In search of the biggest and most reliable laptop hard drive!

Hi there,

I have had several hard drives go dead on me and ever since been paranoid about regular backups! On average, I add around 1 to 2GB everyday and backing up takes a lot of time.

I'm now looking for a hard drive for my Precision M4400. I would like to get the biggest and most reliable hard drive out there and only having to backup once a month instead of daily.

Everyone here seems to like the Hitachi 7K500 500GB one, quiet compared to others but do they have a tendency to die after a few months? It seems like an unusually large number of people had their 7K500 die on them after a few months. It doesn't seem to support Bulk Data Encryption and also seem to reduce battery life! I have had a Hitachi 250GB drive die on me but then again, I have had pretty much all brands go dead on me.

There aren't that many options for large 7200rpm drives. There is the Seagate Momentus, I had bought 3 of which 2 died and the other was DOA. I don't know if their 2.5 Constellation series would fit in my M4400 or if it's even suitable for a laptop!

I have been using 7200rpm only drives for such a long time. I'm thinking they are noticeably faster or snappier in every day usage and applications compared to 5400rpm. If this is not true, I would gladly look into 5400rpm drives as well. There is the Samsung 640GB drive but don't know how reliable they are. I hear there are even 1TB options if we go down the 5400rpm road.

As for my usage, I would be running virtual machines, running multiple heavy applications together and regular browsing and music, What can you guys recommend me? I'm sure you all had different experiences with various brands. What should I spend my money on?

Thank you

 

For your usage I would recommend getting the fastest you can get: Hitachi Travelstar 7K500. It's backed by three year warranty.

Every brand can fail, there's no avoiding it. If you make backups of important data it doesn't have to be a problem.

The larger WD hard drives (640GB, 750GB, 1 TB) are all relatively slow. The WD5000bevt is a very good performer considering it's 5400rpm. It outperforms many 7200rpm drives. The Hitachi 7K500 is faster though.

I've been using a Hitachi 7K500 in my notebook for three months now. It's fast and very quiet.

 

Toshiba makes a 9.5mm 750GB drive. That is the largest hard drive that can fit in the standard 2.5" 9.5mm form

 

Western Digital makes a 750GB drive too.

 

WD's is 12.5mm tho nevermind i guess WD recently released the 9.5mm version

Yes id go with the WD 9.5mm 750GB drive if you are looking for massive space. Wd>toshiba

 

Yes it's 9.5mm.

The problem with the WD 750GB is the relatively high access times. It will be a lot slower than the Hitachi 7K500 in heavy multi tasking and VM.

 

so Hitachi 7K500 would be better in terms of performance n bigger space?

but WD 750GB would be slow in terms of high access times?

 

Hitachi 7K500 is the fastest notebook HDD at the moment.

WD 750GB is larger but slower all around.

 

are you using your optical disk drive? maybe you can get the 5k for boot and VM and a 750WD for data in the CD bay?

 

For backups I use an external HDD which is now in the 2TB area. For portable external backups for laptops it's around 650gb using USB for power. Backup drive speed is not that significant since it's only used for backups.

 

kanehi toshiba makes a single cable usb 2.0 powered 1TB portable HD using their 12.5mm 2.5" drive. There is larger then 650 for small portable externals