Aero harddisk upgrade list Ver. 2.4: (January 8, 1998) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This list is intended as an aid for Aero users who want to upgrade their harddisks in choosing the right one (of course, without any guarantees). Note that only 2.5 '' IDE or EIDE harddisks with heights of less than 12.7 mm fit into the Aero. Read also http://www.reed.edu/~pwilk/aero/aero.faq before upgrading your Aero. It helped me a lot. Please send any comments on (hopefully) successful (or unsuccessful) harddisk upgrades to Christian Rausch (crausch@physik.tu-muenchen.de). I will add them to this list as soon as possible. If you have time, then please check the performance of your harddisk with cthdben.exe from the German c't magazine. It can be obtained via ftp ftp://ftp.ix.de/pub/ct/pci/cthdben.zip and reports the weighted average and the minimum/maximum transfer rate of your harddisk. Note that you should use plain MSDOS (no emm386 loaded, no smartdrv or other caches loaded) and your disk should be as unfragmented as possible to get meaningful results. It would be best to run this program right after installation of your new disk. Please tell me the min/max and avg transfer rates of your disk then. I will add them to this list also. NEW: The cthdben harddisk benchmark program is now also available from http://www.uni-passau.de/~gebhard/aero/ftp/cthdben.zip together with an English translation from Markus Gebhard! xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx This hint is added by suggestion of Jean-Luc Chevillard : DO NOT FIDDLE AROUND WITH THE HARDDRIVE PARAMETERS (cylinders, heads, sectors) THAT ARE REPORTED BY THE SETUP DISK (e.g., v.1.12, Rev.B, generated from SP2054.EXE), EVEN IF THEY LOOK STRANGE (e.g., a cylinder count of 1). DO NOT ENTER THE HARDDRIVE PARAMETERS WRITTEN ON YOUR HARDDISK OR FROM YOUR HARDDISK MANUAL, IF YOU HAVE ONE. JUST ACCEPT THE REPORTED VALUES! xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Best regards, Christian ******************************************************************************* Quantum GLS85A, 84 MB (Compaq's original Aero 4/25 drive) cthdben transfer rate: weighted average = 623 kb/sec, max. 1058 kB/sec (measured by Christian Rausch ) Quantum Daytona 256, 721 cyl., 11 heads, 63 sectors (Compaq's original 4/33c harddrive) cthdben transfer rate: weighted average = 873.7 kB/sec, max. 1420.3 kB/sec (measured by Markus Gebhard ) Toshiba MK1824FCV, 353 MB, 682 cyls., 16 heads, 63 sectors (remarks see aero.faq) IBM DBOA2720, 720 MB, 12mm, 13ms, 1400 cyls., 16 heads, 63 sectors (upgraded by Bill Flynn , Peter Barrette , see aero.faq and Bob Geer ) Remark: According to Bill and Bob, this drive needs a master/slave jumper: the master jumper goes on the pin-pair nearest controller connection pins. Toshiba MK1926FCV, 814 MB (upgraded by Philip Lim and Bob Dyas ) Western Digital WDAL2540, 540 MB (upgraded by Kevin Stock ) cthdben transfer rate: weighted average = 602.2 kb/sec, max. 887.8 kB/sec (measured by Kevin Stock ) IBM DMCA 21440, 1.44 GB, 12.5mm, 700 cyls., 64 heads, 63 sectors (upgraded by Denis Cheong and Markus Gebhard ) cthdben transfer rate: min. 38.9 kb/sec, weighted average = 1062.6 kb/sec, max. 1804.5 kB/sec. (measured by Markus Gebhard ) Conner 340 MB (upgraded by Denis Cheong ) Seagate 170 MB (upgraded by Denis Cheong ) Toshiba MK1001MAV, 1 GB, 2098 cyls., 16 heads, 63 sectors (upgraded by Christian Rausch ) cthdben transfer rate: weighted average = 1055.4 kb/sec, max. 1666.7 kB/sec (measured by Christian Rausch ) Toshiba MK1002MAV, 1083 MB (upgraded by Werner Kuehnert ) Toshiba MK1301MAV, 1.3 GB, 2633 cyls., 16 heads, 63 sectors (upgraded by Thomas Ott and Guillo Kleinlein ) cthdben transfer rate: weighted average = 995.5 kb/sec, max. 1652.7 kB/sec. (measured by Thomas Ott ) Toshiba MK1003MAV, 1083 MB, 2098 cyls., 16 heads, 63 sectors (upgraded by Dieter Collischon ) cthdben transfer rate: weighted average = 1118,3 kB/sec, max. 1803.3 kB/sec. (measured by Dieter Collischon ) Toshiba MK2103MAV, 2.1 GB (upgraded by Javier Hernandez ) cthdben transfer rate: min = 40.8 kB/sec weighted average = 998.2 kB/sec max = 1617.3 kB/sec (measured by Javier Hernandez ) Quantum Europa 540AT, 518 MB (upgraded by Peter Barrette or ) cthdben transfer rate: min = 32.3 kB/sec weighted average = 885.4 kB/sec max = 1541.6 kB/sec (measured by Peter Barrette or ) QUANTUM EUROPA540A, 540 MB, 12.5 mm, 14 ms, 3800 rpm, 85 KB Cache cyl/hd/sec:1179/15/60, BIOS translation: 588/30/60 PWR: Standby 0.5 W, Idle 1.1 W, Read 2.3 W (upgraded by Karl-Heinz Wietzke ) cthdben transfer rate: min 34.4 kb/sec weighted average = 1074.5 kb/sec max. 1712.1 kb/sec (measured at the end of the first 240 MB Partition) (measured by Karl- Heinz Wietzke ) Toshiba MK1401, 1.4GB (succeeder of MK1301) (upgraded by Marc Barrera, and Trent Douthat, ) cthdben transfer rate: Minimum: 43.2 kB/s Weighted average: 1079.1 kB/s Maximum: 1768.2 kB/s (measured by Trent Douthat, , he says that 100MB of his disk were already occupied before the test, but he defragmented the disk before running cthdben) Hitachi dk211a-54, 540 mb, 1047 cyl, 16 heads, 63 sectors (upgraded by jack f.h. wolff, ) price: 235.- DM cthdben transfer rate: min.= 26,6 kB/sec weighted average= 764,1 kB/sec max.= 1296,4 kB/sec (measured by jack f.h. wolff, ) HITACHI DK223A-11, 1079.7 Mb, (upgraded by Emilio Brambilla, ) cthdben 3.0 transfer rate: weighted average= 1044,9 kB/sec max.= 1813,6 kB/sec (measured by Emilio Brambilla, ) Remark from Emilio: (note that on my aero the old original 255 Mb Quantum Daytona scores only 769,1 and 1193.1, a lot less than Markus 873.7/1420.3) (PS new HITACHI HD is very silent too!!!) Seagate ST92130AG, 2.0 Gb, (upgraded by ) cthdben transfer rate: min.= 34.4 KB/s weighted average= 1172.7 KB/s max.= 1914.1 KB/s (measured by ) Remarks from : (I use the Seagate disk manager ver 7.1 to partition the St92130AG with the resulting disk space: Partition Status Type Mbytes System C: 1 A Pri DOS 2047 FAT 16 2 Ext DOS 8 DOS formated c: results in 2,146,631,680 bytes d: 8,200,192 bytes The cost? That's exactly HKD $2000 (which is approximately: USD $256.41) with installation cost! (of course not by Compaq..) ) ****************************************************************************