Hard Drive Upgrade Questions

Hi,

I have an HP dv7t notebook with a 5400rpm 250GB Fujitsi HDD (MHZ2250BH). It is the original HDD that came with the computer when I ordered it.

By looking at my specs in my sig, is my HDD the bottleneck of my laptop? I would like to increase the speed of my startup and was wondering how much of a speed increase would I get by upgrading my HDD? I can't afford SSD, but I think a 7200rpm HDD would be an improvement. How much of an improvement would I notice? Is it worth it?

What would you recommend is the best 320gb 7200rpm 2.5" HDD for my computer?

Thanks


BTW, just wondering, why is it say in the specs:
Drive Transfer Rate: 300 MBps (external) / 100 MBps (internal)

Shouldn't internal be faster?

 

I am by no means any sort of expert, as many here will attest, but my own first thought is to ask if you have performed a clean install of your OS to eliminate bloatware and unnecessary items (programs, registries) your computer has to wade through at startup? My experience, and others' as well, is that this alone can make a world of difference in the amount of time to boot or shut down.
If not, I'd recommend orev's excellent guide found elsewhere at this forum.

 

Thanks for the response. - Yes, I have cleaned up my computer and minimized the items in my startup. My computer is running fast and I have no problems with it, but I was just wondering if my HDD is acting as the biggest bottleneck because I often see my HDD light blinking a lot.

 

If by startup you mean booting Windows Vista the simple answer is no, it won't make much difference to get a 7200 rpm hard drive.

If you hibernate, 7200rpm will be a bit faster.

Here are some benchmarks as example:
http://www.laptopmag.com/review/storage/intel-x25-m.aspx?page=5
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/15079/6

Now if you see your HD light blinking a lot during multi tasking, that would be a good reason to upgrade to 7200 rpm. (as you can see in the laptopmag review).

If you want to get a 320GB 7200rpm drive I recommend the WD3200BEKT or Fujitsu MHZ2320BJ.

 

Thanks very much for the info. Those are great articles. So it seems I'd only gain a few seconds here and there so I'm better off just saving the money and sticking with my current HDD.

Thanks

2 more quick questions:

1. Is ReadyBoost worth using or is it pointless since I have so much RAM?

2. Do you recommend enabling Advanced Performance in the HDD settings?

 

Hi!
I have enabled Advanced Performance, but I don't care about battery time.

I have never used ReadyBoost but when you have 4 GB that should be enough.
What do you use your laptop to? Gaming ? Surfig ? Heavy multi-tasking ?

 

I don't use Vista so don't really know, but from what I've heard:

1 no point.

2 yes.

 

I've even read that ReadyBoost slows down your computer becouse that for example usb stick is not fast as ram modules. But I can't remember where it was, so I didn't want to say that officaly.

 

ok I won't use ReadyBoost. But on the discussion of enabling Advanced Performance, I've seen varying sides. Some say it helps, others say it's bad. Any advice?

 

The only danger to enabling advanced performance is that if your computer suddenly loses power then whatever unsaved data was in the hard drive cache is lost. Notebooks don't have this problem seeing as you have a battery, so if power is lost from the plug then you have a battery that is perfectly capable of running your computer for atleast an hour or more.

I have had advance performance enabled on all of the notebooks I have used in the last few years and have never had a problem with it. However I have not really noticed a difference in system performance between it being disabled v.s it being enabled.

 

Thanks for the reply.
I read this article and was wondering if it's true:
http://yayitsandrew.com/2008/02/13/vista-enable-advanced-performance-benchmark/