Replacing the hard drive

[Linkiboy]

Well the Wind uses a normal 2.5" hard drive, but does anyone know if you have to open the entire case to open and remove it? Or is there a slot door you can just open to quickly replace drives?

This little PC would be great for movie watching on long trips and vacations, but we all know how quickly hard drive space magically disappears...

[servantsong]

Yes, you will need to open the entire back casing to replace the hard disk. It's SATA 1 80G. So, replacing a SATA 1 160G should not be a problem. While you are at it, you may also replace the memory by adding another 1G RAM. It's easy to do that

However, this voids your warranty.

I am going to do that, anyway

[Twisty]

Do SSDs have the same plug as a SATA notebook drive? For those who dont like the HDD in the Wind, they could use a SSD if they are interchangeable.

[jhoff80]

http://www.laptopmag.com/advice/how-...ard-drive.aspx

[Composer]

I've read about people switching the drives to an SSD in the event you chose to go that route. Just like a laptop you should be able to put whatever you want in it.

[tyrian]

Yeah as long as the SSD is a 2.5" you should be fine, it'd be suicide for SSD makers to make them incompatible. As for swapping out the hard drive, 9 screws?! Not that big a deal but I expected better Msi.

[jhoff80]

Originally Posted by tyrian

Yeah as long as the SSD is a 2.5" you should be fine, it'd be suicide for SSD makers to make them incompatible. As for swapping out the hard drive, 9 screws?! Not that big a deal but I expected better Msi.

I still want to see some what kind of battery life improvements swapping it out with an SSD will give. Supposedly the WD Scorpio drive it uses is pretty low power anyway, but still. We'll probably have to wait for release for that though.

[jhoff80]

Edit: Sorry, this post is very messy but has tons of information on SSDs. Basically, you really won't get all that much better battery life than the drive thats already in there, unless you get much lower performance.

Okay, so I found the specs for the WD Scorpio 80GB drive's power usage easy enough: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Produ...D=202#jump1414

Power Dissipation
Read/Write 2.50 Watts
Idle 0.85 Watts
Standby 0.25 Watts
Sleep 0.10 Watts

Then, I was looking at some of the lower cost SSDs (still SLC) and some of the higher end ones.

Mtron MSD-SATA3025 series (Sustained write, 80MB/s, sustained read, 100MB/s) http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.ph...1&limitstart=1

Power Consumption: 0.5W Idle, 2W Active

Not very much of an improvement there, though rocketdisk.com sells the 3025 series at $280 for 16GB, and $450 for 32GB. A little expensive compared to a HD, but relatively reasonable.


Then, there's the Mtron MSD-SATA6025 series which I believe has the same speeds (can't find that anywhere) http://www.anandtech.com/storage/sho...spx?i=3067&p=2

Power Draw Idle / Load .15W / .55W

Huuuuuge difference there, only problem is that the article says retail for these is $1500 for 32GB in the US (and it might possibly be a discontinued model because its not on the Mtron site).

The newer Mtron MSP-SATA7025 series, (90MB/s write / 120 MB/s read) is 0.5W idle, 2.7W Load, so WORSE than the WD hard drive already present (480 for 16 GB, 780 for 32GB).

There aren't any specs for power released about the upcoming 7500 series, but if its faster, it might be even worse than that.

Memoright also makes some high performance SSDs but again, 0.7W idle, 2.5W load. $845 for their 32GB though.

Ridata's SSD seems to use a max of 2.1W

Transcend's SLC ones seem to use 1.1 Watts. That one is $500 for 32 GB.... except its 22MB/s write/30 read.

[webbyboy]

SSD prices are too expensive, wait for it to drop further.

[staker]

I will probably put a 320gb scorpio in the wind.

[Composer]

Originally Posted by staker

I will probably put a 320gb scorpio in the wind.

That'd be really awesome actually, I wanna put random movies on the Wind and play them back on a tv thru the VGA port The bigger capacity the better.

[jhoff80]

Originally Posted by Composer

The bigger capacity the better.

And I thought they said size doesn't matter.

[SebMKd]

Wind = Good movie player. Then need lots of space to store lots of movies.
However, 10" screen = Good Xvid, DivX, MPG player. At ~1GB per movie, 80GB HDD should do it.
HDD movie playable is good. No SSD required. Now, SSD would be 10x cheaper then no question.

[webbyboy]

Originally Posted by SebMKd

Wind = Good movie player. Then need lots of space to store lots of movies.
However, 10" screen = Good Xvid, DivX, MPG player. At ~1GB per movie, 80GB HDD should do it.
HDD movie playable is good. No SSD required. Now, SSD would be 10x cheaper then no question.

Why good movie player? Reviews saying HD playback is not that smooth

[jhoff80]

Originally Posted by webbyboy

Why good movie player? Reviews saying HD playback is not that smooth

You probably could do just as well with a ripped DVD anyway, the screen isn't HD regardless.