Hard drive upgrade, future proof compatabilty, etc

So i collected some extra cash and got rid off my super bulky "portable" hard drive. it was great and all but i hated to carry a power adapter for it and it was as big as 5 dvd cases put together.

So now im on the market, for real this time, to buy a 2nd hard drives (or possibly 2 hard drives) for my laptop.
So I am looking at 7200rpm drives on newegg.com and i see since last week that the WD dropped 10 bucks, which is great and also that there is a seagate drive with 7200 .3 I am looking to use it mainly for gaming. Is there certain specs that i need to pay attention to. Such as that avg seek time, avg latency
Q1) Are they making room for bigger & faster hard drives? thats what i usually associate lowered prices with
Q2)Whats the deal with that .3?
Q3) Do majority of the laptop hard drives have the same connections, so that they are good to be used with a brand new laptop 2-3 years from now?

*Note: Bigger RPMs = Higher power consumption; battery lasts shorter

 

1) There are 500 GB 5400 RPM laptop drives available now. be careful, as some of them are 12.5mm thick while the thickness of drives supported by most laptops today is 9.5mm.

2) i have no idea

3) how many years was PATA around before SATA was brought in? i would say its a safe bet that SATA connections will be around for a while.

 

thanks for the help diablo.
In response to 1) I am aware of the 500gb 5400rpm but they are bit slow compared to the 7200, cuz im looking to use it for gaming. Im looking to probally get 2 320gb @7200 and run them in that raid 0, like you.
Do you have a guide on how to do it? Cuz when i get both, i will need to mirror the stock 250 drive.
rip out the 250 and replace it with the new 320. after that i would install the 2nd 320, but no idea on how to make that raid 0 set up.

In response to 3)... i have no idea what PATA is, but thanks for enlightening me that SATA will be around for a while.

 

The Western Digital 500GB 5400rpm drives (WD5000BEVT) are actually not much slower than the 320GB 7200rpm drives due to the increased data density of 2 x 250GB platters. It's currently the only drive available with 250GB platters - although saying that it looks like Seagate's 250GB platter 500GB drive has just been released. There is a good review of the WD in the hardware section here.

The 7200. 3 refers to 3rd generation drive technology. Seagate are also releasing their fourth generation 7200.4 500GB 7200rpm drive very soon - latest reports have stated a December release. There's loads more info about hard drives in the 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' section of the forum.

As regards building your RAID array all you need to do is install the 2 drives, go into the BIOS and enable RAID on the second screen, reboot, press ctrl+i when instructed to get into RAID config, create a new RAID 0 array leaving all the options as default, and then re-install your OS. Trying to image your old 250GB drive onto your new RAID array is just not worth the hassle. I've done it a few times but it's complicated and you need a few software tools. I'll try and dig out the post where I detailed how to do it.

 

PATA is Parallel ATA. SATA is Serial ATA. ATA and IDE are generally used interchangeably. ATA stands for Advanced Technology Attachment and is the ANSI (American National Standards Institute) name for what the computer industry calls Integrated Drive Electronics(IDE). Its the interface between the hard drive and the motherboard. Parallel and Serial refer to more than just the connecters, but basically Parallel has been around for years, but all the new laptop hard drives are Serial. The 6831 uses the Serial interface.

It is true that there are some 5400RPM drives that are faster than a lot of 7200RPM drives, but the top drives are the 7200RPM drives. If you need something right now, either the Seagate or WD 320GB drives are excellent choices. Yes, the .3 on the Seagate stands for third generation. I picked up a pair of the Seagate Momentus 7200.3 320GB drives and put them in my 7811FX no problem.

 

Im kind of confused on 500gb 5400rpm vs 320gb 7200rpm!
don't i need a higher rpm (/transfer rates)to access gaming data?

Should i just hold off and wait for 500gb 7200rpm???

 

It's not just rpm which affects transfer rates. It is also data density. However a higher rpm will usually get you lower access times. Have a look at the reviews and benchmarks of the different drives. If you could use the extra space the 500GB WD 5400rpm drives are awesome and only very slightly slower than the 320GB 7200rpm drives. Certainly fast enough to run games.

 

I am checking out the stats and it blows the hole out of my stock drive WD2500BEVS, which is a 5400 too.
Now if they could have the WD3200BEKT stats too, that would be great.

Edit: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=305890&page=3 Michel.K has the wd3200bekt and is jealous of the 500.

Thats it. im sold!

How will the 8mb cache perform with games?

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=288101

 

Just buy another stock ST9200420AS 200GB 7200rpm drive and go RAID 0...Then you will have space and speed!

 

His stock HD is a 250GB 5400 Fijuitsu, Hitachi or WD w/8MB cache.

As far as needing 7200RPM drives for gaming (and video and other stuff that claims to need it), well, yeah, there are some older crappy 5400RPM drives out there, and if you got a laptop 3 or 4 years ago, that might be a consideration. But most of todays 5400RPM drives are as fast or faster than the 7200RPM drives were when those 7200RPM reccomendations were made a few years ago. So ask yourself, do I want the fastest? or do I want fast enough? Check out some of the comparissons referenced in some of the earlier posts and you'll see there are some 5400RPM drives that, while not at the top of the chart, still beat some pretty good 7200RPM drives.

 

After checking out the thread with the wd 500gb 5400rpm comparison to 320gb 7200rpm i am convinced to pick up the 500s

 

Good choice, you wont regret it

Prices are slowly coming down too - they are $139 at newegg now.

 

ill wait for black friday and pick them up for a wee bit less.

 

weekend special @ newegg.

109.99 for 500 gb Samsung Spinpoint
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152114

free shipping!

 

Completely avoid the Samsung's. I had 2 in RAID 0 before the WD's and their performance was awful. They were also very noisy, hot and used too much juice.

 

I personally am waiting for the 2-platter 500gb 7200 rpm drives to come out.

 

If i remember correctly that should be around X-mas this year

I'm waiting for next years HD's. WD has reported that they will be releaseing 1TB laptop drives around x-mas of next year. SLC solid state drive + 1TB of storage here i come

 

Next year is too far away.

 

I thought the max space a drive could be on these laptops was 320?
What am I missing?

 

Im currently deciding between a 64GB SSD, and one of these 500GB 5400rpm drives, slightly stuck on the decision, as both would be great.

 

hey i have a p6860... I also have a 3 year warranty with bestbuy... I was wondering if I added a 2nd drive... does that void the warranty?

 

Get two 500GB 7200 RPM Seagates. I'm pretty sure you can like 40 days without a hard drive upgrade.

 

they show you how to add a HDD in the manual, so no, this will not void the warranty, as adding ram will not either.

 

removed link... apparently a bad product

 

And for a second time I say avoid like the plague.

 

oh sorry must have missed the first time... Thought OCZ was a good brand, their SSD's suck?

 

yes, apparently they are brutal from reviews ive read. they lock up, stutter, and when u right click and randomly write they take 10 secs or so to respond. it seems to be a hit or miss, as some people have not have problems, and some have.

 

The addage that you get what you pay for seems to be especially strong with SSDs.

Here's a good article on Intel's X-25M and on SSDs in general http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/intel/showdoc.aspx?i=3403

 

Yeah i guess i got a while to wait before the price goes low enough for me to even look at one. My stock 200gb 7200rpm does the job well enough that i can't justify throwing away a couple hundred $$$ for 64gb of storage...

 

if I had the moo lah i would have one of those in an instant, sooo obnoxiously fast

 

I am noticing most of the postings are recommending the Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD5000BEVT 500GB 5400 RPM and nothing much has been said of the Seagate Momentus 5400.6 ST9500325AS 500GB 5400.

In the past, I have had issues with WD and have always had luck with Seagate. The only real difference based on factory spec sheets I'm seeing is that the WD has slightly better random seek times (12ms to 14ms) and average latency advantage of 5.5ms to 5.6ms.

I'll be running them in Raid 0 and the Seagate's are $20 cheaper at the moment (to show my math skills $40 cheaper for the pair!).

I know it is expected to have the 500Gb 7200RPM drives out soon but I'm looking at price and from what I'm reading, there isn't considerable differences between the 320Gb 7200 drives and the 500Gb 5400's. (Yes, I know it's comparing the 320's to the 500's...but it's what is available now)

I'm not wanting to lose too much in the gaming aspect but the storage is nice as I want my movie library with me as well. Is there a reason to go with the WD's over the Seagate's (that would negate the $40 difference?)

 

As you said the WDs should have slightly faster seek times although there are no firm benchmarks of the Seagate yet. WD however did a great job with the seek times and it's very unlikely Seagate will better them. Out of interest where can you get the Seagate's for less than $100?

http://www.google.com/products/cata...cid=16268454636543444742&scoring=p#ps-sellers

$112.99 with free shipping: http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=209246493

 

I'm seeing the 5400.6's on Newegg for $119.

Sorry if I implied they were less than $100, they are $20 less than the WD's for a weekend special.

 

Those WDs at buy.com are an absolute bargain. Shame the £ has fallen so much against the $ otherwise I would get some.

 

ya id go for the wd over the seagate. You know neither company is the actual manufacturer right? So it doesnt really make sense to have brand loyalty.
Whats weird is they might even be made by the exact same company.

 

Ehh... you sure about that?

Seagate's the largest manufacturer of hard drives in the world.

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/144963/seagate_ships_onebillionth_hard_drive.html

 

this is a point of somantics

Seagate, which is a company ive actually worked for in scotts valley ca does not manufacture these notebook hard drives it engineers them.

They are made by large chinese companies. So its more than possible these two hard drives were actually made in the same factory.

People have brand loyalty based on their short list of hard drives that worked forever and ones that failed for them.
But the reality is each different batch has a different manufacturer different lifespan different reliability... different noise and speed too.
Hitachi is fastest one round and slower the next round.

Im just trying to make a long story short, dont have brand loyalty to whos selling the thing it isnt logical.

 

Well, a point of semantics about the definition of "manufacturer". However, I doubt that both Seagate and WD use the same assembly plant. Even if they did, the drives are NOT identical. (Someone might infer that from your assertion.) It's not like LCDs or DVD drives where half a dozen "manufacturers" sell the same part with a different sticker and product number on it (sometimes, not even a different product number). While there may be common parts (i.e. drive housings, platter blanks, spindles, connectors, etc.), there are some pretty big differences between the drive models of different named manufacturers.