Sony SZ-650N (Vaio) HDD Replacement

Hi, I'm new to the forums (just registered) and....

I have a question regarding replacement of the stock hard drive in my Vaio...Currently, I have a Seagate Momentus 160GB Hybrid Hard Drive. Hybrid meaning it has 256MB of non-volatile memory built into the hard drive itself. I was wondering, if I was to upgrade to something like a 2.5" 320GB SATA 3.0Gb/s 5400RPM hard drive if there would be a noticeable performance change? I'm scrambling for space on this hard drive, as I deal with a lot of uncompressed audio, and have several games installed.

Also, another less-important question...I noticed the first time I accidentally dropped the laptop (only from about 6 inches) a warning came up in the system tray regarding some kind of hard drive safegaurding system. It (supposedly) instantaneously moves the arm off of the platter to avoid a crash in the event of a drop or impact that would otherwise cause a crash. I couldn't find whether this was a feature specific to the hard drive, or if it was something controlled by the computer itself. In either case, would that be a feature I would lose if I replaced the hard drive with another one?

 

hi welcome here.

I don't know how good or bad the Seagate Hybrid drive performs. If you run HDTune on it (terminate as many background process as possible before you run it) and then post the results I can comment on how much faster a 320GB drive may be.

You can download the free version of HDTune here: http://www.snapfiles.com/get/hdtune.html

 

And if you have been or will be dropping that notebook quite often, go for a 32 or 64GB SSD and a high-capacity WD Passport or similar..!! (Not considering the costs, since you will be able to get a 320GB 7200RPM 2.5" HDD much cheaper than that)

 

the additional flash cache does absolutely nothing to speed up the drive, so you should be getting around 36-38mb/sec out of your drive as most 160gb 5400rpm drives get. your current drive uses two 80 gb platters, so it will perform similar to other 2 platter 5400rpm configurations.
The 320gb drives have two 160gb platters, which mean that if you go for a 5400rpm you will get speeds of 52mb/sec or so.
if you go for a 320gb 7200rpm drive you are looking at speeds of 65-70mb/sec

the thing you are talking about is a free fall sensor. I dont think they actually do anything, but almost all new harddrives come with them, or you can buy the versions which have them. usually a "G" in the model suggests it has a free fall sensor.

K-TRON