Who makes Dell laptop hard drives?

Dell offers a variety of sizes and speeds of hard disk drives in it slaptops that it buys from various manufacturers. While the sizes are obvious, in practice the relative speeds of the drives are not obvious, since it is not simply a question of 5400 rpm vs 7200 rpm.

Benchmarks comparing dozens of 5400 and 7200 rpm 2.5 inch drives are available here:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/storag...=414&chart=153

But to use this information when selecting Dell hard drive options, we need to know the manufacturer and model of the drives available on current Dell laptops.

Does anybody know?

To those who have a fairly new Dell laptop, could you check the model (eg in Device Manager) and post the Dell laptop model, the hard drive size, and the hard drive manufacturer and model number?

I think that that would be helpful to those about to purchase a laptop.

As for me, I'm especially interested in the hard drive options of the Inspiron 1520

Thanks, Fuzzy

 

The use whatever ships in on the day they build the notebook. Some laptops ship with Hitachi, others Seagate, others WD, Fujitsu...all of 'em. And there is no way to tell what you're getting, and you can't (nor can Dell) control what brand you get.

 

agreed^^
My dell has a toshiba you may get one with a WD.

 

I've seen Seagates and Hitachis (IBM's) on the Latitude line.

 

All of the Dell laptops I've had have had IBM/Hitachi drives.

 

Whatever's fresh at the market.

If you want a specific drive, I suggest ordering with the cheapest one, buying the one you want, and swapping it in there. They should give you the Windows disk, so that shouldn't be a problem. You can either sell the drive it came with, or buy an enclosure and use it as an external drive.

 

all drives are pretty much the same...i doubt it matters.

 

I got a Toshiba on my first Vostro 1400, got a Seagate on a replacement with a grainy screen, and now on a Hitachi with the second replacement.

 

Gee, that is helpful

-LQ

 

I got a Samsung.. lol They make hard drives? That's new..

I agree.. I doubt the brands makes a huge impact, maybe in lifespan because they all do things differently but it can't be like a huge huge difference.

Hard drives suck.. they need to develop something new, and these SSD or SDD or w.e are not the best alternative

 

^^ lol

Samsung also makes the new 64GB SSD.

 

Toshiba here.

 

As long as capacity, rotational speed and cache are same there is really no performance difference between drives. However noise, consumption and heat can vary which can make a difference.