Want to replace HD in Dell 700m

I am new here, this is my first posting. I would be very appreciative if someone could help me ASAP as I would like to order the new HD ASAP. I love my little 700m
I have talked to Dell but am not sure the tech was sure of what he was telling me. I bought the 700m with a 60 GB HD, I believe it was in early 2001, & am looking to replace the HD. The Dell tech said I could upgrade all the way up to a 320GB HD & would not have to partition the HD to use a 320GB drive. I really am only looking to go to 120 or 160GB HD. He also said it needed to be a EIDE drive & noticed on the site it says the drive I am looking at is a IDE drive, is that the same? Would the following HD from Amazon work: Western Digital 160 GB Scorpio Blue 100 Mb/s 5400 RPM 8 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Notebook Hard Drive - WD1600BEVE
OR
Western Digital 120 GB Scorpio Blue PATA 5400 RPM 8 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Notebook Hard Drive WD1200BEVE
More info can be seen on the following webpages:
Amazon.com: Western Digital 160 GB Scorpio Blue 100 Mb/s 5400 RPM 8 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Notebook Hard Drive - WD1600BEVE: Electronics
OR
Amazon.com: Western Digital 120 GB Scorpio Blue PATA 5400 RPM 8 MB Cache Bulk/OEM Notebook Hard Drive WD1200BEVE: Electronics

Thank you SO much in advance for whomever can help me!!!

 

Yes both those drives should work.

I'd go with the 160GB, since it's only a little more expensive.

 

Yeah I concur with Phil, the 160 GB is worth the money, especially with PATA drives when additional space is a big premium.

 

Friends, would a 7200 RPM PATA drive also work here? I got a decent performance boost when I put one in my dell d610 (manufactured in 2005)

 

I would presume 7200 rpm PATA drives are difficult to find. I upgraded my D600 from a 4200 rpm 40 GB Hitachi drive to a 5400 rpm 160 GB Samsung Spinpoint, and just that alone had dramatic results for OS snappiness. The read/write speeds of PATA doesn't break...PATA speeds so I doubt the 7200 rpm would make a huge difference. You would probably be better off with a PATA SSD instead.

 

Tsunade_Hime, Sorry to be unclear I meant would it work for the OP...Guess it was more the fresh vista 32bit install than the Hdd upgrade that gave me the perceived boost. Thanks for mentioning PATA SSD, may have to look into that! Thanks for the informative reply! Josea

 

Yes a 7200rpm HDD would work. However the 100GB 7200rpm PATA drives aren't necessarily faster than 160GB 5400rpm one platter drives.

 

Phil, good point. As a general rule, if the drive is newer (manufacturing date-wise) then it will generally be faster.

From what I remember about PATA 7200 RPM drives; even though they were faster, in the systems that I used them in - they were also much hotter running too. (I only used Hitachi 7K series Travelstars back then...).

 

A 7200RPM will still have better latency, even if the throughput isn't as good as a newer drive. The problem with a 7200RPM drive is the largest capacity they were offered in was 100GB - either the Hitachi 7k100 or Seagate 7200.1. As noted they've have been being produced for quite some time. As a result supply is lower than demand making them expensive per GB.

 

7200rpm is good for latency, two platters is bad for latency. The 100GB 7200rpm drives were two platter iirc.

When I went from Seagate 100GB 7200rpm to Samsung HM160HC I noticed a good increase in performance.

 

Susie,

If you have any existing WD internal drives(even one in your desktop could work), you can take advantage of the WD Customer Loyalty Program:

WD Support / Warranty Services / End User / WD Customer Loyalty Program

You can get the 320GB for about $50 or so or 160GB around $40.
They are both very good deals. I recently got the WD3200BEVE and was able to get more than 250% throughput compare to my old 40GB.
All you need is a serial number of a WD hard disk. I suggest you use one that has warranty expired because the program requires you to invalidate any existing warranty on the serial number.
After the upgrade my old laptop is almost as fast with Windows XP as newer laptops with Windows 7.