Acer 8204 Hard Drive Upgrade

I'm looking at upgrading my 8204 with a larger HDD as it possibly is on its way out after nearly 4 years of constant use. If I am going to reformat may as well increase the space somwhat.

I see some people (in old threads) have gone to a 320GB 7200rpm SATAII drive rather than the 100GB 5400rpm SATA I drive in there at the moment.

I was wondering what is the largest drive the system will support and if any one has any recommendations? I have looked at Seagate 500GB drives but not sure what depth the existing drive is as notice there can be variances.

Any advice will be appreciated.

Thanks - John (in UK)

 

There really is no size limit on HDD so long as it fits in your laptop meaning that it has to be a 2.5" drive. Right now, the largest capacity available in the 9.5mm thickness format is 640GB 5400 rpm drive from Hitachi. Your drive should be 9.5mm in depth. Depending on your laptop's HDD setup, you can get the new ones from WD. The largest laptop drive overall is 1TB 5200 rpm from WD but that has a thickness of 12mm and may not fit in some laptops. As for SATA I or II, it doesnt matter what interface you have as long as it is SATA. A SATA II drive will work in a SATA I drive and vice versa.

As for rpm differences, the 500GB 7200 rpm Seagate I have is faster but also runs hotter than my stock drive by 2-3C on load. It runs cooler when idling though. If you plan to get this drive, make sure you get the new revision. The old revisions had horrendous failure rates.

 

I just put the Western Digital 640GB 5400RPM in my 8204 [Drives are so cheap now]. It's the largest drive that will fit this machine. The WD 750GB and 1TB are too thick.

I swear by WD drives. I have had two running in an old desktop 24/7 for a decade without a single hiccup.

 

Thanks for the responses and advice.

Yellow11 - Would the WD drive you installed be the WD6400BEVT as sold here:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/175930

Looks just the sort of thing I could do with if the right one.

Thanks - John

 

Just as a closure on this thread I purchased the recommended 640GB WDC drive last night (98 UK pounds) which arrived at 7am today. 10 minutes afterwards it was in the drive being reloaded with XP (although the DVD looks like it may be on way out now and the ACER recovery DVD I made nearly 4 years ago is scratched beyond repair!).

Dead easy to replace but if anyone else needs to do same thing just a warning that underneath drive cover is some two-sided sticky tape so on my system needed a bit of a gentle prise with a screw driver moving across middle underneath to lever it off. Just trying to lift from one may well have snapped it. Not sure if this tape is normal.

Lovely to have so much disk space available although bound to get filled up quickly with data that I tend to accumulate.

Rgds John