Upgrading my laptop's RAM and HD, advice?

I am upgrading my laptop's HD and RAM, here are the specs now...

HP dv9500
t7500 Processor
160 GB HD (with a second empty HD bay)
2 GB RAM (x2 1GB sticks)
2.2 ghz
Windows Vista Ultimate 64 bit OS

So yea, I want to put a 250 HD in the second bay, will put my internal to 410, and with my 320 external I should be just fine. The HD I'm looking at purchasing is right here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822149070

I'm pretty confident on the HD, but the RAM situation is a different story. As you can see I have Vista Ultimate 64, whether or not that was worth getting is up for debate, but I've heard it runs optimally on >2 gigs of RAM, and I figure I'll take care of the RAM while I'm doing the HD. So here are my options that I need some help sorting out:

1) Should I upgrade my RAM at all?
2) Should I upgrade to 3 gigs of RAM by purchasing a single 2 gig stick?
2) Or, should I upgrade to 4 gigs with 2 2 gig sticks?

Any advice is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

1) Depending on what you do with your laptop, you should see a performance boost.
2) I suggest to take advantage of a 64bit os by getting 4gigs of ram.

Also keep in mind that you won't be able to use raid if your hard drives aren't the same size and speed.

 

You should be good upgrading to 2 x 2gb of memory. That will give you 4gb of memory, which will run Vista very nicely.
As far as the harddrive goes, I would not go with the Toshiba drive. Samsung, WD, Hitachi and seagate make better drives than Toshiba does, so if you want something that is going to last get something else.
Generally,
Seagate is the quietest
Hitachi is the fastest
WD is the coolest running
Samsung is pretty quiet and good bang for the buck

Toshiba and Fujitsu do not make very durable drives. Some models are good, but some are bad, and do not last very long.

Also, I would go with either a 320gb 5400rpm drive for the most performance, or the same performance from a single platter 160gb drive like the samsung HM160JI. Both the 160gb samsung mentioned and the 320gb 5400 drives are able to do about 53mb/sec, whereas a 250gb drive can only do 43mb/sec average.

K-TRON

 

What exactly is Raid?

 

On HDD a Samsung 320 is $5 dollars more you get more storage and better performance (from NewEgg also)? On two RAM well can't go wrong either way. 3GB's will be an improvement and will cost you $40 as you can use one of your current sticks. You could always buy another stick if not happy so not really losing anything? But four well you have 64 bit so might as well go for 4GB's as OS can make use of it. I guess I would ask if you didn't want 4GB+ why get 64? It will set you back about $80. No right no wrong here on the RAM. I would get 4GB's unless money is a issue. 3GB will be an improvement over 2GB and next month when you have more money you can get the other 2GB stick. Good luck!

Edit: Does this notebook even support RAID?

 

Let's say you decide to get another 160gig 5400rpm hdd, you could set them up in raid 0 which would increase your hard drive performance by ~40-50% and also make your two 160gig hard drives appear as one 320gig one.

However if you have one 160gb hard drive and one 250gb one, you have two options. You either set them up in raid 0 and sacrifice 90gigs of the 250gig hard drive or use each hdd separately in which case you couldn't take advantage of the increased performance due to a raid 0 set up. I know this sounds pretty complicated but it's not that hard. There are pretty good guides on the net which explain how a raid setup works.

 

It should support raid since some of hp's dv9xxx series laptops are being sold with raid.

 

Thanks for the advice with the Samsung, I'm going to go with this I think, good reviews and only 5 dollars more for what seems like a better drive in quality, not to mention 320 vs. 250: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152111

As for RAM, I think I'm sold on 4 gigs, I got 64 bit with the intention to eventually upgrade, and I was just making sure the 3-4 different wasn't worth the cost, but it seems like it is worth it after all. Are there any particular brands you guys can suggest? At first glance this seems the most affordable and from what I can tell, no different from the others which range from 10-20 dollars more: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820146697

Is this a good product?

 

As far as raid goes, I might upgrade my original 160 HD to a 320 in the future, and at that time I could use raid to boost performance.

 

Mushkin is fine. You don't have to buy a "kit" you can buy two of the same if cheaper (hell you can buy two different brands but no reason to do if you buy at the same time). Here is a link to my thoughts on RAM and brand. Only thing I want to bring to your attention is NewEgg has some GSkill with CL4 vs CL5 which is the standard for PC5300 link.

Edit: RAID 0 has issues such as doubles your chance of catastrophic failure and DATA loss. It does have a purpose but learn the benefits and drawbacks first. There are RAID configurations that almost eliminate the likely hood of catastrophic DATA loss. So do read up on it and pick what is best for you. Again if your notebook even supports. I have no idea if yes or no tried to find could not.

 

That harddrive and the memory looks good. You will enjoy the performance increase.
I dont think your laptop supports Raid 0, or 1. I think it only supports spanning mode, meaning supports 2 harddrives, but no raid.
In actualluty, Raid 0 will show a 100% improvement in synthetic benchmarks, but in realtime use the benefit is only about 10%. This is because Raid 1 struggles with smaller files, which are more common than larger files.

K-TRON

 

If you want to know more about raid, there's lots of info on wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID