My Acer Aspire 5600's 100GB IDE drive just died. Please help me find a reliable replacement for cheap, I'm broke after Christmas!

This afternoon my Acer Aspire 5600's 100GB ATA/IDE drive died on me (lots of clicking/grinding sounds, nonstop disk read errors). I was looking around for a replacement but all I can find in stores are SATA drives. Can I find a reliable IDE drive somewhere for cheap? Would it be worth putting in a solid state drive (if one can be found for $100 or less)? Thanks for any and all help/suggestions!

 

$100 ?? NO WAY ! You have to pay a lot more for even a 32GB SSD.

Are you in U.S ?
Newegg.com
Bestbuy.com

Just search for 2.5" EIDE/IDE/ATA disks.

 

I think there are a couple of ATA SSDs, but I doubt they'll be any good, since the performance would be bottlenecked due to the interface itself. (But no moving parts!)

You can checkout the Samsung HM160HC series (prob at ZZF) or the WD2500BEVE series.

 

The Samsung HM160HC is the fastest IDE hard drive according to member tests http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=264209 . It's also cheap. Period. End of Discussion. [Edit The samsung is not availble on newegg right now, look elsewherefor the Samsung 160GB]

I put the WD 250 GB in my Ferrari because I didn't know about the Samsung. It's fine, but the Samsung is cheaper and faster. Not enought to warrent me buying that (Hell, the 250 GB is NICE)... but yeah get the Samsung. You'll appreciate the price and the speed increase over your old hard drive.

 

http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10007684

 

How much of an upgrade would the Samsung HM160HC or the Western Digital Scorpio 250 be over the old hard drive (a Hitachi Travelstar HTS541010G9AT00 100GB)?

 

I would recommend the WD2500BEVE series for reliability.

If you really want a/an SSD, there is an 8GB SSD (yeah eight gigabytes), for $83 from Newegg.com. There is also a 32GB model for cheap, but that model apparently suffers from lousy performance (not recommended for Windows/OS installation and use).


edit: The Samsung HM160HC averages 52MB/s and the HTS541010G9AT00 averages about 42MB/s and both are 5400 RPM drives, so the Samsung would be up to 23% faster than your previous drive.

 

About 1.5x boost in performance. Both the WD and Samsung are pretty close in performance.

 

Hmmm...The WD 250 is in stock at a nearby Best Buy for $100, and Andy found the Samsung 160 for only $55 shipped. This is a tough decision; I'm strapped for cash, but 90 gigs extra at 50 cents per gig seems like a great deal (and I don't want to wait a couple weeks for shipping). Am I correct in interpreting that the Samsung is slightly faster and the Western Digital slightly more durable?

edit: Has anyone seen the Samsung 160gb available in brick and mortar stores?

 

Errm....No, not really. The Samsung will be better, since being a single-platter drive, it will give better loading times (slightly), better power consumption, and less noise (if you get a good drive!).

The Samsung at $55 is a steal.

The WD2500BEVE is terribly over-priced, and is not worth more than $60 or so. Plus, A.T. Tomshardware, the WD has an insanely high power consumption. (Check out the HDD charts at their site)

 

With shipping the Samsung will be $65, and I might not get it until the new year. It seems like the WD250 is roughly proportional, in terms of price per GB. Western Digital claims their Scorpio HD's have all kinds of added durability features; are those legit or just talking points?

 

I bought my HM160HC at lagoom a few months back and it is still rocking. No problems whatsoever. Its got nearly 1,000 hrs of use on it, and its still running like brand new.
I bought mine for ~$74 in the summer, so for $65 thats a great buy.

Their is a lot of marketing bias out there. Personally I am not fond of WD harddrives, almost every single WD I have ever had died in less than a few hours of operation.
Samsung makes good harddrives, their is no reason not to buy from them.
Philflow, I , and a bunch of others bought the HM160HC and noone has reported problems as of yet, so it seems like a very stable drive

One question:
Are you sure your best buy has that wd in stock?

I have never seen one bestbuy in New York which carried laptop harddrives.
I am not sure where you are, but make sure that if you do buy the wd at bestbuy, that the model number is the WD2500BEVE. If the model is something different, it will not work.

Personally I would get the samsung, its a great drive and has a much higher bang for the buck.

K-TRON

 

K-Tron: I read your review of the Samsung and found it to be extremely informative, and if it were available in a brick and mortar store at $65 I'd buy it. I've had hard drives that have died on me within a week, and my laptop is my only computer, so I can't spend a few weeks shipping product back and forth (and I don't want to wait a week to get my computer running again, since my order wouldn't get processed until monday and then might not arrive until the following week).

The most important factor for me right now is reliability; I've had too many hard drives crash on me in my lifetime and I want something that I know will perform flawlessly for four or five years (until solid-state drives become affordable). Which hard drive is more resistant to the bumps and shocks that come naturally with laptop use: the Samsung or the WD? Just how much of a speed and battery life advantage does the Samsung provide over the Western Digital? According to BestBuy.com, there are three stores in my area (Connecticut) that have the WD drive in stock.

I usually leave my laptop running 24/7, downloading torrents and streaming media to an Xbox 360 and a Logitech Squeezebox Boom; does that shorten a hard drive's life? I always held the assumption that turning a computer off and on was more strenuous on it's components than simply leaving it running all the time (as long as it's not running hot).

 

According to Samsung and Western Digital's website:
The Samsung can withstand:
Liner Shock(1/2 sine pulse) / Operating 325 G
Liner Shock(1/2 sine pulse) / Non-operating 1000 G
Vibration / Operating 0.7Grms
The sticker ontop of the drive says 850mah,

Western Digital states:
Vibration
Operating 0.00459 g²/Hz (10 to 500 Hz)
Non-operating 0.05102 g²/Hz (10 to 500 Hz)

I have no idea how to compare the two because of the different units, but I can tell you this:

The Samsung drive has a single platter, so it will run cooler, quieter and use less power.
Reason being:
The WD drive has two platters, so a higher continual amperage is needed to keep the platters revolving at 5400rpm. Since their are two platters, their are 4 heads. That is twice the amount the Samsung has, so the samsung has ledd moving parts, thus less noise and less power usage.

From other people's reviews of the wd2500beve drive on the forums here it runs very hot and uses alot of power. So if you want a cool running drive go for the samsung. Mine has never went above 122F or so.

Leaving the harddrive running all of the time isnt bad for it as long as the laptop is not sitting on a quilt or something blocking the air from circulating around your laptop.

K-TRON

 

Thanks for the help everyone, I appreciate it. I picked up the WD from Best Buy and put it in, but now I've got a couple problems.

1. My laptop didn't come with a Windows XP Media Center disk (it was pre-installed), so I downloaded a copy of it to use with the user key on the bottom of the case. However, I don't have access to a CD burner (my only CD burner is in the laptop). Is there a way to install XP Media Center edition from a USB drive?

2. My laptop is an Acer Aspire 5600 (a couple years old), and I've heard that some older laptops can't handle drives bigger than 137gb. Is there a way to know if the Acer Aspire 5600 has this limitation?

 

Well, the Western Digital drive just died on me after two days. Right before I was able to back up all the updates, programs, etc. I'd installed of course.

 

Holy crap.

Now I'm feeling scared.

I've got a 400GB of data in a single WD drive right in front of me.

What were signs of the drive dying?

 

Can you dig up $105? If so get this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152114

SAMSUNG Spinpoint M6 HM500LI 500GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive - OEM

I have this drive and it is quiet and very good. I have the Acer 5315-2713

 

sorry man sorrrrrry you hav e horrible luck go to newegg.com you will find the cheapest hard drives there and good warrentys

 

Unfortunately, that drive is not compatible with OP's computer.

 

It started making faint clicky noises, then an hour later it started making sounds like a spring popping loose. Shortly after that it started taking a really long time to do really basic tasks, like open a rar file. Then it went to the black "disc read error" screen a few minutes later and was dead. I returned it earlier this evening for another one, right now I'm doing all the tedious windows updates and driver installs.

Is there a program I can use to back up my windows installation, programs, etc. so if this happens again I can just copy everything from the backup usb drive to the new harddrive instead of re-installing everything?

 

My mistake didn't see IDE. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136159

Western Digital Scorpio WD2500BEVE 250GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache ATA-6 Notebook Hard Drive - OEM $79.99

This is the largest drive I see not sure ATA-6 is the same as IDE. That all they have ATA-6, SATA 1.5, SATA 3.0 and SCSI

 

When you install your new HDD what version of Windows will you be installing ?

I ask because I reinstalled windows on my Acer Aspire 5630 - installed a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate - after a few re-installs later, I discovered only the pre-installed version of windows on my laptop seems to be compatible with it.

I hope you will post back on your experience if your installing vista.

Thanks,

Smithy.

-- Edit: Saw the post about installing Windows Media Center - Nevermind though, thanks anyway.

 

I finished installing everything (finally) on the new replacement drive. It's actually on sale this week at Best Buy for $85 so I got $15 back. I installed HDD Health to monitor the hard drive, so far it claims the hard drive is at 100% health. When idle it runs at 39 degrees Celsius, when doing heavy lifting it goes up to 50. Is that dangerously hot?

 

For most drives, the safe temperature range stops at 60C.

edit:
Temperature (Metric). Operating, 5° C to 60° C. Non-Operating, -40°C to 65° C