Inspiron 1520 Hard Drive Upgrade - Please Help.

I wanted to upgrade my hard drive for my old Inspiron 1520 laptop.

Inspiron 1520, Intel Core 2 Duo T7500, 2.2GHz, 800Mhz, 4M L2 Cache
4GB RAM
256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
160G 7200RPM SATA Hard Drive
Windows 7 64-bit

It currently has:
Hitachi HTS722016K9A300 ATA Device
7200 RPM
~160 GB

I found this post: http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...spiron-1520-viable-after-market-upgrades.html

Which said:

There's just too many choices out there...
If I go with an HDD I would like at least 500 GB @7200 RPM.
If I go with an SSD, well cost is the limiting factor - I can't spend over $200 (which probably isn't enough).

Can anyone recommend some drives that will work in my Inspiron 1520?
Things to look for, things to avoid, ...

Thanks,
Dave

 

Find a Samsung 830 or 840 SSD... plenty of space and just about $200.

 

I saw this on Best Buy:
Samsung - 840 EVO 250GB Internal Serial ATA III Solid State Drive for Laptops
Model: MZ-7TE250BW

Would I need any installation kit, or does it just slide in and plug into the cable that was on the old hard drive?

Dave

 

It's plug and play, simply take out the old and swap it with the new. Alternatively if you really wanted more storage capacity you could go for the Hybrid Drives offered by Seagate.

Seagate - 1TB Internal Serial ATA III/Serial ATA II Solid State Hybrid Drive for Laptops

 

Thanks!

In my Inspiron 1520 would the Samsung SSD be faster than the Seagate Hybrid?
Or is some other part of the system going to limit them?

Also, do you have any feel for how much faster these would be than my current Hitachi HTS722016K9A300 ATA Device?

I really appreciate your help.

Dave

 

hybrids are only fast in short bursts, it is designed to move frequently accessed data to the solid state portion of the drive for quicker access.

a true SSD drive will be much faster period.

the main advantage to the hybrid is the over all storage size and price.

but now you can get much larger SSD drives - up to 960GB