topic Upgrading FE21B hard drive - any issues? in PCs & Accessories

Upgrading FE21B hard drive - any issues?

Not_At_Home — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 11:40:00 GMT

Hi all

I want to upgrade my FE21B's hard drive to one with a higher capacity. Does anyone know whether I can install a drive with >137GB capacity (I'm thinking of 250GB) as I've heard that this can be a problem sometimes. I'm using BIOS version R0130J3, which I think is the latest.

I'm also considering buying a drive running at 7200RPM and with 16MB cache instead of the 5200RPM/8GB that comes as standard. I assume that a faster drive would run a bit hotter and drain the battery more quickly but are there likely to be any other problems/issues with the speed or cache that I should be aware of?

I'd appreciate any help or advice.

Thanks.

Re: Upgrading FE21B hard drive - any issues?

chris-kay — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 21:14:20 GMT

My first advice is: scratch all relevant drivers from the recovery partition together. I did not do that and now I have to contact Sony support or rely on the mercy of someone here on the forum.

In my case Sony provides drivers for my new FW11ZU, but they are incomplete, and I demolished the recovery partition already as I thought I could rely on Sony...

So much for that...

Re: Upgrading FE21B hard drive - any issues?

Blencogo — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 22:42:35 GMT

Hi Not-At-Home and welcome.

You should be OK. I do not think there is any capacity restriction on SATA drives.

Check the physical height of the drive does not exceed 9.5mm as some high capacity 2.5 inch drives over 300GB are 12.7mm and won't fit.

The power consumption of 7200 rpm drives does not seem to be much more than the 5400 rpm models so heat should not be a problem.

Re: Upgrading FE21B hard drive - any issues?

Not_At_Home — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 20:55:30 GMT

Thanks Chris and Blencogo for your help and advice. I'll take the plunge and see how it goes!