Dell Latitude D830 Media Bay SATA Compatible?

[rwinegar]

I found a media bay hard drive caddy that will accept a 7,200RPM SATA hard drive. My question is, is it worth the extra money compared to an IDE caddy? Will the Latitude D830 actually run the 7200 RPM drive at SATA speed or will it simply run at IDE speed? Will I gain anything by using the SATA caddy compared to an IDE caddy?

[Train]

eSata is faster than USB if you are talking external.
Internal bays, the read and write speed of the hdd are the factors you want to pay attention to.

IDE seems to have a 750 GB limit as that is the largest made, while SATA is now at 2 TB. So the internal connecion can be a limiter.

[rwinegar]

Thanks Train.

I may not have been clear. The media bay hard drive caddy fits into the laptop computer in the same cavity as does the CD/DVD RW drive or an extra 6 cell battery. It is not external. OEM media bay hard drive caddy is IDE. One manufacturer I know of makes a SATA caddy. But even though the SATA caddy will accept a SATA hard drive, will other connections in computer limit the SATA hard drive to IDE performance standards? The OEM internal hard drive is a 7,200RPM SATA. But Dell never produced an OEM media bay hard drive with SATA capability. They produced only IDE. I am wondering if I install a second SATA hard drive in this computer via the media bay hard drive caddy will I achieve SATA speeds or will other factors within the computer limit performance to IDE?

Has anyone out there tried this?

[Train]

Now one of those I have never dealt with.

It would cut into the battery life for sure. And 7200 is a lot faster than the 4200 most laptop hdds achieve. But for the life of me, I do not see a advantage for SATA over IDE even in a desktop. The hdd read and write speeds are almost identical.
Now faster RPM has always made a GOOD difference!

[photolady]

If the Media Bay is IDE then that's all you can insert in that slot.

[rwinegar]

Photolady:

If it was that simple I would not have posted this thread. Read the question.

SATA version - http://newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?...roducts_id=148

IDE version - http://cgi.ebay.com/Dell-Hard-Drive-...203155002r5125

Any difference in performance between IDE 5400RPM and SATA 7200RPM since both would plug into the same port in the computer? If you don't know please don't guess.

[photolady]

I was looking at specs at Dell. I didn't guess.

According to your model, the Dell specs include this about the media bay. All I said was if the connection inside, (which dell doesn't document) isn't SATA, then you cannot use SATA.

media bay — Supports a floppy drive, optical drives, a second battery, or a second hard drive

And where I found this info:

http://support.dell.com/support/edoc....htm#wp1203151

[rwinegar]

I GIVE UP!!

Mods please close this thread.

[jdc2000]

Thoughts:

Make sure you can return the item if it doesn't work with your laptop (for whatever reason).

The SATA version should work with your laptop, according to the model compatibility listing. While it does't say so, it appears that the bay contains whatever circuitry is needed to work with the Dell bay (for bot the PATA and SATA versions).

A 7200 RPM hard drive will noticeably speed up a laptop from my experience. It will also reduce the amount of time it can run on the battery as well, and will probably produce additional heat. The drive will spin at whatever speed it is designated as, the interface has nothing to do with that.

Perhaps the only thing you would gain by using a SATA versus a PATA caddy is compatibility with future drives. PATA drives are becoming harder to find.