HD 500GB and 8GB RAM Recomendations DV5 1010EF ?

I have a DV5-1010EF and I would like to replace the original 250GB HD with a 500GB, and go up to 8GB RAM any recommendation and online stores?.

 

The Seagate 7200.4 500GB 7200RPM drive is supposed to be very good. But, since it was only released a little while ago, it's in short supply.

I think you should consider whether you really need 8GB of RAM. Two 4GB modules of RAM will cost you a lot, and it will bring little performance gain at all, except for intense virtual-machine work.

 

Assuming you've got DDR2 RAM, the 4gb modules have been hard to find the past few months. Those of us in the HDX Dragon Owners thread recently got together when one of us who had a friend overseas found a lot of G-Skill modules that we were looking for, and had him ship us several pairs so we could upgrade our HDX's. As it turned out of course, NewEgg listed them online as being in stock after being out for months. You can also check on E-bay, as that's where we put the extra sets that weren't bought - we had a couple of people drop at the last minute after they were ordered. But they don't last long, so you need to be vigilant and just be lucky enough to find it when they're available. Price wasn't that bad - just over $300 for the pair.

However, it also depends on why you want to upgrade to 8gb. Unless you've got the kinds of programs that will benefit from the upgrade, about the only thing you're going to see performance-wise is an increase in resources management (available vs used RAM) , but for non-64 bit programs you're not going to see that much of a performance increase. For myself, I use most of Adobe's CS4 programs, which are all 64 bit certified and do see a big increase in performance with the upgrade. But those, Webex (my Remote Client Computer Support Program) and resources management are the only areas I've seen any real improvement. Your WEI likely won't change, and your network speed won't get any faster.

My point is, if you're expecting to plug in another 4gb and see your system turn into a rocket, it won't happen, except maybe in your mind.

As far as HD's, your Dv5 is limited as to what you can replace it with, so check first to see what you can put in first, then determine from there which is the better drive. You might want to ask that particular question in the Dv5 Owners thread. Keep in mind also that unless you've got the Recovery Disk set from HP when you bought your system, you need to make a set prior to swapping a drive - if you don't install from the Recovery set or your own disks, you're going to be dealing with problems trying to get things to work. Make sure you're prepared ahead of time before doing any drive swaps.

 

Agreed w/ above. If you have money to blow, you might as well put it to a SSD. Then you will actually see a noticeable difference.