2TB HDD in laptop

I was wondering if anyone has installed the Samsung Seagate 2TB 2.5" drive in his/her laptop? Any issues? I was surprised to see 2TB drives available but they don't seem to be too popular. I'm guessing there is a good reason for that. Any thoughts? Thanks very much.

 

I have done it, and I know quite a few others on the forum have done it as well. No issues whatsoever. I got mine out of external enclosures being they were much cheaper that way. I don't think they are super popular for a few reasons. First is that they are usually very hard to find and expensive as bare drives and commonly found cheaply only as external drives you need to open up to pull the drive out. Second is that many people want the fastest mechanical drive they can get, which in most respects in the HGST 7K1000, although the 5K1500 and the Samsung M9T can beat it in some instances. Many people don't trust Samsung very much as a drive manufacturer, but I see no problem with it. Lastly, so many people are wholly focused on SSD's and not mechanical drives.

If you decide to do it, be careful of one thing though. I never experienced it with mine, but some people say that certain versions of the firmware on drives installed in external enclosures don't let the drive function correctly when in a laptop. I don't recall any more information regarding that, but someone posted that issue on the forum not too long ago. Of course, if you get the bare drive you will not have the problem, but if you decide to pull it from an external enclosure, you may encounter that.

 

Brilliant! That was so helpful, thank you. I'm going to dive-in with a bare drive, then. Or maybe two.

 

I had two of them in Raid 0 0n a m18x r2. But I traded that laptop for a Clevo one. I still have them but need to install them. I love the space they provide.

 

OP if I might chime in, I was in a similar sort of dilema when I needed to get a 1TB/2TB HDD.. I decided upon the Hitachi/HSGT Travelstar 7k 1000 1TB 7200rpm drive over the Samsung/seagate 2 TB one because the Hitachi is much faster due to it being a 7200rpm drive.. if you want storage, get the 2TB one however the Hitachi will blow it away performance wise...

 

Basically because they're slow. In the days of SSDs any HDD slower than 7200 rpm is basically obsolete in today's applications. Now if all you're interested in is simple storage (especially backup), then by all means go right ahead and buy.

However, with every square cm of space in a laptop being valuable, one can't afford to waste anything that doesn't contribute to optimal performance. In the case of applications that require a fast drive, they will specify the drive speed for use as well as m maximum performance.

 

Fixed for great justice. There is no difference between 7200prm and 5400rpm when compared to SSD. Buying 1TB HDD when you can buy 2TB for less than 2x price and in spite of most modern laptop's limited storage expandability seems not very wise decision to me.

2x2TB M9T's here. One as internal drive, one as external. Bought almost year ago, though.

 

For the additional cost per GB of a 7200RPM drive, I'll take a higher capacity 5400RPM one and spend the difference on a bigger SSD, thank you very much.

 

Most 2TB HD's are 5400 RPM. Western Digital has a new thing they call IntelliPower. It's supposed to be faster then a 5400 RPM and but better at power saving then a 7200 RPM HD. Seagate actually stopped making 7200 rpm 2.5 " drive in 2013. Finding a 7200 rpm drive is hard compared to 5400 which are the ones used in the factory of laptops you buy.


http://www.seagate.com/tech-insight...e-storage-is-not-about-rpm-anymore-master-ti/

 

The Hitachi Travelstar 7Kxxxx models give visibly better performance than any 5400RPM drive and do so with little to no actual hit to battery performance.

5400RPM drives peaked a decade ago. Intellipower is also not new; it is just 5400RPM with a new brand name. The reality is that total power consumption for a given/fixed workload may even be higher with the inferior 5400RPM models.

The real question becomes does your workflow or your laziness earmark your need for a 2TB HDD in 2015? The best use of HDD's today is in a NAS with 4/6/8 or more drives in a RAID5 or better configuration that can rival (single) SSD performance and with the right network hardware, even outperform it.

 

I bought a Hitachi 7K1000 because everyone kept talking about how much faster they were. I had my doubts, but I needed another hard drive and the 7K1000 only cost a tiny bit more than the 5K1000. I honestly don't know how anybody can say that they feel a difference. I have the HGST 7K1000, 5K1000, 5K1500 (I own a Z5K1000 as well but it remains unused), and Samsung M9T (although I have not used it as a system drive). Unless you sit there with a stop watch, I don't think anyone could tell the difference in a blind test. Even benchmarks show the difference between the 5K1000 and 7K1000 to be only about 13%.

On the other hand, I do have a handful of older drives at least two generations removed from these current ones. The difference between the fastest of the old ones (WD 320GB 5400rpm) and the slowest of the new ones (5K1000) is quite easy to feel, however.

 

tilleroftheearth, we're discussing 2.5" notebook drives here, not 3.5" desktop drives. As Qing Dao rightfully said, 5400 rpm is de facto industry standard nowadays, and mechanical drives perform pretty the same within one generation. SSHD makes a difference in many scenarios - e.g. when used as OS drive with regular workflow - but certainly not in all.

 

Yeah, don't know what thread you're commenting on, but I'm talking about the Travelstar series... notebook drives, 2.5" format, etc....

Just because 10 billion flies eat $hit doesn't make it the next master chef dish.

 

I had upgraded from the Hitachi Travelstar 7K1000 to the Samsung M9T's.. I don't notice a damn difference. Don't know how anyone can really say the Hitachi is noticeably faster.
If you're after speed, get an SSD and be done with it. If you're after storage, get a HDD.

 

The M9T makes weird noises from time to time (at least on mine) it's like a scratching(?) sound, maybe the reader arm is moving or something.

Good HDD, just don't expect speed out of it. The search latency is acceptable and the speed is around 100mb/s, probably the large data density compensating for slow read speed.

 

Thanks very much for the input. This will be for storage only; apps get installed on an mSATA. I remember when 5400 rpm was the fastest thing around. I believe my old PowerBook had a 4200 rpm drive. Apps took 10-20s to load. Oh, and not to forget my Commodore 64 days, oh boy!

 

13% difference is still a difference... I will never go back to 5400rpm HDD ever... I absolutely hated my 5400rpm HDD in the Hp laptop I had and now, I only buy 7200rpm HDDs... I notice this stuff and am not the most patient type in the world.. If I had a choice, I would get a 1TB SSD but too bad the wallet is a bit empty now