb the biggest hard drive you can get for this? Is it because the BIOS doesn’t recognize anything bigger than that? If I can’t get a bigger hard drive I may consider selling this laptop. I love it but I need more space.

I think the reasons are the physical size and the popularity of the HD among different manufacturers that causes the situation that there’s maybe not enough market for new models to be made with this technology.

Flash memory-based HDs are coming and those will replace the segment of small HDs eventually, but we just need to cope with the situation and the limitations. I’m really happy with my TR3, ‘cause I have a powerful Core 2 Duo desktop that I use for multimedia and gaming needs and also an external HD for TR3 if I need more storage on the road. 40Gb has been enough for my needs with laptop, but if the laptop is the main work machine for you then I understand the need for more HD capacity.  :wink:

[
Flash memory-based HDs are coming and those will replace the segment of small HDs eventually, but we just need to cope with the situation and the limitations. I’m really happy with my TR3, ‘cause I have a powerful Core 2 Duo desktop that I use for multimedia and gaming needs and also an external HD for TR3 if I need more storage on the road. 40Gb has been enough for my needs with laptop, but if the laptop is the main work machine for you then I understand the need for more HD capacity.  :wink:

Hi,

I use my TR5 primary for traveling purposes. I want some music, some movies and space for pictures of my digital camera und of course the storage of map-data.
I was running a N505x with a 2.5” HD with 80 GB. Its quite an old notebook but the disk in there was fast and quite.
And now I want the same storage on my TR….(I hope my HD will arrive tomorrow)

Christoph

i just installed an 80gb hdd for my tr2mp, the toshiba mk8007gah i believe. everythings is working perfectly fyi

How much did you pay and where did you buy it?

Christoph

i tracked it down on ebay and got it for 140 pounds. i think thats way under the retail price, but still pretty expensive. but its working great