Whats a good notebook HD?

[FireChicken]

Hi,
I am looking for an up grade to my current notebook HD. Looking for a top notch 7200rpm 200gb or more HD.

I saw a review on the Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 at storagereview.com. Is this still the top notebook HD? What are some of the close competitors?

Thanks

 

[corkyg]

I have a pair of those Hitachi 200 GB/7200 rpm. You can get a 250 @ 5400 or a 160 at 7200. Right now there are not many choices. The Hitachi is excellent. Fast, quiet, and no problems.

 

[FireChicken]

Thanks. Sounds like I found my up grade.

 

[onlyCOpunk]

I've also heard that the speed difference between larger capacity drives because irrelevant because of the size of the disks or something like that. I just put in a 250 WD in my laptop and it works perfectly fine.

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: onlyCOpunk
I've also heard that the speed difference between larger capacity drives because irrelevant because of the size of the disks or something like that. I just put in a 250 WD in my laptop and it works perfectly fine.

Close - a 5400RPM drive with a higher density platter will generally be faster than a 7200RPM drive with a lower platter density, provided the difference in size is >40GB. If the drives are of equal size, you should see a little better performance out of the 7200RPM drive.

 

[TheStu]

Not only that, but the 7200RPM drive technology has improved significantly, that Hitachi that Corky was talking about has 3rd generation perpendicular recording, power saving systems, and a 16MB cache... all in all, barely consumes more power than a 5400RPM drive, and generates only slightly more heat.

 

[mundane]

This may be a stupid question, but other than interface type (ex. SATA-150), are there any other compatibility implications with laptop harddrive upgrades? My 100 GB SATA-150 laptop (Inspiron E1705) drive fritzed out on me this morning, and although it's back up I'm frantically pulling everything off of it while I can. I'm eyeballing the Travelstar 7K200 as well, but wanted to ensure it would work. The "official" offerings by dell.com for my specific machine are only up to 100 GB. TIA.

 

[TheStu]

No, SATA is SATA is SATA, you can even drop SATA laptop drives into desktops.

 

[IlllI]

Originally posted by: TheStu
No, SATA is SATA is SATA, you can even drop SATA laptop drives into desktops.

so...what.. you are saying is..sata is...sata...?

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: clandren

Originally posted by: TheStu
No, SATA is SATA is SATA, you can even drop SATA laptop drives into desktops.

so...what.. you are saying is..sata is...sata...?

uh... yeaaa?

 

[mundane]

Thanks, didn't know if there was anything proprietary about how Dell 'customized' the hardware.

 

[rivan]

Originally posted by: Brainonska511

Originally posted by: onlyCOpunk
I've also heard that the speed difference between larger capacity drives because irrelevant because of the size of the disks or something like that. I just put in a 250 WD in my laptop and it works perfectly fine.

Close - a 5400RPM drive with a higher density platter will generally be faster than a 7200RPM drive with a lower platter density, provided the difference in size is >40GB. If the drives are of equal size, you should see a little better performance out of the 7200RPM drive.

Does this mean the lower capacity 7k200s will not perform like the 200G shown on storagereview? Or do they just use fewer platters?

 

[MrX8503]

Originally posted by: rivan

Originally posted by: Brainonska511

Originally posted by: onlyCOpunk
I've also heard that the speed difference between larger capacity drives because irrelevant because of the size of the disks or something like that. I just put in a 250 WD in my laptop and it works perfectly fine.

Close - a 5400RPM drive with a higher density platter will generally be faster than a 7200RPM drive with a lower platter density, provided the difference in size is >40GB. If the drives are of equal size, you should see a little better performance out of the 7200RPM drive.

Does this mean the lower capacity 7k200s will not perform like the 200G shown on storagereview? Or do they just use fewer platters?

Correct.

The 100gb hitatchi wont perform nearly as well as the 200gb variant. I believe the 200gb 7200rpm hitatchi drive is currently the fastest drive you can get. A 320gb 5400rpm drive probably a close second.

A good rule of thumb is that high storage space + high rpms = fast hdd.

 

[DarkThinker]

I have the 2.5" 200GB 7200RPM 16MB cache Hitachi...which I picked up 3 of them @ Best Buybefore and during BF for a mere $130 a pop....take a trip to your local Best Buy and see if they still have those DTG / DGW drives......

 

[pukemon]

I have the Hitachi 7K200 (200GB) in my Macbook and it's worked just fine. I don't really have an apples to apples comparison (ugh pun not intended) because I swapped out the original 5400rpm Toshiba 80GB that hadTiger and put Leopard on the new drive. Leopard, for the most part "feels" faster on Intel Macs...