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laptop hd help , older (pata)

zCypher

zCypher

Diamond Member
Hello,

It's an old Acer TravelMate 4202wlmi with 80gb 4200rpm and 512mb ddr2
Upgrading to 2x2gb ddr2 and 100GB+ hard disk
The RAM is good, already found a place that ships it for $76

for the hard drive however, I'm stuck between what seems to be the hitachi spinpoint m5 (HM160HC) and the western digital scorpio blue (WD1600BEVE). Both are 5400rpm/8MB cache and both can be had for CAD$50-70.

I was hoping to get a 7200rpm/16mb drive instead but it seems more rare and costly to acquire one for pata these days. I can find some Seagate models on eBay from China, but I'm a bit wary of that. and they are closer to $100. There are a few Hitachi models for sale on eBay as well (USA) but the WD/Samsung seem to be the best deals. and they are available from various online stores which i do trust.

What are your thoughts? The CPU, I believe, is an Intel dual core 1.6GHz.

edit: WD and Samsung can both be had with 3 year warranty
 
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I have had good experiences with Western Digital, I have a Black in my current desktop and I'm very happy with it. I've never used the Samsung hard drives, but have had good experience with a myriad of other Samsung products. I'm on the fence about trying the Samsung hard drive or if I should just stick to WD.

I found the WD as low as $65 and the Samsung as low as $49
 
zCypher said:
for the hard drive however, I'm stuck between what seems to be the hitachi spinpoint m5 (HM160HC) and the western digital scorpio blue (WD1600BEVE).

What are your thoughts? The CPU, I believe, is an Intel dual core 1.6GHz.

edit: WD and Samsung can both be had with 3 year warranty
Click to expand...

If there is enough space you can probably fit a SATA SSD with a tiny SATA to PATA adapter off ebay. I tried it on two laptops I own. One had the HDD sit inside the laptop and fit plenty, but the other had a drive bay. It barely fit after I took the SSD out of it's 2.5" case.

A few cautions, those two laptops ran full speed capping out 133MB/s, but in a 3rd laptop, it maxed at 66MB/s. The SSD's access time still made it miles faster than the HDDs you mentioned and worth it. Which brings to my main point... because your laptop is old, I just wouldn't spend too much money on it which is appears you're doing. :thumbsup:

The good news of this method... the adapter is about $10-$20 shipped and the SATA SSD you can use on your next laptop. It's up to you, but in my experience it was worth it over the HM160HC and WD320 which I had in both laptops and replaced with the SSD.
 
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razel said:
If there is enough space you can probably fit a SATA SSD with a tiny SATA to PATA adapter off ebay. I tried it on two laptops I own. One had the HDD sit inside the laptop and fit plenty, but the other had a drive bay. It barely fit after I took the SSD out of it's 2.5" case.

A few cautions, those two laptops ran full speed capping out 133MB/s, but in a 3rd laptop, it maxed at 66MB/s. The SSD's access time still made it miles faster than the HDDs you mentioned and worth it. Which brings to my main point... because your laptop is old, I just wouldn't spend too much money on it which is appears you're doing. :thumbsup:

The good news of this method... the adapter is about $10-$20 shipped and the SATA SSD you can use on your next laptop. It's up to you, but in my experience it was worth it over the HM160HC and WD320 which I had in both laptops and replaced with the SSD.
Click to expand...

That sounds cool, where can I find that adapter? The idea is to spend less than $200 since you can buy a new netbook for that price anyway.
 
It's this one: http://www.cooldrives.com/2sahadrtoide.html. You can also find it cheaper on ebay. I've seen two. One is that POS:STI-P which is very short, but a bit taller than a 2.5" HDD and another one is thinner, but longer. Choose the one that suits your installation needs.

Actually there are other methods if that adapter doesn't work/fit. There are also a SATA to IDE CD-ROM HDD caddies which are a bit more expensive and still may not run full speed without some software tweaks.
 
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Make sure it will all fit in the 4202 HD caddy adapter tray.
 
I'm in Canada
There is also the fact that not all motherboards support all RAM, and the ones I selected I know are specifically supposed to work in that laptop.
 
I wanted to do that initially, but on laptops, the drives themselves are already a tight fit to begin with. In the end I just picked up a kingspec pata ssd and slip it in...
 
Yeah, I paid $100 for a 32 GB PATA SSD, when 64 GB SATA are going for about the same price. Ubuntu 10.04 eats about 10% of that 32 GB, and boots in just a hair over 10 seconds from power up (Turion MT-40/2GB)

With 1/4 inch laterally and 1/8 inch vertically, it was just easier to buy the PATA. Trying to mount a SATA + dongle in that space just wasn't feasible for me.
 
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