Which HDD to get?

I'm moments away from ordering a M1530 and I have the following hard drive choices:

250GB SATA Hard Drive (5400rpm) / Included in Price
250GB SATA Hard Drive (7200rpm) with Free Fall Sensor / +$200
320GB SATA Hard Drive (7200rpm) with Free Fall Sensor / +$250

1) Which is the fastest? (I've heard 5400 RPMs can be faster...)
2) Which is the quietest?
3) Are there any issues with heat or battery life?
4) Which one should I get? I will be using it for ms office, gaming, occasionally photoshop, itunes, and browsing the internet. I'm getting this laptop for college.

 

Ya it looks like you made 3 posts...

I have a 250GB 5400RPM and it's a Western Digital. It's fairly quiet and respectably fast. A 320GB 7200RPM is probably your best option depending on the price to upgrade. It should be faster then the 5400RPM. Sometimes larger capacity 5400RPM drives are faster then lower capacity 7200RPM drives. It all depends on the individual laptop model. I personally think Western Digital hard drives are the only way to go, I have about 6 of them between my different computers and have had great luck with all of them.

 

Well the extra 70 gigs won't be of much use, I don't expect to use that much space, and I won't be copying files too much, just accessing them.

I was more concerned with noise, heat and reliability.

 

Is the free fall sensor really that useful? I intend to back up my files at least weekly on an external drive.

Also will hard drive speed matter when using applications? Or just for accessing them and starting them?

 

Get the stock harddrive, cause you can buy the 7200 rpm 320gb drives from WD, Hitachi or Seagate for less than $180. Your best bet is getting the cheapest harddrive offered. Than when you get the laptop sell the harddrive and get say $50 from the sale and put that toward your new harddrive. Than you can go buy a 320gb 7200rpm drive and only pay a net of $130. This way you save money and get the fastest drive. It takes more effort, but I dont see the point in spending money for the 250gb 5400 drive which costs around $90 (included in price) and then having to pay $250 more to get the 320gb 7200 drive. Thats $340 for a $180 drive.

Get the cheapest one and then sell it to get the fastest drive.

K-TRON

 

You have already posted about this here

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=289907

Cross posting is not allowed on these forums and this issue has been forwarded to the moderator on call.

 

Get the standard, cheapest/free 1st option (250GB 5400RPM).

Get an external SATA enclosure, and use that drive as an external.

Buy the WD3200BEKT/WD3200BJKT or the Hitachi 7K320

EDIT: And don't open multiple threads

 

Sorry, I wasn't aware of that. Like I said I'm making the purchase in a few minutes, and only two people answered with conflicting responses. But I wasn't aware and it won't happen again.




I forgot to mention however that I'm getting a 4 year warranty on the laptop, so I don't think I can upgrade the drive myself...can I?

 

What Andy and K-T said, do not upgrade at those prices.

On a a second note. Depending on what you do the 250GB @5400 might be fine for you. When we start talking of computer things we talk of performance in milli, micro and nano seconds. Those very tight times mean for all may not be critical. Just thoughts? What is out now for the mainstream is faster than almost all available 2 years ago. And people were doing serious computing 2 years ago.

Edit: You can upgrade the HDD itself will not be covered by DeLL. It will be covered by HDD MFG or retailer. So you will have coverage at some level.

Also cheaper to upgrade RAM yourself in most cases. Same situation.

 

The After-Market HDDs won't be covered under the notebook manufacturer's warranty, but will be covered under the HDD manufacturer's warranty....
You can keep the original HDD as an external with a small OS partition on it, and whenever you would need to send the notebook under warranty, just install the original drive.

^ And for the tasks you stated, you really won't need a 7200RPM HDD..

 

The threads have been merged. Cross/double posting clutters up the forums so please don't do it.

 

Sorry about that.

 

I second Andy's suggestion of switching the stock hard drive out. What you will want to do is use imaging software and make a 1:1 copy of your stock drive to the other drive you bought. Then, switch out the hard drives. Then, if you ever need warranty repairs on it, just switch the hard drive back in and they'll never know.