Replacement for failing HDD on VGN-TZ21VN

[Nutter_B]

Anyone have any experience of replacing the internal disk on a TZ21?

I have one in with classic signs of hard disk failure (can hear it's having trouble reading data and OS now fails to load - presumably corrupt files / read failure).

Unfortunately, what would normally be a fairly routine data recovery, HDD replacement and re-build / product recovery is a *little* more complicated.

It uses a relatively unusual 1.8" drive (Toshiba MK1011GAH).  What's more, a little research throws up a handfull of people who've attempted to replace it (at vastly higher than usual prices for standard 2.5" drives) with SSDs and have got nowhere after having paid out vast sums of money for a very unusual form factor SSD.

Hence my post... So, anyone had any experience or have any usefull input other than don't bother?

Cheers for any info anyone can provide...

I'll answer a couple of other peoples posts while I'm here to give something back to the community...

P.S. - Apparently, the life span of these drives is 5 years - begs the question Why did they decided to use an unusual type of drive?  OK, it's got low power consumption and fits in a nice small space, but come on Sony - HDDs fail over time (particularly ones fitted to laptops - I have a bag full of them to prove it) and unless you're going to fit a drive with a huge life expectancy surely you should considder availability of spares???

[Blencogo]

Actually, the 1.8 inch drive is very common - it is in almost every iPod ever made.  The only thing to watch is that there are two different interfaces and you need to make sure you get a Toshiba interfaced drive.

You may find this guide to replacing the HDD of a TZ useful!

http://www.insidemylaptop.com/disassemble-sony-vaio-tz-laptop-remove-hard-drive/

[Giorgi86]

There are different interfaces for the 1.8 inch drive, I have checked for a long time for what is the suitable SSD for my VGN-TZ21VN, and got the confimation that we should use 1.8 inch 40pin PATA ZIF SSD.

I finally went for a 120GB Renice K3E (native PATA) from Asiatechtrade. Going from a HDD to the K3E is taking a massive leap. Technical benchmarks are below, but in real-world everyday use it's like load times for apps, response in the Finder, saving and quitting apps are all a thing of the past. The difference is remarkable. Spotlight is instant, as is data handling in apps such as Yep <--- massive improvement handling an index of thousands of Word docs/PDFs.

The switch took just over half an hour.

Rudimentary benchmarks from cold boot:
Word 2011 - 3 secs (was something like 30 on the HDD)
Photoshop CS5 - 7 secs (looooong time previously)
Aperture 3 - 2 bounces (then it start's to open library)

Loading from RAM the above are halved. Most other apps are 'one bounce'.

Battery life: around 4 hours wifi surfing. I usually spend much of my time in Word/Excel with Wifi off which pushes this to 5 hours+.

Summary: A really worthwhile investment that gives a Sony Vaio with HDD more than a new lease of life.

Xbench Benchmarks

Renice K3E 1.8 ZIF SSD 120GB (E2)

Results 117.06
Xbench Version 1.3
Drive Type RENICE E2 RENICE E2
Disk Test 117.06
Sequential 98.85
Uncached Write 107.57 66.05 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 103.83 58.74 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 63.81 18.67 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 170.43 85.66 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 143.49
Uncached Write 124.03 13.13 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 60.41 19.34 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 1353.42 9.59 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 396.80 73.63 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Message was edited by: Giorgi86