Upgrading a new harddrive

Hi guys, thinking of upgrading my 5400rpm harddrive to a new FASTER harddrive. What is the faster and best harddrive for a laptop.

I think my studio 15 uses a ATA harddrive. Whats the difference between ATA and SATA and will SATA fit in my laptop.

Thanks guys

 

I believe your Studio 15 uses a SATA interface hard drive. Depending on your needs, a 500gb 5400rpm will give you the most capacity while a 320gb 7200rpm will give you the fastest performance (but not by much compared to the 500gb 5400rpm due to a lower platter density).

 

the Studio 15 is a SATA based laptop.
The three fastest drives you can get are these:
1) 500gb 7200rpm (seagate momentus is the only one at this point)
2) 320gb 7200rpm (Hitachi 7K320/Seagate momentus 7200.3/WD3200BEJT)
3) 500gb 5400rpm (WD5000BEVT)

I have the 7K320's they are nice drives fast and quiet, but the 500gb 7200rpm drives are going to be faster. This is because they utilize two 250gb platters, whereas the 320gb drives have two 160gb platters.
The increase in data density means more data throughput and thus a faster drive.

So if you want the fastest mechanical harddrive, right now its the seagate 7200.4
I dont know of the reliability of the drive, a few nbr members have it. Hopefully it doesnt suffer the fate of seagates desktop drives, which have been utterly bad in the last few months.

K-TRON

 

woah there is 500gb 7200rpm model? O.O

 

I’m surprised that know one has given you a correct answer

Look for a SSD hard drive, that is if you want the fastest

There are lots of posts here on that very subject

I have 3 different notebooks that are using solid state drives


Alex

 

Woah again

I didn't even know they existed

 

You get more bang for the buck on those Hitachis 7K320 drives cheaply at newegg. 500gb 7.2k are expensive right now is not affordable at this moment.

 

eh?


The new 500GB 7200rpm cost exactly the same as the usual 320GB 7200rpm drives. Do the math yourself and see that the price is the same per GB!

 

Wish I could get newegg where I live

Here it is hard to find a 7K320 let alone a 500gig laptop drive
backward place

 

How much are you paying for each? I've seen 320GB 7200RPM drives from $60-75 new, but 500GB 7200RPM drives only as low as $135 (double :O)

 

How is it going with the math?


Let's take newegg for example they have general good prices. Usualy around 80 to 90 bucks. Hitachi is the only one with rebate (down to $60), there are no 500GB 7200rpm with rebate, so we have to consider the cost without rebate, then the hitachi is $80, not like the other ones are, because the others are $89.

320GB/80 = you get 4GB per buck. (this is counted on $80 which is ONLY hitachi)
Seagate and WD has a cost of 3.6GB per buck.
500GB/135 = you get 3.7GB per buck.


So you can't say it's not affordable, if you compare seagate to seagate it's actually cheaper to buy the 500GB. And that's more fair to compare as it's from the same company and the seagate is much faster than the hitachi.

And don't blame it on anything else, because you gotta be realistic, and it's not realistic to compare a product which has rebate togheter with a product that doesn't have rebate, it's just not fair So the best thing to compare is on the same store with the same manufacturer.

 

Thanks guys apreciate it. SSD are wayyyyyyyyy to expensive. My budget is up to a 100.
Can you guys give me some links preferibly newegg of some good harddrives.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148336
(this is considered the fastest when it comes to sequential read/write - $89)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145228 (cheapest with mail in rebate - only $59)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136280 (wd3200bekt considered the fastest of them all with best accesstime - $89 though)

I get 71MB/s sequential read speeds with the WD and 15.1ms access times.
The seagate should be around 70-75MB/s and with 16.5ms.
And the hitachi is around 60-65MB/s with 16ms (i think).

They all are considered to be quiet, but the hitachi is the best buy for your money because of the $30 lower price.

 

okay which is better peformance wise, the 1st or 2nd?

Also is Serial ATA known as SATA.

Rep for you

EDIT; Can you explain harddrive specs, example its seek time which is better higher or lower, and so on. It would really help.

 

WD is the fastest overall AFAIK, also according to the majority of this forum. Some will say seagate but that's only for sequential transfersspeeds (and not acces times which does more than 2-3MB/s higher transferrates) and as a normal user you don't have the use for that as much as lower access times and still pretty high transferspeeds as the WD has.

Yes. SATA is short for Serial ATA


Seek/access times = lower is better

Transferspeeds (sequential/random write/reads) = higher is better

 

well, Alex, you didn't give a correct answer either. The OP asked for the fastest harddrive, not the fastest solid-state-drive. An SSD is NOT a HDD. So, an SSD Harddrive would be some kind of hybrid, a mix between SSD and HDD. There's only a few of these on the market at current, and none of them can boost the fastest speed, as that is held by the Intel SSDs for consumer SSDs, and the Seagte 7200.4 for consumer HDDs.

Anyway, you are correct in stating that SSDs are fastest, yet, they are not harddrives...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harddrive
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_state_drive

 

I stand corrected


I guess that my old habit of calling the thingy that stores information, a hard drive is out

Now that we have other affordable options for storage on our laptops and desktops I will have to stop using the old term hard drive for that thingy lol


Alex

 

It might not be fair to compare it with the rebate, but I've had no problems with getting those, even if it takes some time. If you get the rebate, then I don't see how it isn't realistic to compare them as that would be the cost to you. Realistically, the speed difference between different manufacturers is minimal, so I believe in going with the cheapest of the 3 (WD, Seagate, Hitachi) is the most reasonable.

So you pay double the price approximately for about 50% more space and a slight speed premium. If you think that the speed justifies the cost, then it's a reasonable decision.