New hard drive?

If my laptop's hard drive has to be replace, can I replace it with any 2.5" and does the capacity and speed matter? My current one that came with the laptop with vista pre-installed is 160gb SATA.

 

Practically any current 2.5" sata drive in the market will fit.

If you buy 7200rpm drive, it will generate more heat. With new drives, performance difference between 5400 and 7200rpm isn't much but you'll get quieter and cooler system with 5400rpm.

There was a test with WD Caviar Blue 500GB and Black 320GB drives, performance on paper was almost the same (= so small difference that if you want more performance get an SSD instead). I just can't find the review anywhere right now, I'll add it if I find it somewhere.

 

The Caviar series are 3.5" drives. I think the article you are looking for compares the WD Scorpio Blue 500GB with other drives. I remember reading it also. I went with the Scorpio Blue 500GB when migrating to Windows 7 and am pleased.

 

Damn. No wonder even my google searches found nothing

It actually wasn't so hard to find after that slight adjust in my search words... And guess where it was?

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4954