can hp [compaq] nc400 laptop use a sata hard drive?

Question

was about to upgrade the stock 30gb and slower hd to a seagate momentus 7200.1 (model # st910021a) 100gb 7200 rpm hd with 8mb ofcache, but thought to ask this beforehand. also curious about if i should be concerned about heat by going to a faster, higher capacity hd. TIA & regards.

also curious if there is a a 7200rpm hd with greater than 100gb and/or > 8mb of cache?

wow, what a great forum... thanks for your rapid responses thus far!

as an fyi that I have already maxed out the RAM potential of this laptop to two kingston 512mb (ddr pc 2700 cl2.5 so-dimm, 333Mhz, 200 pin) after i discovered that a single 1gb ram card in one slot does not work. i hope the rookie hat is have on is not so obvious ;-)

concurrently, i am also looking to maximize the memory capacity and speed of the hd as i am interested in using the laptop for high res, stereophile qualiy digital recordings for cd and dvd mastering. however, looks like we have conflicting responses regarding the applicability of SATA hds... please clarify.

also wondering if it is possible and/or worthwhile to upgrade the video card or sound card of this laptop. TIA & regards!

Answer 1

i can understand your euphoria upgrading your laptop. but almost everybody upgrading a laptop forget a very important thing - the internal power module - that part isn't designed to power even more memory, bigger hard disks, external USB devices, PCMCIA cards a.s.o., sooner or later that internal power module will be fried.

specs of the nc4000 laptop
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/11606_div/11606_div.HTML

concerning your 2 questions:
for the hard disk i strongly recommend NOT to go for a 7200rpm disk, they need too much power. a 5400rpm disk is fast enough and you will hardly notice any difference compared with a 7200rpm disk. futhermore the above specs say the maximum size is 60GB, 5400rpm, but maybe with a BIOS upgrade it's possible to go to 80 or 100GB.
this laptop doesn't support SATA drives, it uses normal 2.5" IDE drives

the graphics and sound cards aren't upgradeable because they are integrated on the mainboard.

Answer 2

You currently have a SATA drive, so yes you could upgrade to the 100GB HD with the faster rpm. You will have to search to find out if their are bigger than 100GB, (I am positive there are).

If you want speed, I would upgrade your ram. As this will get you your best "bang for your buck!" And just buy a cheapo hard drive, with a bigger capacity if you need more space.

Here are your RAM specs: (based on the max your laptop can handle):

1024-MB 266-MHz SDRAM DDR SDRAM (512-MB SODIMMs in slots 1 and 2)

Answer 3

Hp Compaq nc 400 comes with normal hdd and it doesnt support sata drive, actually 30 GB is sufficient for installing windows xp and all new application software. To make your harddrive more free, you can use external harddisk storage units. You can buy USB HDD cases and Drives seperately and assemble them with more capacity.

Increasing the memmory will provide a little more perfromance

Answer 4

In addition to RAM, maintenance is also important. Do a "Defrag" of your hard drive. Update Windows and all of your utility programs. AVG Virus scan, Ad-Aware, Spy-bot, and then do it again in "Safe-Mode" to make certain that you've gotten everything off of the drive. You will see an increase in speed then!