HD upgrade

I'm planning on adding RAM and a new HDD to my aging laptop (specs in signature). I'm buying from a local retailer in Canada who is offering me approximately $140 for a Maxtor 80GB 5400RPM model. I need to know if this price is reasonable. Is Maxtor a reputed manufacterer? Will I notice a decrease in battery life, or an increase in noise or heat?

Before I go out and just buy, though, I need to know what specifications are critical for compatibility. Besides physical dimensions (9.7mm height) and the connection (enhanced IDE), is there anything else I should know about?

 

Two problems here:
-Maxtor doesn't make laptop hard drives (they are planning to, but I have not seen/heard anything else about them yet)
-It's overpriced.

The upgrade will not decrease your battery life (with a Pentium 4, you can't possibly have that good of battery life anyway), and it should not add to the heat/noise.

On another note, going from a 40GB 4200RPM drive to an 80GB 5400RPM drive should yield a nice performance boost, very noticeable. Western Digital makes the best hard drives in my opinion, look for one of those. Maxtor is a good brand but they were bought out by Seagate; they are bringing back Maxtor as a budget brand, and since this is the first time they will be producing a hard drive for notebooks, there is no telling how good/bad they will be. So, avoid for now.

 

My suggestion is to do your best Stone Cold Steve Austin impression on this local retailer for his blatant attempt to rip you off. First of all, look on newegg.com or buy.com or amazon.com or any online store and tell me if you can possibly find an 80 GB Maxtor internal HDD for more than $50 US (or ~$55 Canadian). After that futile attempt, look at some of the prices for 7200RPM HDD's. And MAXTOR??!?!? My god, you'd have to give me money to put any data on one of those. Maxtor is basically the (insert really crappy car brand/model) of really crappy hard drives. They used to be good but now as Chaz has said they've been bought out and are now just terrible.

My guess is this guy thinks you're tech-challenged (nothing too wrong with that, stay awhile and we'll make you smaaaart) and is trying to make a killing off you. Unless he's your broke uncle or something, don't let that happen.

Edit: Ohhh ok you mean a local store? Well.....go with the Stone Cold impression anyway...

 

I could be wrong about the brand... but I guessed that the price was a little high. Thanks for the advice guys, I'll think on what you said.

 

OK the brand must have been Western Digital, I'm pretty sure. But that leaves the part about connection interface, something I haven't familiarized myself with yet. Alot of the HDs on newegg.com have an ATA-6 interface or IDE Ultra ATA-100. On toshiba.ca it lists my HD as using enhanced IDE. Are they compatible at all?

 

Hello, ATA-6 is the same as IDE. Just dont get, ATA-7 or SATA.

JC

 

WD has the onces you will like they use the power of 4200RPM and run at 5400 RPM

 

If they're both the same, why are they termed differently? They must be compatible, but still different interfaces.

 

Make sure you are looking at notebook drives on NewEgg. I've only seen the ATA100/133 specification on desktop drives (ATA6 on notebook ones). Also as mentioned above, stay away from the SATA drives as they won't work in your notebook.

As for the technical differences in ATA100 and ATA6, I have no idea. However, desktop drives are usually superior in data throughput/burst speeds even when matched with the same rpms. Perhaps that is why the interface is termed differently.