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replacement drive advice for dying disk :(
Inspiron 1420 with this hard drive:
Hitachi 160GB 7200RPM SATA 3.0 Gb/s
Don't know the cache, or what that means, because Dell somehow doesn't recognize my service tag.
This drive is failing, won't boot into Vista and should have been replaced before this happened. But, here I am.
I believe my drive was getting way too hot, which contributed to its demise. From what I've read online the 5400 RPM drives do not get as hot as 7200 RPM drives. I want the computer to operate quickly, but I don't want this to happen again. There seem to be more drives available at 5400 rpm.
Are 5400 RPM drives cooler, and is that enough for handling large images? I don't do gaming or video editing, but I do have a lot of huge photos. I might want more RAM, as I only have 2Gb now - could adding RAM compensate for the lower RPM? (I don't know how the components interact.)
Is there another number I should be looking at, like latency or seek time? (I understand neither.)
Can I go higher than 160 GB?
Does cache size matter?
Should I look at Western Digital and Seagate for reliability? Any others?
Is there another thread that answers all these questions?
After I replace the drive and install Vista, my next step is to try to rescue the data that didn't make it into my last backup. :( I'll be back to ask for help for that, too!
Thank you for any advice.
ejn63
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October 8th, 2009 11:00
You can use any 2.5" 9.5 mm SATA notebook drive - 500 G is as large as they come (there are 750 and 1000G drives from WD but they're 12.5 mm and won't fit).
aliciacw
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October 9th, 2009 16:00
Thank you, I ordered a 500GB 5400RPM drive - and I didn't order it from Dell.
Meggie13
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October 9th, 2009 19:00
Which brand did you get. Seagate has a known factor in some laptops of having a clicking sound that will drive you nuts. It is all over the boards about it.
aliciacw
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October 14th, 2009 11:00
I looked at Seagate and Western Digital and chose the latter. I'm glad, because I don't need another reason to throw my laptop out the window. ;)
jjbender58
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October 19th, 2009 12:00
Western Digital is the best choice. I used to like Seagate but after this clicking problem, mine came up with 2000-0147 which is a bad drive period stopped booting and if it did boot would BSD. Replaceing the HDD to a different brand solved it. It sounds to me that you are getting the WD Scorpio Blue, 500 GB 5400 rpm, excellent drive. It has been tested just a little slower than the Black at 7200 rpm.