Laptop HD advice

[kinetic]

Hi,

looking for tips on where to buy within Oz one of the following
replacement options for my trusty Dell laptop:

160.0 GB ATA/100 5400 RPM 9.5mm 12.5MS 8MB Cache
100.0 GB ATA/100 7200 RPM 9.5mm 10 MS 8MB Cache
80.0 GB ATA/100 5400 RPM 9.5mm 12 MS 8MB Cache
60.0 GB ATA/100 5400 RPM 9.5mm 12MS 8MB Cache
30.0 GB ATA/100 4200 RPM 9.5mm 12MS 2MB Cache
20.0 GB ATA/100 5400 RPM 9.5mm 16MS 2MB Cache

Current original is a Fujitsu 40Gb and a few sites recommend staying
at 5400rpm for the heat dissipation the lappy was designed for.
So basically the 80Gb or under? :shrug:
(Slot and caddy mounted in the side of the laptop btw)

Thoughts and advice would be appreciated.
cheers,

Steve

[snowyskiesau]

I've always had good service from EYO (http://www.eyo.com.au). I've bought all my computer stuff from them for the last 15 years or so
They carry a wide range or 2.5" disks at competitive prices..

[mithrandir]

For about a year I've have a 320Gb 5400rpm SATA laptop drive (about $140) in an external USB SATA case (about $30). It doesn't get particularly hot. The 3.5" SATA in it's USB case gets a lot hotter.

Have you considered doing the same and only keeping the o/s and programs on the internal disk??

The 7200s are a bit warmer than 5400s but not a huge amount.

To an extent it comes down to how much space you really need, and how fast you want it to be. And how much you are prepared to spend.

SSD blindingly fast.
7200rpm quick but a bit warmer
5400rpm speed ok
4200rpm slow but quiet and cooler

But you should also remember laptops are easier to steal and subject to many more knocks, so every Gb of disk needs to be backed up somewhere.

[RB]

I use EYO as well, very happy with them.

:)

[kinetic]

Yes, I'd definitely do that Andrew BUT my older laptop only has 1 x
USB 1.0 port. Even the backup process done a few weeks back which
saved me from disaster was very slow.


Thanks for the tips about EYO guys, I will look them up:thumbsup:, cheers!

Steve

[floyd_2]

If your lappie has a pcmcia slot, you could pop a usb2.0 card in there if you wanted to head down the USB external drive path. Seagate sells 1TB 7200RPM external USB drives for about $150 now (although they never seem to let on how much cache is on the drive). I have one of the Seagate external drives and use it on a laptop for music production and it works like a gem.

If you need to replace the internal drive in your laptop, rather than adding more space, then 7200RPM will probably give you a performance improvement.

Dean

[kinetic]

Dean,

unfortunately this laptop never did like a USB 2.0 card in it's
PCMCIA slot. I went down that path a few years back and had no
success getting stuff to work. I didn't shell out more money on another
card just to check if it was the card though...

As far as SATA drives....and my original list..
This one at EYO says it is SATA 150.
http://www.eyo.com.au/prod_E-HM160HI_proddesc_2.5_Samsung_160GB_ SATA_5400rpm_8MB_Cache_HM160HI.html
Is that compatible with ATA-100?
My 40 GB Fujitsu has a very fine pin header with 2 rows of
22 pins:shrug:

Steve

[mithrandir]

Is that the drive or the carrier it is in? With that many pins a drive would be a IDE, not SATA.
The age of the laptop - only having one USB1 port makes it fairly old - makes it unlikely that it takes SATA drives.

[kinetic]

Yep Andrew it's quite old but a search today by model etc gave me this
suggested list for a Dell Latitude C610:
http://www.drivesolutions.com/cgi-bin/shop/ug2store.cgi?command=listitems&kind=dll&pos=0&type=itemid&itemid=dll86

I cut and pasted that suggested (non-caddy) list.

The HD plugs in from the side using not quite a caddy as such, more just
a cover plate which you use to pull out the HD.
The HD has the 44 pin header and is a Fujitsu MHT2040AT
That brings up that it is ATA-100 drive...:shrug: I see , so it's not
SATA!

Steve

[mithrandir]

Then I won't go so far as to say say you are pushing the proverbial up hill, but you probably won't get a lot of choice in larger drives. Quick search:

Techbuy have a few listed - Samsung 160G, Western Digital 160G/250G
i-store have the same WD
eyo have a couple of WD - 250G/320G

[kinetic]

Thanks so much for the help Andrew.
I did a complete backup (.bkf) last night to an external HD via the
USB 1.0 port.....reallly slow, took all night to create a 22G file, but I
think that's partly due to the internal HD starting to fail (original problem).

I have backed up the Windows / My Docs , user stuff to one file and also
everything else to a .bkf.

Only downside was some read errors allowed a few files to be skipped
in the process. Mostly non-important ones but one in particular that
I wanted to work was the inbox.dbx file. That was skipped.
I can still read/ access the inbox so I will try and save it manually before I
do the HD changeover.

Again, cheers for the help.

Steve

[toryglen-boy]

get a 5400rpm 250Gb EIDE drive, i think without special conditions, its about the biggest 2.2 ATA drive you can buy.

sorted!

[kustard]

I also recommend EYO, use them for all my work IT purchases.

[mithrandir]

Windows taking ages to do anything on a disk that's ever been close to full (within about 15%) is par for the course. Even on a disk with no hardware errors.

Defrag helps. SysInternals "pagedfrg" will clean up stuff Windows is incapable of doing.

Having twice as much disk as you are ever likely to need is the best answer.

RAID (not RAID0) is the hardware failure solution, but not many laptops support it.