Silent HD upgrade for xps m1210

Hello all,

Anyone knows a good (and silent) HD upgrade to a xps m1210?
Is the Momentus 320gb (7200) a good choice?
The original one, that came with my XPS (hitachi, i think) it's too noisy. Even on idle...

 

Are SSDs within what you want? Though probably not since you mentioned the Momentus.

 

Im considering, but they're really expensive!
I think I could live with a 64gb one, using the old hard disk eventually with an external enclosure.
Are there some 64gb "not too expensive" and fast options?

 

I don't know of any models, but I'm gonna stay subscribed to this thread because I've been thinking of switching hard drives because my laptop is always on and it's on the table next to my bed, sometimes keeping me awake at night.. darn scheduled nightly defrag.

I read a thread somewhere that you could purchase one of those stuttering SSDs and then fix it by doing partition alignment, but I still can't remember which model it was...

 

just saw this:

http://www.elites.com/cms/index.php...sk=view&id=650&Itemid=27&limit=1&limitstart=3

Looks like that SSD performance is strongly related to the controller. The same Patriot SSD 32gb was from way faster (on an i7 desktop) to slower on a dell notebook... That's frustrating!

 

The cheapest, most reliable and fast SSD (if you have the 965 chipset, you might be capped at SATA-150 speeds anyways) at 64GB would be the Samsung 64GB SLC drive for $180-200 at www.geeks.com - though I'm not sure if they have any in stock ATM. Samsung uses there own controller, won't stutter and increase your battery life by a bit.

 

well, ok, but besides ssds. any other good low idle noise hd?

 

and btw, this one is what you're talking about?

http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=MMCRE64G5MPP&cat=HDD

 

Based on several user reports Hitachi 5K500.b is silent, fast and power efficient.

 

There's a little bit of quiet ticking when the heads move, but it is certainly among the quieter HDDs I have used and not like the pecking chicken noise I have sometime encountered. And the E6400 is good at showing up the noisy HDDs.

Samsung used to give a lot of emphasis on quietness. They may be an alternative.

John

 

That is the MLC rather than SLC variant but it is still a very good choice (especially at that price point). I have the 1.8" SLC variant of the same SSD and have been extremely satisfied by it (see the SSD effects link in my sig).

 

Congratulations for your post. Very detailed and informative.
But.. What's the difference between MLC and SLC?

... edit ...
got it: Multi-Level Cell vs single level cell

But why SLC is better?

 

For silent HDD go single platter, current largest is the Hitachi 5K500.B 250GB version.

 

To put it simply, SLC is more reliable (having been tested and used for over 30 years) compared to MLC and will have faster write speeds (comparing similar models) but at a higher cost.

http://www.edn.com/article-partner/CA6319917.html
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=223173

Since you prefer a HDD instead of the investment of a SSD (which is still quite costly), I second the choice mentioned above for the Hitachi 5K500.B - single platter 250GB for minimum noise, heat, etc. or if you need the capacity, the 500GB version.

 

Well, but the 64gb ssd MLC is not that costly. ~140 vs ~90 for the 5k500.b

Could not find the 250gb "single platter" version of Hitachi's on ebay.