Page 1 of 1
hard disk upgrades
Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2005 4:40 pm
by renard_go
To upgrade the hard drive do i need to buy the hard disk from ibm or can i just buy any brand of hard disk? will the active protection system still work on a diff hard disk?
Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2005 7:07 pm
by LtTPfan
I'm not sure what protection system you mean but any 2.5" drive will work as long as you get one of the same height or smaller.
Posted: Fri Nov 25, 2005 7:38 pm
by Kyocera
The active protection should work, I have 3 different brands of HDs IBM/toshiba/hitachi 4200rpm and 5400, 5 altogether, they all work fine.
Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2005 1:23 am
by renard_go
oh thanks, i was thinking of getting an upgrade cause my 40gig 5400rpm disk is filling up real quick. do u have any brand recommendations for a 80gig 5400rpm hd?
Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2005 3:46 am
by Blex
renard_go wrote:oh thanks, i was thinking of getting an upgrade cause my 40gig 5400rpm disk is filling up real quick. do u have any brand recommendations for a 80gig 5400rpm hd?
Seagate's a safe bet, so is Western Digtal - both have come out with some great 2.5" drives this year, but generally speaking the warranties for most drives these days are good (3-5 years I think, depending on what country you're in). The warranty's definitely the important bit, because hard drives have moving parts and they're expected to fail after a period of time.
The prices for different generations of drives jump according to HDD cache size, it seems. A big 16mb cache makes a difference in terms of speed, but you'll pay for it through the nose and for most people's purposes an 8mb cache is ample, and a 2mb cache will get the job done anyway.
NB: The two brands I've listed above are personal preference - I've had good experience with customer service from both of them, and their drives generally seem to be very reliable. Read some of the other threads too - there are some interesting links to in-depth comparisons of 2.5" drives.
Posted: Mon Nov 28, 2005 4:31 pm
by renard_go
how many types of hard disk controllers are out there? i checked most of the shops that sell 2.5 hd most of them are using IDE ATA100 im not sure what that means is that diff from Serial ATA? the hard disk on my Z series notebook has the following specs.
Hard disk size: 40GB
Hard disk controller: Serial ATA
Hard disk type: Serial ATA
Hard disk average seek time: 12 ms
Average latency: 4.17 ms
Cache size: 8 MB
Number of platters 1
Platter RPM: 5400
Burst transfer rate: 150MBps