> In Ireland we have a stock reply to strangers who stop us and ask for
> Directions: "You know, If I were you, I wouldn't start from here at
> all!"
Well, I never went to Ireland, but I lived for some
time in Boston and New England, where the Irish community
is quite developed, and I did not have a chance to hear this reply...
now of course when I was not working I was practicing my english
at the local Irish pubs, and usually I was asking about beer, not
directions, and the replies I was getting were full of insights :o)
> You have a Toshiba - right? Toshiba have expensive propietary
> components, so they can rip you off on spares. Knowing what disk you
> can put where requires a knowledge of the options on your Toshiba.
> Unless you can find a Toshiba dealer to break ranks, or talk too much,
> my advice is get a quote for getting ripped off. What does the dealer
> say will work, and how much?
I actually fearlessly opened my notebook and found out that the hard
disk is just a plain old 2.5 inches model. The only quirk is that there
is room for a hard disk whose height can be up to about 12
millimeters, so I guess I will go to the dealer with a ruler.
> Hard disks on an ide bus in general are backward compatible, i.e. mode
> 4 disks will run on mode 3, etc. So if your new disk supports fancy
> dma requests, and your bus doesn't, they won't fall out over that.
I was surprised when I learned that, for me IDE was just as
much incompatible as it could be (I'm just an SCSI freak and
clueless about IDE), and after getting answers from this list, I did a
check on some IDE FAQs to learn that and other things. So after
all IDE is not as bad as what I was thinking, which is a good surprise
for me. I was also happy to stand corrected about my
misconceptions.
> Heat
> is Watts. Watts = Volts x Amps on each supply rail, all added. That's
> easy.
Heat should be ok, or at least I hope so.
> I still say - let your dealer do the smoke test with your new hard disk
> ;-). It's safer and easier. But of course, nobody running Linux is
> interested in the easy safe option, are they ??:))
Well, feeling kinda adventurous these days... At a shop, they told
me they could do the test, but I had to leave the laptop during
one FULL day ! I just was not feeling like leaving my laptop
unattended (I believe I'm very maniac and/or paranoid), so I was
planning to do it on my own. And actually that may be a good
occasion to test the fire alarm of my building, or the temperature
behaviour of the magnesium boxing of the laptop...
At any rate, thanks to all the people who replied (I learned quite a few
things and revised my (unfounded) opinion of IDE),
Regards,
Laurent
PS: I found the following article on storagereview to be quite
instructive for me (actually explaining the IDE terminology and
its abuses), so I put the link if you are interested:
http://www.storagereview.com/guide/guide_ide_standards.html
