Internal Hard Drive Recommendation

[sameoldnewday]

Hi. I am considering upgrading my Lenovo Thinkpad R61 . It currently has 1Gig RAM and has SATA 7200@ 100GB HardDrive. I want to replace it with max of 4 GB and replace the Harddrive with about 500GB @7200. I use UBUNTU /Xp on a partition. The laptop has an Intel Core2 Duo, T8300 @2.40GHz.
I looked up
Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB 7200RPM SATA 6Gb/s 32 MB Cache 2.5 Inch Solid State Hybrid Drive ST750LX003

but quite a few reviewers said that after a few months it starts to give problems.
Any and all suggestion would be appreciated. Also, pls. suggest which brands of the memory as well as harddrive ,you suggest.
Also, for reference, the HardDrive i have right now,the model no. is : ST9100821AS
Not sure if there are other specs that i forgot to mention.

Thanks a ton.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

I haven't heard and can't find any long term reliability complaints about the Momentus XTs in particular. (Aside from people that complaining that they'll never buy another Seagate because their drives broke within the warranty period. But that happens to everybody.)

If you're sticking with a single hard drive, but need more space than an SSD can provide, the Momentus XT is about as good as it gets.

 

[sameoldnewday]

Thanks for the reply. So given the specs, is the Seagate Momentus xt good, or would it be better to get a 1TB External HardDRive and just go ahead with upgrading memory from 1 to 4 GB?

 

[kowalabearhugs]

I've been running a Ubuntu on a Momentus XT for 2+ years without a hiccup. I have one of the 250GB models... not sure if they made any changes when releasing the 500/750gb models.

 

[sameoldnewday]

Thanks again. Also, For memory upgrade on my laptop from 1 to 4 GB, is a Voltage of 1.8V good? The memory i am considering is
Module Size: 4GB kit (2GBx2)
Package: 200-pin SODIMM
Feature: DDR2 PC2-6400
Specs: DDR2 PC2-6400 • CL=6 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR2-800 • 1.8V • 256Meg x 64 •

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Thanks for the reply. So given the specs, is the Seagate Momentus xt good, or would it be better to get a 1TB External HardDRive and just go ahead with upgrading memory from 1 to 4 GB?

You want the boot drive to be as fast as possible. So if you're moving the laptop around (which often rules out external HDDs, especially as boot drives), you want some fast internal storage.

If you don't want to replace the optical drive with an optibay enclosure and go SSD + HDD, then the Momentus XT is probably your best/fastest bet for getting >512GB of internal storage in a laptop.

The Momentus will definitely outrun any HDD plugged into the external USB port.

 

[corkyg]

I have used 4 Seagate XT's in my T60 and T510 lappies for about 2 years now - never a problem. Some people that have problems tend to have problems with any drive they use. 🙂