Worth the money an HD upgrade?

Hi there

I have a three years old laptop. Its an Acer Aspire 1694 Wlmi. The hard drive is maybe a little slow. I always thought that it was 5400 RPM because Everest says so, but going to Seagate's homepage I've discovered that it's 4200 RPMs. That explains some things, BTW.

Well, I was wondering about upgrading to a Hitachi HTS722020K9SA00 (Travelstar 7K200) due to the intensive use that I do to the HD, but I don't know if it's a good idea because of the bottlenecks and so. My HD uses Ultra-ATA/100, and this one is Serial ATA/150. Is that going to be a problem?

Thanks for reading and I hope you can solve my doubts.


Regards

 

ATA/100 - Best HDD is the Samsung HM160C, or the WD2500BEVE.

Your notebook has the ICH6-M, so I guess you won't run into any LBA issues. And all OEM Seagates are 4200RPM, so the Samsung 160GB HM160C ( Review) should be a good upgrade (on par with the 7K200).

And SATA and IDE are two different interfaces. You can confirm that you have IDE/ATA-6, by looking up the specs of the HDD in Everest/HD Tune.

 

Thank you very much for the answer, Andy

Yes, I can confirm that I have ATA-6.

I'm reading that review and I'm very impressed with that Samsung HM160HC. I think I'm going for it.

Thanks again mate, you're very kind.

Regards

 

Your system had a IDE interface, so your best bet are either of the two drives Any mentioned.

In my review of the Hm160HC you will see comparisons between the samsung 160gb 5400rpm drive and other high density 5400rpm drives. The drive does beat out the fastest 7200rpm drives for the IDE/PATA/ATA interface, an so does the WD2500BEVE drive. Both are great solutions for upgrading your current drive. You will see a big difference in speed. Run hdtune on your current system, and compare the charts with the ones in my review, and you can see what the performance difference is.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=264209

K-TRON

 

The difference between those HD and my current one is almost 2 times better talking about average reading!

Here's the benchmark to my Seagate's HD from HD Tune: http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e99/Arioch33/Continuacion_01/hdtune.jpg

I'm pretty sure this really worth the money looking at the results of the benchs in your review.

Another question. Can I transfer my OS, drivers, etc from my actual HD to the new one? Because I don't have the Windows CD, it's inside the HD or in the Recovery Disks...

Thanks again!

 

Yeah, check out these two posts....

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=3787273&postcount=2
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=3385292&postcount=7

 

Oh, you've made my day. I can't give you enough thanks!

Thank you very much Andy and K-TRON!

 

Good luck with the install.

My harddrive I upgraded from was actually worse than your 100gb 4200rpm drive, and the difference in performance was like night and day. Its a great drive, and well worth the money.

K-TRON

 

Yeah you can't go wrong with the Samsung HM160HC. I've got it after K-tron's recommendation and my laptop feels very fast with it. It's also cooler and quieter than my previous Seagate 7K100.

I've posted PC Mark HDD test benchmarks between the two here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=270582

 

Thank you guys, I've ordered right now the Samsung HM160HC. It seems looking at benchmarks that it has better average reading even than my desktop's 7200 RPM SATA/300 HD.

Looks very promising, I'll post some benchs when it arrives.


Regards!

 

Hi again friends,

I'm having troubles with the new hard drive. I did all the steps you said but when i start the system with the new HD, after the Acer screen appears a Black screen with flashing cursor in the top left and never gets into Windows.

I don't know what to do now...Anyone can help?

 

uowh..looks like something went wrong during the cloning process.

Does the new HDD show up in the BIOS ?

 

Yes, it shows in the BIOS with its name and its serial number...

 

So you cloned the drive?

If you left the cd in the drive, than the system will hang. Remove the cd and go into the Bios and set the harddrive to be the first boot device.

K-TRON

 

Sure, I did that:

Step 1: Check your existing HDD to find out the interface type (PATA or SATA) DONE

Step 2: Buy a compatible HDD plus a suitable USB enclosure DONE

Step 3: Go to Acronis and download the trial version of TrueImage. Install and create the recovery CD. DONE

Step 4: Put the new HDD into the enclosure and connect to the computer DONE

Step 5: Boot the computer using the Acronis CD and then select the Clone option DONE

Step 6: Clone the old HDD onto the new one DONE

Step 7: Take the old HDD out of the computer and replace with the new one from the enclosure DONE

Step 8: Boot the computer. Everything should be as it was except for more free space. FAIL

Of course I changed the BIOS after that to put the Hard Drive in the top at the Boot menu. I removed the CD also. So I don't know what to do. I don't have even a Windows CD so I'm a bit stuck with this...

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vj7iMAgji0I

(Does this help ? I haven't watched it yet.)

Also, check out this forum.

 

leave the harddrive installed for a few minutes and see what happens. Sometimes it takes the harddrive a little time to compile the files for bootup on its own.
I didnt have any problems installing the operating system on my Samsung drive, I hope it works for you.
If the drive is picked up in the Bios, than the drive is functioning. Whether or not you imaged the drive properly, I dont know, but it should be working.

K-TRON

 

Don't know, I'm cloning again but I did everything ok last time and didn't work so I don't have great hopes this time.

Thanks again mates.

 

Cloned again and nothing changed. Black screen, flashing cursor and no activity from the HD or CPU (I've waited for a long while).

What can I do? Any suggestion?

 

Maybe a loose connection to the drive?

If you boot with a CD now (such as Acronis or your Linux CD), can it access anything on the hard drive?

 

Yes, it can access any folder from the Acronis Boot CD (and it seems that I have all the folders I got before), but it can't launch Windows...

 

Well, my brother had a Windows XP Professional CD so I've installed it and everything runs fine. Soon I'll post some benchmarks and comparisons.

Thanks to everyone!

 

I am glad you were able to get it to work. Its strange that the imaging did not work for you. I have no idea why the imaging did not work, it is a very straight forward process.

The samsung drive is fast, so hopefully you are noticing the speed increase over your previous drive.

K-TRON

 

This HD is a beast!

I can feel it when I start the laptop, when installing or uninstalling programs, when I open a program like Photoshop for example, when I copy or transfer files from one partition to another... New life for my laptop!

Well, I've made a few benchs, let's see how my lappy performs now.

Before




After




Before




After




Before




After




I'm very happy with it. Thanks to you guys, I did well asking here before purchasing anything...

 

Yes, a fast HDD does improve booting, application loading times and HDD intensive performance.
Have fun with the new HDD.

 

I told you, you would love the HM160HC it is a great drive

Your harddrive upgrade was pretty big, so enjoy all of that new space and speed

K-TRON