What kind of specs do I look for in a new harddrive for T23?

[BlueDevilTide]

I'm thinking about getting a new HD for my T23.

I'd like something with a 7200RPM, 16MB Cache. But I don't know how it would connect. IDE? SATA? ATA? I don't really know the differences other than SATA seems to be the newest technology.

The form factor is 2.5"...is there anything else to know? Would I need any other parts to make it fit in the T23? Or just use the old caddy or whatever else is holding the current, original HD that's in there now?

I don't have any XP Pro CD's so I don't know how I would install my data back on there. Is there a way to "clone" all my data from the old HD onto the new one? Would that mess up drivers or the OS? It seems a little odd, anyway.

And one final, somewhat unrelated question: My X30 has, I believe, its original 4200RPM HD inside it. If I get a new HD for that as well, how much of a hit would I take on battery life? Would the speed increase be worth it?

Thanks so much.

[tfflivemb2]

The drive that you would need would have to be PATA (P=parallel, S=Serial) PATA and SATA drives are both ATA. IDE would be for a PC. As for recovering your drive....many users here recommend Acronis True Image...but it isn't free. The other option is to use Recovery Disks to restore your T23, then use a bay adapter for your hard drive to copy over your Documents, Pics, Music, etc.

The X30 battery life would be affected by a faster drive, but some say that it would be minimal, since a faster drive means that accessing the drive would take less time.

PM sent on T23 recovery disks...

[schleptop]

Is it worth getting a 7200 rpm drive? I'm considering upgrading my T23's 30GB 4200 rpm (I think) drive.

There seems to be a high premium for the 7200rpm over 5400 rpm drives. Looking at some charts from Tom's Hardware Guide, it's not clear that the 7200rpm drives greatly or always outperform 5400 rpm ones.

[BlueDevilTide]

I ended up getting a Hitachi 7200 RPM 60gb hd. It's installed and works well. No real difference in noise or heat thus far.

As for real-life difference in speed, I haven't noticed a huge one yet really. Not sure why. HD Tune shows a big difference, though:

Avg Transfer Rate (MB/s):
4200: 18.6
7200: 33.1

Access Time (ms):
4200: 19.1
7200: 17.0

I'm about to up this T23 to 1gb Ram, so that should make the difference.

In retrospect, I wish I had gotten a little bigger on the size (putting all my documents onto the HD off the external leaves me only 30gb free...though that includes some large video files). That being said, I would probably always regret not getting the higher speed drive since performance > size, since I have a DVDRW for keeping large amounts of files hand when need be.

[FunkyRes]

Is it worth getting a 7200 rpm drive?

Definitely.
I saw a marked increase in performance on my T20 when I put in a 7200RPM drive (8MB cache, Seagate).

[ashleys]

I recently installed an Hitachi 100GB 8MB cache 7200RPM drive in my T30.

The performance (better seek times, improved latency) of the faster drives is only apparent during higher I/O loads. My boot time significantly improved but during normal I/O loads you will not see any/much difference.

There is an argument that you can get better performance from the slower/bigger drives due to their increased density factor. However, this is heavily reliant on I/O patterns and ensuring that you are doing full track sequential processing.

[FunkyRes]

The performance increase I saw on my T20 is quite likely actually because I only have 256MB of physical ram, so swapping does occur fairly regularly. Swapping at 7200rpm is going to be much faster than at 4500.