Hi! As a kitchen table project I purchased a “scraptop” HP dv9000 from my local computer recycler (this model contains two separate drive bays). I rebuilt it from the motherboard up, put a WD5000BPKT-75PK4T0 in Bay 1, and am currently running XP Professional SP3 on it.
This laptop has no problems running/recognizing my 500GB, 7200rpm, SATA II drive. While I have partioned my existing drive for OS and data storage, I’d like to do a belt & suspenders approach and add a second HD in Bay 2 for backup purposes (not looking to do a RAID configuration). In looking at the forums dealing with the dv9000 it appears that the HP engineers, in their wisdom, put a physical limit in Bay 2 of either SATA I, or 1.5Gb/s. No one has been able to get a SATA II or 3.0Gb/s drive to work in Bay 2. Even drives that have self-reducing throughput are not recognized by the hardware, nor are drives with jumper configurations to reduce the throughput. Different drive/manufacturers’ products have been tried without success.
Since I’d like to stick with WD, here’s my question: What is the largest/fastest WD drive I can put into Bay 2, that is either a SATA I configuration, or has a native maximum throughput of 1.5Gb/s? If I’m limited to 5400rpm, so be it.
Any ideas/info will be appreciated!
