Which 2.5" HDD

[Deleted User]

I don't think you can go far wrong with Western Digital drives, they do 320GB ones for about £50 delivered.

donny-gal

Thanks bluboy - so if I treat myself to something like this, it should work and be faster access?
DG

doshsaver_2

Best way to check for upgrades is to first find the Service TAG Number for your laptop.
Most Dells come with TAG (aka serial number) stuck to the bottom of the of the laptop. It is also available in the BIOS screen. Normally, its a seven alpha numeric character long.
You enter this on the Dell Support site and it will give an idea of what options for upgrades/ current setup.

I hope this helps.

bluboy

donny-gal wrote: »

Thanks bluboy - so if I treat myself to something like this, it should work and be faster access?
DG

Yep.
And just £60 from ebuyer.
A fast drive but whether you'll notice a difference in speed or not I'm not sure - too many variables.

I'd also recommend the Acronis free trial for cloning the old to the new drive although you'll also need a USB caddy with a SATA interface.

donny-gal

One of the reasons considering a new dd is I have to rebuild this laptop anyway as it needs it, so would be little point cloning I think, unless I am missing something, let me know if I am.
Thanks again DG

prowla

I just bought a couple of Iomega 320 GB USB drives for £45 apiece from tesco direct.

In terms of NAS, it can be a bit slow (especially over wireless).
I just picked up a bargain 1TB NAS drive for £42 at a car boot sale (I even registered it online and it gave me the full 3-year warranty), but getting things onto it took a while, and that was over a gigabit Ethernet link.

prowla

donny-gal wrote: »

Thanks bluboy - so if I treat myself to something like this, it should work and be faster access?
DG

Don't get too carried away with the specs; 7200 rpm seems slow to me - 15k rpm is fast, and note that it's 3Gb/s (ie. gigabits/sec), which is 300MB/s (divide by 10 to give approx equivalent megabytes/sec and allow for overhead).
Now even that seems fast, and would suggest that a 4GB video file would copy inside 5 seconds. But in real life the operating system gets in the way and it would take much longer.

weegie.geek

bluboy wrote: »

Its SATA

HM120JI

Well spotted, I didn't even check it, I just assumed the OP was correct.

That makes it cheaper to upgrade, for sure.

weegie.geek

prowla wrote: »

Don't get too carried away with the specs; 7200 rpm seems slow to me - 15k rpm is fast, and note that it's 3Gb/s (ie. gigabits/sec), which is 300MB/s (divide by 10 to give approx equivalent megabytes/sec and allow for overhead).
Now even that seems fast, and would suggest that a 4GB video file would copy inside 5 seconds. But in real life the operating system gets in the way and it would take much longer.

15k is scsi/sas territory. Any consumer grade drive will be 7k2 tops. Raptors are not consumer grade before you say anything, they're enthusiast drives, and you pay the premium for the extra 2800rpm.

3Gb/sec != 300MB/sec, it's 384MB/sec, and that's a measurement of the interface anyway, not the speed the drive can do anything. Theoretically if there were a drive that could push 400MB/sec, the interface would become the botleneck. In reality, even the top of the range SSDs aren't approaching that kind of speed.

Overheads, OS or otherwise, are not what slows it down to < 20% of that, it's what the drive's physically capable of.

If you're going to say things in the manner of someone who knows what they're doing, try not to talk blatant nonsense.

Leopard

donny-gal wrote: »

... so if I treat myself to something like this, it should work and be faster access?
DG

I found this comparison review of them helpful.

The Western Digital Scorpio WD320BEKT (320 GB, 7200 rpm) that you have in mind was highly rated.