I’ve officially switched over to the IBM ThinkPad T41 and will get around to selling my Sony Z1A on eBay once the holidays are over. I know that might sound odd but I don’t want to get into a “I need it by the 25th!” issue, so I’ll hold off on it. Besides, it will give me a chance to make sure I got all the old bits off of it, before I restore it and send it away.
The thing that I’ve noticed is that I’m feeling a sense of “cleanliness” that I usually only feel after thoroughly cleaning a house… something about leveling a HD and rebuilding everything from the OS up seems to make me feel… good, in a clean way. Am I the only Geek that feels that on a clean install of your OS or am I still basking in post Return of the King goodness?
how much are you selling your vaio for?
It’s up for auction on eBay, at the moment, so whatever it goes for there…
I know what you mean, dude. I’ve recently become the proud owner of an 160GB SATA HD (moving up from the packed full o’ shit 20GB ATA) and had to do a clean install (w/ xp file transfer). I love watching this thing boot now, makes the geek in me giggle with glee. My wife doesn’t get it, she just shakes her head in disbelief.
ooOooo SATA, eh? How is that working for ya? I’ve had 4200, 5400 and 7200 drives and haven’t really noticed an increase in speed – usually just drive noise – and wondered if the SATA was peppy…
I think it’s pretty quick, I guess that’s all that matters, right? Vice City doesn’t lag nearly as much as it used to on my old drive. The reason I bought into technology this new in the first place was 1) I was still flying high from getting a 8x DVD burner for Christmas, and 2) I got a $100 gift card from work, I figured I’d splurge.
It’s a 7200rpm and I believe it’s carrying an 8MB buffer. I was coming from a WD 5400 20GB ATA100 drive, so for me the extra 50MB/sec, speed, and buffer size is pretty noticeable. I’m not sure how much difference one would see coming from ATA-133, but I guess it’s still cool for bragging rights. Once they up the transfer to 200MB/sec, I would say the mass migration will begin. I never got into SCSI, but from what I’ve heard it’s not going to take long for SATA to bury SCSI anyway.
What I got a kick out of was mounting a 40GB volume as a folder. I love it, no more drive letters. I heard XP could do that a while ago, but this was the first time I actually did it.
The weirdest thing about the drive…..the power plug is actually wider than the data plug. I did a double-take when I noticed it. It’s odd not seeing that 40 pin connector taking up 3/4 of the back of the drive. And as for noise, there really isn’t too much of a noticeable difference, but this is the first 7200rpm drive I’ve had. I always thought in the past, why spend the money, am I really going to notice an 1800rpm increase that much? Every now and then I hear a small gurgling, but only if there’s a whole lot of access to the drive.
I would recommend getting one if you come across a good deal somewhere.
BTW Cool site, it kicks ass. It’s nice to hear someone, other than myself, ranting about stuff for a change.
As, that’s some sweet stuff there. My motherboard has the ports for them but in “true Randy fashion” I bought a new 80GB drive about 4 days before SATA hit the streets in an affordable price. That’s normal. What I hate doing is upgrading my primary drive. I know products like Ghost will make a bit for bit copy but I still don’t “trust that”. That means another reinstall of XP and the rest of my apps, etc., so I’ve been holding off. I figure when all the new hardware comes out – new CPU socket, PCI+, DDR-2 – later this year, and I build a new machine again, I’ll go SATA too.
Yeah, I’ve seen the PDC preview of Longhorn do the no drive letters… bit of a learning curve that is, given how long we’ve had drive letters for… that will take some getting used to.
OT, I’m actually in a quandry about my notebook. It’s got a 40GB/5400 drive in it now and I wanna take that to either 60 or 80GB. What I don’t know is whether or not I wanna go to a 4200, 5400 or 7200. Obviously, 7200 would be faster but the current drive is sorta loud and runs a nice amount of heat, as in, I don’t want a hotter drive… so I’m debating that in my head right now :)