Good bang for the buck HD?

Hi,

I have a 3 year old HP laptop and the HD is starting to take a dump so I am looking for a replacement. I currently have a Seagate Momentus 100 GB SATA drive in it. I was looking at Newegg and there are a bunch of drives that have pretty much the same specs by many different manufacturers and I am not sure which one to choose. I have had some good luck in the past with WD and Fujitsu drives in my desktops but I am not sure about their quality in laptop drives. As far as price goes, under $75 would be good, and anything over 100 GB capacity is fine for me. Also when reinstalling Vista, am I going to have to call MS to have it reactivated, or can I just go the clean install route with the software key on the flash drive?

Thanks,

Matt

 

The WD Scorpio Blue's are very popular and within budget. If you go with a 320GB 5.4k drive, you should expect similar performance to the 7.2k due to data density on each platter. Thus, save your money if you do not need the absolute fastest.

 

Hitachi 5K320 320GB for $70
http://www.google.com/products/cata...320+320GB&cid=15543083320572904260#ps-sellers

or WD3200BEVT for $62
http://www.google.com/products/cata...en&show=dd&cid=4875778610806684002#ps-sellers

The Hitachi is cooler and better batterylife, the WD is slightly faster.

 

For 7200rpm drives, I recommend looking at the latest generation 7200rpm model. I have the 7K320 from Hitachi and it is a very quiet drive, and also power efficient. I think most of the latest generation drives are as power efficient or more power efficient than most of the current 5400rpm drives.

250gb 7200rpm:
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10009010
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10008857
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148364
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136279

If you prefer a quieter drive, I recommend the Hitachi 5K320. It has been given many reviews here as a quiet drive. The fastest of these 320gb 5400rpm drives is the WD3200BEVT

320gb 5400rpm:
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10008232
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=10007593
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145227
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136197

K-TRON

 

Thanks for the replies guys. I'll do a little research and get one ordered. How about my Vista question- will I have to call MS and have windows reactivated or can I do it with the flash drive?

Thanks

Matt

 

You should be able to save your license files. This will make it so you don't have to call MS. Did you want to completely reinstall or just image to disk (1 to 1 copy)? There is should be guides for both in the Windows area, stickied. I suggest a reinstall, but if you do not have enough time to do so, then go 1-1.

 

I was going to do a clean install because I had to send in my lappy to HP and get a new and different mobo installed under extended warranty because the wireless card failed. Ever since then it has been running really slow- I'm guessing due to driver issues or something. Every once in a great while it won't recognize the HD on boot up and there are a ton of bad sectors on it. When it was in getting serviced at HP, they wanted to put a new HD in it (another 100GB one) for the cost of $500. I told them forget it and send it back. What a rip-off. I feel sorry for the people who would pay that especially when the computer isn't even worth $500. Anyhow, I guess I'm off to search for a post on saving the license files.

Thanks,

Matt

 

if its still under warranty they shouldnt have charged anyway, no?

 

No it really wasn't under warranty- its 3 years old but they were having a problem with the wireless cards overheating a failing so they were doing a "good faith" warranty replacement of the motherboard and wireless card. I guess its ok because the mobo they put in now is slightly better than my old one and they paid for overnight shipping in both directions. Overall, I am pretty happy with how they handled the problem minus the overpriced quote for the HD.

 

I thought I would give an update as to which drive I chose. I ended up getting the Hitachi 7K320 from Newegg http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145228
and after rebate its going to be $69.99. I figured that it was a good price for a well liked drive. Thanks again for everyone's input.

Matt