Help with Other Places to install a hard drive on a laptop... My HD controller i

[Stonecomputers]

Hello,
I have an HP Pavilion DV4. The hard drive controller is toast (so HP tells me) I got it cheap from a friend of a friend. I have a few laptops and was going to use this for an internet spare like installing a small cloud OS like JoliCloud. I WILL NOT buy a new Motherboard... So what other options do I have for installing a hard drive? I have heard yes and no on using the extra mpcie to put an ssd drive there, but even if that works will it boot? I know I can use an external hard drive but I don't want a drive hanging off this computer I want to actually put a drive inside it... there is room in the old hard drive area and like I said I got an extra mpcie slot also I have the mini pcmcia slot or a sata port on the side or maybe the DVD rom slot... What can anyone think of????? It needs to be able to boot. INTERNAL HARD DISK DOES NOT EXIST OR WORK... Thank you

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[boiler1990]

Is the DVD drive a SATA drive? IF it is, you should be able to fit a laptop HDD in there to boot from. You'll have to install your OS via a USB disk or external DVD drive.

 

[ulysses35]

I wouldnt be so sure about using the DVD drive connector to use with a HDD - Im pretty sure the controller will be for both the HDD and DVD drive.

External HDD is not really fast enough to use as a boot disk... USB doesnt provide high enough transfer speeds.

If you cant find anyway to connect a HDD to the MPCIE bus then you could try and use flash or usb storage internally by connecting directly to an internal usb header.... not easy and again it will be slower than a proper HDD controller

 

[Stonecomputers]

Right now I have the system running totaly off the usb. The DVD rom has a real small connector but a normal one on the inside that is always on the Laptop DVD rom. The idea is to try and use the mini pcmcia or mini pci-e. How about ways to fix a HDD Controller? it has to be a chip I can solder.... right?