I want to change my hard drives, which ones should i get ? Are they easy to install yourself ?

I would describe my computer knowledge as average, i currently have a Sony Vaio VGN-AR51SU and i want to upgrade my hard drives as they are just 4200rpm ones.

1) How easy is it for the average person to change the hard drives in a laptop ?

2) Which make should i go for, ive read on here that Seagate seem to be good, i want 7200 rpm disks.

3) I currently have 2 X 250 GB - Serial ATA-150 - 4200 rpm, would it be possible to change them to 2 x 320 GB drives giving me a capacity of 640 GB ?

4) With running RAID i have heard you have to set up something called an Array, is this easy to do ?

Here is the details of my machine and drives and current RAID set up.

Sony Vaio VGN-AR51SU

Hard Drive 2 X 250 GB - Serial ATA-150 - 4200 rpm

Storage Controller Serial ATA

The hard drives are: 2 x FUJITSU MHX2250BT

Its running Raid 0

Buffer size 8 MB

 

1. Very Easy.
2. All 4 - Hitachi, WDC, Seagate and Samsung are good. The latest 7200RPM drives are very good from all the 4 manufacturers and perform almost the same. Depends more upon which HDD you can get cheap w/warranty.
3. Yes
4. Forget RAID 0. (You can go for RAID 1, but it'll leave you with 320GB usable of the 640GB installed)
5. You would have to set the HDD mode in the BIOS to SATA RAID, then enter the RAID manager, create an array, and then install Windows.

 

Ive been looking at some disk drives and you get some that say 8MB cache and some say 16MB cache, does it make any difference which ones you get and whats the difference between 8MB and 16MB cache ?

My current hard drives are 8MB cache, does it make any difference if you get 16MB ones ? I like the one below, i wouldn`t mind a pair of them.

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?quicklinx=57SD

 

Currently i've only seen 320GB 7200rpm wich has 16MB cache of the new drives. Those who has 8MB cache is the 5400rpm AFAIK. So are you looking at 5400rpm too?

There isn't any noticeable performance difference between 8MB and 16MB anyways. But more cache is always better, it can save more in that "memory" making some operations faster, the HDD's rpm is more important though.

Two of those seagates would be nice in a raid0-setup, though i wouldn't recommend using raid0 as if one disc brakes you loose all the information.

I'd say, go for them! They'll give you a nice upgrade, as the 4200rpm drives are so slow.
I myself went from a 160GB 4200rpm drive to a 320GB 7200rpm and that was a huge performance gain!

 

Why the hate on RAID 0? If you have one hard drive, and it fails you lose everything! A RAID 1 will give you the same read performance but half of the write performance of RAID 0 as well as giving you half the capacity. A compromise is just to leave the drives separate such as having one for windows/applications and one for files - you get all the space, mid-irritation after failure. Each file has half the max read speed of an arrayed volume.

While you have twice the chance to lose your hard drive due to failure unless you experiencing a lot of failures I wouldn't worry. Hard drives last a long time. Be smart and back-up what you need.

The only thing that might be worth thinking about is cooling. Two 5400RPM drives will be cooler then 7200RPM, a little cheaper, and only a bit slower. On the other side you could buy two 500GB 5400RPM drives which are the same speed as the smaller 7200RPM drives but are a bit more expensive (about $140 vs $110). 500GB drives are cooler than the smaller capacity 7200RPM drives.

 

It has nothing to do with hate, i would run RAID0 myself if i could, but i don't recommend users who is new to the feauture (or hardware) as they usualy don't know the risks or are too lazy to back up their data.

And yeah, i agree on the 500GB 5400rpm idea, that's a good compromise. Though the 7200rpm 320GB drives doesn't suffer heating problems.

 

"Its running Raid 0" - My feeling is that if the computer came with RAID0 and it has worked thus far its reasonable to continue using it if the user can successfully set up the new drives to use it.

I know they don't have issues, but it was my understanding that they were hotter and consumed more power (not a ton, but a noticeable amount), so my thought was that the 500GB drives would give more space while using even a little less power could be a good option.

 

Yeah sure it comes standard with the notebook. But i still stand by the argument i just said.

And if it works with those drives it came with it should obviously be safe to continue using the standard drives in raid0. I would test the new drives for atleast 2 months without raid0, if it works fine over that period i'd set up a raid0, cause if the drives will work for 2months without any problems then they'd most probably work for atleast 3-4 more years.

The power consumption isn't that much anyways, check some reviews and you'll see that it has more to do with what brand you choose, some has a major difference in power consumption.
(whatever you do, don't choose any samsung, they draw alot of power, the 500GB 5400rpm ones takes 4.5W vs ~3W (320GB 7200rpm) if i recall correctly).

 

Raid 0 isn't that bad. In 3 years, my desktop's 250GB 7,200 RPM internal hard drive has never failed. It's a Seagate btw.

 

RAID 0 is risky, especially when its Software RAID, which is dodgy. RAID 0 is not worth it unless it is on a reliable H/W RAID Controller. Software RAID 0 eats up part of your processing power when under load, and it hardly improves real-world performance, though synthetic benchmarks show about a 60% improvement.

Anyway, RAID or no RAID is the OP's choice. I would not opt for RAID 0, because the risk of losing data is twofold, and the performance increase is minimal.

Setting up RAID is normally described in the user manual....

 

So whats the general consensus here for the best thing to do ?

I`m basically after a faster load up with windows as my current pair of hard drives are only 4200rpm, seeing as i will be upgrading it also makes sense to put in bigger hard dives.

Someone mentioned 2 x 500GB drives at 5400rpm or would 2 x 320GB Momentus 7200RPM drives be better, 640GB is plenty for me. I just want the drives that will give me the best performance along with best cooling etc.

I like these so far, if you can link anything better than feel free to do so.

http://www.dabs.com/productview.aspx?quicklinx=57SD

 

The 7200rpm drives will have a lower seek time, meaning they can access files faster, thus faster startup and loading times.
Go for a single 320gb 7200rpm drive and see how that works out for you.
You can always buy another drive later

K-TRON

 

320GB 7200rpm will be feeling faster. One will be faster than those two 4200rpm drives!

 

Thanks for the input.