Hard Drive Upgrade

TheBlackCat · Jul 5, 2006, 05:26 PM

My laptop is getting kind of old some I have been busy upgrading it lately. The next item on the list is a new hard drive. My current hard drive is a 4200 RPM 60GB 2.5" laptop hard drive (the brand is not important). My plan is to get a 100GB 7200RPM replacement. They don't currently make 7200 RPM 2.5" drives larger than 100GB as near as I can tell, so if I want a fast one this is the best I can do. I have a 7200 RPM 250 GB USB external, and I will put my current 60GB in a USB enclosure, so so I will have plenty of room for files that don't need as much speed. I thought it would be better to get a slightly lower capacity but much faster drive and then use slower external drives for files I do not use as often. Does this plan make sense? It is always possible that the faster times do not make that big a difference and I should instead focus on a much larger 5400 RPM drive (they go up to 160 GB for perpendicular recording hard drives). It only seems to increase the seek time and latency by about 1ms each according to the figures on the site (not that I can necessarily trust those in practice). It might even be better to wait for faster perpendicular recording drives to come out, I am not sure. So I am not sure my plan is necessarily the best one.

I am not going to get rid of my current hard drive, 60GB is nothing to scoff at and I need the enclosure anyway to transfer my files over to the new drive, so I might as well keep it.

I know RAM or a new processor will probably increase my performance more than a better hard drive, but my laptop is already maxed out on RAM and the new processor is a much more significant investment and a much more difficult upgrade operation so I am going to wait on it for a bit.

If this is a good plan, I have another question. Newegg has 3 different 7200 RPM 100 GB 2.5" hard drives:

HITACHI Travelstar E7K100 HTE721010G9AT00 (0A26617) 100GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache ATA-6 Notebook Hard Drive - OEM

Seagate Momentus 7200.1 ST910021A 100GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache ATA-6 Notebook Hard Drive - OEM

HITACHI Travelstar 7K100 HTS721010G9AT00 (0A25015) 100GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache ATA-6 Notebook Hard Drive - OEM

The toshiba has a 5 year warranty vs the hitachi 3 year, but has half a ms longer seek times and no published write times. Otherwise they seem pretty much identical to my untrainted eye. The $5 price difference is not an issue. I was wondering if anyone had any advice on which of these three hard drives I should pick.

I was also wondering if there is any real difference between 2.5" hard drive enclosures these days or if anything will do, or if there are any brands or features in particular you think I should focus on.

Lelisevis · Jul 5, 2006, 05:41 PM

Hi blackcat, due to my 3rd hdd failure this year both laptops and one 200gb desktop I also have recently been in the upgrade market. Couple of things to bare in mind.
Firstly a faster Hdd is gonna have an impact on your battery life, Ive found 5400rpm to be a perfect balance. It's noticeably quicker than 4200rpm and not noticeably slower than 7200rpm. I have both types and can't tell the difference.
Secondly Ive not seen any evidence to back this up so take it at face value but in something like a laptop HDD which is frequently moved around and bumped the faster the disk reads and writes the more scope for errors. Once again that may be total BS but in the fuzzy logic of my mind it seems to tie in with faster disks having larger caches.
Thirdly 5400rpm disks are cheaper. Yaaaaay

Oh and if you restore your laptop from a store type master disk swapping out the disk for anything different will make the disk invalid. Ive had that happen twice.

TheBlackCat · Jul 5, 2006, 05:44 PM

I never use my laptop without a power cable, so battery life is not a real concern for me. I also usually do not use it anywhere other than a desk, and I rarely move it (although I will probably have to start moving it between my apartment and my office starting this fall, but not while it is on). I am more concerned with speed and capacity than battery life or working under harsh conditions. I have a laptop more for the space savings than the need for portability.

I was not planning on using a restore disk, I was going to use a bios upgrade disc combined with a straight transfer of my files using Restrospect. I need to check retrospect, it may have an easy way of doing it.

Dyre Straits · Jul 5, 2006, 06:00 PM

I wonder if the hard drive failure of these laptops is due to excessive heat....which IS a major concern for most laptop users.

One highly....and VERY INEXPENSIVE....suggestion for laptop users is to get a baking cooling rack and place the laptop onto this rack. It then provides airflow beneath the laptop and thus provides better cooling.

Good luck on your upgrade/installation.