M11x R3 Hard Drive Question

Hello All!
Long time reader, first time poster, but I think I'm narrowing down my choices to the m11x R3 over the m14x for college. It just seems to me that the portability and battery life will be better for me than the little extra size & DVD drive.
The only "real" game i seem to ever keep going back to is Star Trek Armada II (with mods)...yes, i know, i am crazy...

Anyway, I was hoping y'all could tell me specifically who makes the 320GB hdd for the r3. I've heard its either a samsung or seagate, but dell doesn't really seem sure and I've had such horrible luck w/samsung drives I wanted to ask if one of you who ordered their r3 w/ the 320 could give me the model # of it and perhaps their impressions of it?

I'll probably ultimately switch it out for a SSD down the road, but it'll depend on scholarships and college tuition and all (you know how that goes...) so i figured it's good to do the research now.


Thanks in advance!!
MM

 

the HDD used varies: you'd have to actually open up the bottom panel, take out the HDD itself to find out.

if the HDD provided is not up to your requirements you can change it out to one more reliable.

 

True, of course, or just my computer>right click c: >properties>hardware.
i was kinda hoping that a few people here who might have either swapped them out for a SSD already or are just really tech savvy might want to chime in here... Dell says it's most likely going to be a samsung, or perhaps a seagate, but as we all have had our experiences with hard drives, models vary greatly in terms of reliability/performance/etc. (I'm looking at you Hitachi, with your G1 death stars...)

Thanks for your input though.

 

SSD does load faster though it means the OS needs to be tweaked, tuned, and slimmed down to make the SSD effective.

 

And see, that's what I don't get. After the appropriate amount of google searching, i was able to quickly determine, and confirm on multiple sites, Dell uses the samsung p810 SSD, but nowhere i could find any make/model # for the stock hdds. Now I could be going blind, or my google skills failing me, but the curiosity was peaked that I'm interested in knowing what dell crams into the m11x as default...
Not really interested in the SSD conversion process yet as waiting to secure funds for the process, and 320GB will suffice for now...assuming its any good....

 

this is what they used in the R2.

 

Yea, for the SSD, sure, I was able to find some pics for that too.
But can you find any of the 320gb?

 

Out of curiosity, have you ever tried it, or did you go straight for your corsair?

 

I had a 500gb toshiba HDD for a good 2-3 weeks before moving to SSD. windows loads much faster than on HDDs.

 

Yea, for sure the SSD's are much nicer than a regular hdd. Would love to have one, but gotta worry about school first.
After doing a little research, this seems to be the most likely samsung 320GB that dell would throw in there, but that's what I am looking to get answered...
Newegg.com - SAMSUNG Spinpoint MP4 HM320HJ 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

 

My M11x-R3 came with a Toshiba 320GB HDD (7200RPM, model number: MK3261GSY).

Hope that helps.

 

Thanks Glacius1! In all my chats with dell, they never mentioned toshibas as a possibility. Should I really be surprised the sales reps didn't know this??

Cheers!

 

FYI, I have an R3 which came with a 500GB Western Digital HDD (Scorpio Black). I know you were asking about the 320GB hard drives but WD also makes 320 GB versions as well. Just another brand to consider.

 

Thanks for the info CreepingDeath. I haven't used one of those personally, but have read good things about them. That might be worth the upgrade price...

Cheers,
MM

 

My 750GB in my R3 was a Seagate Momentus. Seagate Momentus 750GB 7200rpm Hard Drive Review

Don't buy the Samsung SSD from dell. It's not worth the price you are paying for it (500$ for 256gb? lol). For 400$ you can get a Crucial m4 256gb. You really don't even need a 256GB if you are using an external HD for music and such. A 120GB would run you ~220$. That'd be my recommendation.

 

Ok, so it seems like Dell uses pretty much everybody for hard drives. We've got Samsung, Toshiba, WD, Seagate, who's left?
Guess it's just a pot luck then.
Yea, $500 for their SSD seems ridiculous... Thanks for the info CanadianReaper7.
So now that you've had some time with the m11x, would you do anything different? (maybe the 14x?)

 

I don't think the price point for the SSD makes any sense whatsoever... (buying from Dell at least) - if you absolutely HAVE to have a SSD, then I'd get on newegg and save some cash.