Hard drive recommendations for 8100

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@freddydynip wrote:

What is the best (fastest, most reliable) 40-60 gig hard drive that I can use as a drop-in replacement for the OEM IBM Travelstar 30 gig drive in my Inspiron 8100?

 

The original IBM drive is beginning to fail (IBM's Travelstar Diagnostics report a growing number of bad sectors) and I'd like to replace it with something faster (e.g., 7200rpm instead of the IBM's 4200rpm). I've heard good things about the Hitachi Travelstar E7K60 (which Dell has on sale for $148.74), but I've no experience with Hitachi drives.

 

The 8100 has a 1.2 GHz CPU with 512 megs of RAM, and I'm running XP Pro and do a bit of graphic design work.

 

Recommendations?

 

Using the Advanced Forum Search on the bottom of this page, you can quite easily find the answer to this often asked question.

 

This is often-asked, and the answer easily found.  The drive you specified is NOT designed for a notebook computer, w/o the leading "E" is the drive you might want to focus on.

 

You should also read about people's ability to distinguish between the 5400 and 7200 rpm drives in performance, and of course the price difference.

funtoupgrade,

Many thanks for the link. I knew Dell was expensive, but I didn't realize they were THAT expensive.

What ever you do don't buy one from Dell unless you want to pay double or more the going price. One good source is www.newegg.com - the new seagate's have a five year warranty. Any 2.5" notebook drive will work.

 

Rick,

Many thanks for the quick reply. I checked out your link and it looks like you've got a bit of experience with Dells....

I actually did use the Advanced search before posting. But after 30+ minutes of searching/reading and following alot of dead ends and finding alot of conflicting advice, I thought it best to post one of these "what is the best...." questions myself. My apologies for the redundancy of the question, but it's difficult to perform a good search when you're short on time.

I didn't read Tom's article, but my original post (re the Hitachi drive) was based on a couple of older posts I found which touted the Hitachi's great speed, reliability and prowess as an Inspiron laptop drive. However, unfortunately, all of these posts were 1~2 years old and, as we all know, technology and trends tend to change with the seasons, which is why I thought someone here might have more recent [direct] experience.

I tend to keep things for a long time and my experience (with desktops) has generally been that Seagate drives last the longest, but tend to be average performers. It appears that newegg has very reasonable prices, but I didn't see any 7200rpm drives listed. In addition to my own [desktop] experience with 7200 drives, I read a PC Magazine article that referenced the "potential" performance increases available with some 7200 2.5" hdds. But, from my searches of previous posts here, opinions seem to be mixed.

Would it be a fair question to ask if someone could make a specific recommendation and include some background on the reasoning behind it?

When my HD died nearly 2 months ago, I replaced it with a 60GB Seagate Momentus 5400.2 (5400rpm). so far so good. Very quiet.

I have insprion 8100 1.2mhz 512mb ram too.

d;-)

Mine was kitted out with IBM Travelstar 40GB drive. Can't remember if it was 5400 rpm or 4800 rpm.

As for performance ... the only think I notice is the quietness of Seagate (60GB Momentus 5400.2.). I don't know about the speed as the RPM is the same as my old HD at 5400. My Seagate now got WinXP Home Ed SP2 compare to my old HD which was on Win XP Home ed only and the speed is almost the same ... so I guess Seagate might be perfoming well ? I might be wrong but so far so good.

I don't know about you but I like Seagate as recommended by many on Dell forum. I wouldn't spend more for a 7200 rpm HD (I don't they are compatible with 8100 ... ). Pointless really. Well for me anyway.

So there you go.

d;-)

I have the 40gb 7200rpm which I have used in an 8000 and now in a C840(I8200 Hardware clone) and it is certain to be compatible in the 8100 as well. You are right about the price however; I bought mine slightly cheaper-$130- but it is still high compared to a Samsung 40gb 5400 rpm, which I purchased to use in a refurb for $68

Latitude C840(converted from Inspiron 8200)
1.6mhz Pentium IV
512mb PC2100 DDR SDRAM
40gb Hitachi 7200rpm-HTE726040M9AT00-UDMA5
HL-DT-ST-GCC-4240N CDRW/DVDROM in Fixed Bay
LS-120 SuperFloppy in ModularBay
Windows XP Pro SP1a
FanGui 2.20
nVidia GeForce2 Go 32mb Video Card
15" SXGA LCD
C/Dock II 

kw,
You're defintely right about Seagate's quietness. I have Seagates in two servers and they're, by far, quieter than the drives (WD and Maxtor) in other machines.

I guess the question is if you feel the price differential for the 7200 rpm drive is justified? I'm kinda leaning toward the Western Digital 60Gb ($80), but if the performance increase justifies the price difference, I'm game.
Also, have you had any problems with heat while running the 7200 drive in the Inspiron? I've read a handful of posts that suggested this could be a problem.

Don't forget about the 5 year warranty on the seagate's!

 

Good point (re the warrantee) and that's one of the reasons I'm a bit hesitant to go with the 7200rpm Hitachi (1 year warrantee). I just don't know that I want to pay 40% more for a drive that I'll probably end up replacing (presumably for a 7200 when the prices come down a bit more) in a year or so anyway.