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I’m sure this must have been covered at some point, but my search-fu is weak.
What do I need to look for in an aftermarket HDD? Will any sata laptop HDD work? Are some brands of drive to be avoided at all costs?
The reason I ask is that I’m thinking I’d like to put on a different OS, probably either Vista or at least XP Pro. And, I’ve been thinking I might upgrade the HDD. So I thought if I’m going to do both I could do them at the same time then just keep my old HDD as it is for a spare. There is a local retailer who often puts Laptop drives on sale, right now they have a Toshiba 320G Sata for what seems like a decent price ($79).
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
As long as the drive has a SATA connection and is the right size it should work ok. Do you know the model number for the Toshiba drive?
Depending on what you are looking for you should narrow down the list by deciding what is important.
Are you looking for a ‘high’ performance (7200rpm) drive?
Or maybe a large amount of storage space, 500GB drive?
Are you concerned about power consumption, and battery life?
Do you want a drive which is going to be very quiet/little vibrations?
Do you want the added protection of a drive which parks it’s heads when it detects it’s being dropped?If you replace the drive, it may be handy to buy a cheap external enclosure for the old drive so you can still use it.
Unfortunately I do not know the model of the local drive on sale.
I think as to narrowing down the list, I’m looking for the following;
Size is important
Quiet/little vibrations is next important
Power Consumption is next important
7200rpm is not as important as the above
Parking heads is not as important as the aboveExternal enclosure… that’s an awesome idea!
Does anyone have any experience with this HDD? Or any opinions on why it would or would not be a good choice?
I’m a fan of Western Digital’s drives.
That particular drive is supposed to be very good. It certainly has the storage space, and from reviews it appears to be quiet with good power consumption for it’s size.
If I upgrade it will be either to the one you linked to or the Western Digital WD3200BJKT (this one is less appropriate for you).
I am waiting a couple more months for SSD disks to decrease in price, they are constantly falling as new drives are launched on a monthly basis now. The 160 GB disk which came with my NC10 has far too much space for my usage right now, anyways. 🙂 (I keep network shares of all my music, movies, tv shows, etc).
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