Acer 6935G - Upgrading the Hard drive - Clicking

Hi there!! As a fellow Acer 6935G user for some two years now, I have just a minor problem with my laptop (every piece of the hardware has worked perfect up until now! )

My Hard Drive has been clicking, grinding and what not. I have read many websites which state that the hard drive isn't safe when this happens - it usually happens when its about to die out on me. So I have a feeling that I will need to upgrade the hard drive!! Or fix the problem, which I'm not sure can be done. I will definitely check the hardware of it all soon to make sure everythings in place right.

Anyway, the sole point of this post is; what can I upgrade my hard drive to? I don't know much about laptops, and I want to buy a hard drive that is fully compatible with my Acer Aspire 6935G! This one is a 320Gb hard drive which came with it, but I was thinking if I was going to upgrade it, I should probably get a bigger one (like 500, but no real worry here..)
I just need to know what's compatible and what's not, and if I'm missing something big, thanks!

PS. Oh, and before I forget! I'm thinking that, because this is also my "most powerful" computer still (sad, I know!), I might have to upgrade the CPU soon to run games more effectively for this era! Can anyone please let me know what is the strongest CPU that I can install that would run perfectly fine still? Thanks!

 

Any 2.5" SATA HDD will work.

There are a variety of options.

5400RPM HDDs - Very cheap, quiet, large capacities, slow
7200RPM HDDs - Quite cheap, a bit noisier, almost as large capacities, a bit faster
Solid state Drives - Very expensive, silent, small capacities (for the money), very fast

The fastest CPU is technically the one in my machine (The x9100) which can be overclocked. However it is VERY power hungry. I would recommend a P8800/p9600/T9600.

Having had a 6935G myself I would recommend a P8800 or P8700.

 

Cool thanks Meaker! Okay, Solid State Drives look really cool, but they are too out of my price range sadly
I think it would be better if I go with a 7200RPM HDDs, so I could get it a little bit faster. The noise isn't that bad, is it?
I'm guessing the 6935G is a 5400RPM... Mine's extremely quiet.
Anyway, thanks for the input! I can buy a 500gb HD easy! Problem solved!

Only other thing to worry about is the CPU. Is it worth changing? I mean mine works fine and all, and if I change it to a newer CPU I want to see a significant result. I don't know much about CPU's so please forgive me, but is the P9600 or P8800 almost alike to the T9400? Well a little bit more powerful.... But anything that I could actually notice? I don't want to feel like I'm replacing something that works fine with something that's just a tiny bit better.

Would the T9600 a show significant performance boost? And the X9100 is definitely more crazy powerful? Sorry, I shouldn't be asking too many questions, this is just a topic I know a lot less about (close to none as you can tell!)

Thank you!!!! The help with the hard drives was great, and with the CPU's, its giving me much more insight!

 

What do you need the CPU power for?
If you do some video encoding or sth like that you would benefit from the CPU upgrade whereas when it comes to gaming GPU is far more important so your fps is not going to increase significantly.
If it's just general usage like music/browsing/office and your current CPU doesn't feel sluggish (it shouldn't) there's no good reason to spend money on an upgrade (at least IMHO)

Here's a benchmark list of CPUs which you may find useful while comparing them.

 

Cool! So Graphics Cards are more important in gaming. I do small amounts of video encoding, but its not enough to really bother.
My Graphics Card I feel is powerful enough for gaming, I love it! (9600M GT, overclocked to 9700M GT, not too powerful, but works perfect!)

So looks like I won't upgrade my CPU, but I definitely need the new hard drive, this thing is driving me crazy now, thanks.