Possible Stupid Question

Never owned a laptop and I really like my Alienware M11x R1, I want to upgrade the hardrive. I cant find specs on the dimensions I should shop for. How hard would it be to install? and is there a way to copy my windows install onto the new HDD? Thanks for any info

 

Most 2.5" HDD. Just make sure it isn't the rare 12mm kind. Most 2.5" HDD are 9.5mm, so you would be fine.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136546, this one is 9.5mm. any comments on whether it is a good buy? sale ends tomorrow and can anyone tell me about its battery consumption?

Or should i just shop for an external HDD so anything I download I can take anywhere?

 

It should draw the same power, due to it's relatively slow RPM (5400). It will fit.

As to the external HDD - that's upto you. I don't go around a lot, so I use external HDD (the small ones that don't need extra power bricks) for moving my data from place to place. If I was more mobile (if I were part of Sales, let's say), then I would probably get an internal drive.

 

This deal on slickdeals is what got me pondering. I may just buy this Newegg.com - Western Digital Elements 120GB USB 2.0 External Hard Drive WDBAAR1200ABK-NESN

its pretty portable because it needs no external power. I already filled my internal one with all the games I want to play on the M11x so i dont know if 120 external will help me much

 

If you see a need for it, buy it and use it. Otherwise, it's e-waste (IMO).

You could use it for backups or for transferring media content, though. Some uses will not be apparent until you get one (contradicts with what I just said, I know...).

 

I use a 120GB WD external for storage and I would highly recommend them. Mine has been fallen down the stairs and it still works fine! You should probably go for at least a 500GB one for some future proofing.

 

Internal vs. External Drive

Deciding between buying an internal hard drive vs. an external hard drive will depend on what you are looking to store on that drive. If you are going to be saving applications, games, etc on the drive, then you definitely want an internal drive. For the rest of the post, I will call the drive that you load your OS, application, games, etc as your "primary" drive, because you absolutely must have this drive for your system to operate, and this drive will be seeing the most activity.

An external drive will be far too slow for you to want to use for those purposes. If you are just storing content (videos, music, movies, etc) then an external drive will do just fine... the slower speed of an external drive will not affect the playback or retrieval of that kind of content. I will call this drive your "secondary" drive.


Choosing an Internal Drive - Speed and Performance

How important is speed and performance to you? If you care at all about speed and performance, then there are three categories of drives you want to look at: 7200rpm mechanical drives, a hybrid drive, and a Solid State Disk.

A 7200rpm hard drive is your traditional hard drive, except it spins at 7200rpm (the Western Digital Scorpio Blue that you linked only spins at 5400rpm). The faster 7200rpm spindle speed makes the drive faster overall. There is absolutely no reason that anybody should ever have less than a 7200rpm drive in their machine as their "primary" (internal) drive. You can get a nice 500GB 7200rpm hard drive for about $80.

A Solid State Disk (SSD) is the newest drive technology. The hallmark of an SSD is that it is unbelievably nosebleedingly crazy fast. Going from a 7200rpm mechanical hard drive to a Solid State Disk is like running on foot vs. racing in a Ferrari.. Incredibly fast, but also expensive. Expect to spend $200 - $250 for a 120GB SSD.

Then you have a hybrid drive. This is literally a combination of a mechanical 7200rpm drive, and a small (4GB) SSD drive that act in combination. The idea is that your most frequently used data gets stored on the very fast 4GB SSD memory, while the rest of your data gets stored on the slower 7200rpm mechanical hard drive platters. The end result is performance that is much better than a pure 7200rpm drive, but slower than a real SSD. Think of this as the "bicycle" of the group. You can get the Seagate Momentus XT 500GB hybrid drive for about $160. It is an incredibly popular drive with people on NotebookForums right now, because of the great price / performance balance that it has. If you can afford $160, then this is definitely the drive you should get.

And yes, there are ways to copy your current installation of Windows to a new hard drive. You would use a drive imaging tool like Acronis True Image to do this.

Choosing an External Drive - All About Storage Capacity

When you get an external drive, you will only want to store media and content on that drive (videos, photos, music, etc). You don't want to install any programs on an external drive, because running programs from that drive will be S-L-O-W. Programs should ALWAYS be installed on your primary (internal) drive.

After that, the only two real factors to buying an external drive are going to be storage capacity and convenience. Many "portable" external hard drives are really 2.5" laptop hard drives installed in an external drive enclosure, which means that they do not require external power. You can run them entirely off of the power you get from a USB port.

Beyond that, it's just a question of how much storage capacity you can afford. It is always cheaper and easier to buy MORE storage capacity than you think you need right now, than to try and get more storage down the road. Because of that, I would recommend you get at least a 250GB drive at the very minimum. Getting at least a 500GB drive would be ideal, and wouldn't really cost very much more than a 250GB drive.

 

I would recommend getting this Newegg.com - Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ Solid State Hybrid Drive -Bare Drive.
It's what I have in my m11x and it's AMAZING!

 

Absolutely correct. The Seagate Momentus XT is really the minimum that people should be considering, if they care about performance.

 

Will installing another hdd to the m11x void the warranty on it??

 

No Step-by-step

 

Got 1 of these for my baby & picked up a external hd case for the drive that was in the m11 .