Which Laptop HD to get?

[IHAVEAQUESTION]

I haven't been kept up with HD evolution so I need to catch up with what most of you know already.

All I know is that I want to spend less than $100 and I want a 5400rpm. I will only consider 7200rpm if it offers significantly more performance. (I need to watch out for my battery life).

Thanks for any advice

 

[i game with a gateway]

Errr, 7200RPM vs. 5400RPM in battery life isn't that different. It'll only take a few minutes of your battery life. IMO, I'd go with Hitachi. Lenovo uses them (well they did) and I replaced my 4200RPM drive with a 7200RPM Hitachi drive. IMO, I'd avoid Toshiba. I've had nothing but problems with their laptop drives. Cache, not sure but going from 2MB to 8MB was pretty cool. SATA vs. ATA? Depends what your notebook takes. If it takes SATA, buy a SATA, if it takes ATA drive, buy that.

 

[IHAVEAQUESTION]

Hey, that's the longest nickname I've seen.

SATA and ATA...which is the superior technology?

 

[Commodus]

SATA is technically superior, but it arguably doesn't matter much - the drives can rarely peak beyond parallel ATA for very long.

As for drive speeds, they only play partly into the speed of access. A high-density 5400 RPM drive with 8MB of cache will beat a lower-density 7200 RPM drive with 2MB cache.

What you need depends on what you're doing. If you're going to be doing a lot of gaming or video editing, then 7200 RPM is important. But you're not really going to get much benefit listening to music or browsing the web. I'd rather have as much RAM as possible (usually 2GB in a laptop) to help overall performance.

 

[postmortemIA]

I have 5hr battery life and 7200 rpm drive. PATA drive=sign that that laptop is obsoleted.

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: IHAVEAQUESTION
Hey, that's the longest nickname I've seen.

SATA and ATA...which is the superior technology?

SATA would be better, but you don't really have a choice with a laptop hdd. You have to find out what kind of hdd connection your laptop uses and buy that type of drive.

 

[IHAVEAQUESTION]

thanks for replies.

I guess I need to start reading that small pamphlet called "manual"

 

[corkyg]

You really don't have a SATA/PATA choice. However your laptop is configured is the way you must go. Only newer laptops have SATA - and they will not take PATA - no connectors. Laptop HDD caddys/sleds/carriers are all very proprietary and only can connect to specified HDDs.

 

[fbrdphreak]

*7200RPM vs 5400RPM makes little to no difference in battery life
*Modern 5400RPM drives perform closely to 7200RPM except in raw transfer speed; normal usage "feels" very similar, if you need capacity or value go for the 5400RPM
*PATA or SATA is entirely determined by your laptop, no performance benefit to either; SATA can have better power management implemented depending on platform (PATA does not mean obsolete)
*Hitachi and Seagate are your best bet. Hitachi is a little cheaper, but louder & 3 year warranty. Seagate has 5 year warranty and is quieter. Performance is very comparable, Hitachi edges out in some cases.

 

[IHAVEAQUESTION]

Ok, while I was comparing drives at newegg, I came across ATA serie-150 and ATA-6. What's the difference? Looks like ATA-6 is a bit more expensive.

Oh...forgot to mention that I prefer quieter HD. How does western digital compare to others? On newegg, it mentions about the whisper technology on WD hard drive which supposely makes it super quiet...mmm.

 

[fbrdphreak]

ATA 150 is probably SATA, but if you google the exact model number you should be able to find out for sure. ATA-6 is PATA.

If you prefer quiet, go Seagate or Fujitsu. Fujitsu is a little quieter than Seagate, but Seagate has better performance and warranty.

Personally, I wouldn't go WD. Their drives just don't perform on par with other models. Noise is about the same as Seagate.
http://www.laptoplogic.com/reviews/detail.php?id=92
http://www.laptoplogic.com/reviews/detail.php?id=104

 

[pkme2]

I use 7K60s for my laptop and anything else as external USB drives.

Just got another 7K60 off eBay. This time a hdd pull for $68 shipped.