Upgrading Lappy HDD, Which brand?

[CrackRabbit]

I need more storage space on my Inspiron 5000e, i want to get a 20-30 gig drive, but i dont want an ibm drive, the travelstar drives i have worked with act very very similar to the 75GXP drives that die so often (making strage crunching, scracthing and pinging noises, plus the fact that one absolutely refused to format) It leaves me with 3 options, Toshiba, Fujitsu, and Hitachi, of these three which makes the fastest, quietest, and most reliable drive?

Thanks,
CrackRabbit

 

[CrackRabbit]

No Answers? Someone has to know something!

 

[CrackRabbit]

upp!

 

[benjamit]

i have an inspiron 4000 and the ibm hdd that came with it does make the sounds that you describe

which i thought was descriptive of an early hdd failure

anyhow i got a larger ibm hdd of the same model for external storage but this one is really silent even when transfering at max cap

 

[Night Blade]

Well, not much of a comparison but what the hell...

Installed a 4GB Toshiba on an older laptop (Impulse Powerlite 6000) & I can barely hear the damn thing, was previously a 2.5GB Toshiba which had some noise but nothing you'd notice. These are older hd's, but if Toshiba has kept up this quality with their 20-30GB drives then i'd say give them a try.

 

[CrackRabbit]

thanks for the opinions, anyone else?

 

[CrackRabbit]

one more time

 

[demonbrian]

Stay far, far away from Toshiba 20 gig drives. They had a huge batch of bad drives from factory and they are still out on the market... Fujitsu is good, we use those to replace the bad Toshibas that come in. (Panasonic laptop repair center) As far as I know, its only the 20 gig ones that are bad from Toshiba though.

Hitachi, I have no idea about.

 

[Dug]

IBM 40gn series. It just recently replaced the 30gn series in the last 2 weeks.
Very quiet and quick.
Can get em at googlegear. They have a good selection even if you don't want the IBM.

If you want speed, get the 60gb version as its 5400 rpm instead of everyone else's 4200rpm. Huge difference if you've used both.

BTW, I have noticed the crunching, scratching and pinging noises you have described from just about every manufacturer.

It really depends on how well the case can hide the noise a hd makes. Some have made bios updates such as Hitachi that slow the drive down so you don't hear those strange sounds. But you loose performance.