Upgrading my Dell 700m hard drive -- 2 questions!...

I'm still using my beloved Dell 700m after many years. (no laptop seems to have everything I like -- 12" inch screen, lid opens flat to 180 degrees, etc.)

Anyhow, I'm looking at upgrading my hard drive. It came with a:
Fujitsu mhv2080ah (5400 rpm, 80gb), which is actually fine.
I'm looking at replacing it with a:
Western Digital WD2500BEVE Scorpio Blue (5400rpm, 250gb).

Anybody know if there will be a significant improvement in performance (other than the storage increase)? I've looked at benchmarks, but can't understand much.

Also, I've never done this, but is my best bet to do a clean install (saving data to an external hdd first), or is there a way to transfer/clone without any performance loss (and without having to buy expensive enclosures, cables, etc)

many thanks for any help!

 

Yes, you can use it, yes, it will improve your performance, no, the increased performance may not actually be significant enough for you to feel it, and yes, you should do a clean install if you don't have some sort of enclosure or device with which you can connect the old HDD to your machine.

Though enclosures or USB PATA adapters really aren't that expensive. Cloning your drive is pretty convenient if you have/get one.

 

Thanks for the reply! 2 more quick questions:
Is there any performance advantage between doing a clean install with the new drive vs. cloning the old drive to the new drive? (for example, I heard something about the bios still have information about the old drive or something)

secondly, if I clone, would either of these work fine - or is something better recommended?
http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-SBT-E...1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1259693965&sr=1-1
http://www.amazon.com/SATA-Hard-Drive-Converter-Cable/dp/B001OORMVQ/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...2&cm_re=pata_enclosure-_-17-816-002-_-Product

Lastly, what happens if you have your drive partitioned into two - do you have to reallocate the new space with Acronis, etc or do they grow equally.

Thanks!

 

First, a cable to connect your old drive via a cable and usb is not expensive, it's between $10-$30. Here's one that's $10 -
http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0302461

Here's one that's more versatile that's $30 -
http://microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0288978


Second, there's often a performance advantage to doing a clean install, but mostly just because a lot of junk has accumulated on your system over time, and doing a fresh install of the operating system wipes all that out. If you've had your computer, say, 4 years and have never reinstalled the os, it might make things faster. I just redid mine, and it's definitely faster - it hangs a *lot* less. It's hard to say for sure if it will or not - I think mine had old programs that ran on startup that I had forgotten about, and wiping it got rid of all of them. If you just reinstalled your OS last week though, I don't know of any performance advantage of reinstalling vs copying the drive.

On other option, if you already have an external drive and WindowsXP, is to use Window's backup program to do a full backup of of your hard drive, then put in the new hard drive, and do a full restore of the backup. This may involve installing windows on your new drive, then running the restore program which will wipe everything existing drive (which would be blank except your new install of windows).

Just listing out the options I know of.