What is the best hard drive to get for X31?

[corrado85]

I want to upgrade the hard drive.

Is there a substantial difference in battery life between a 5400rpm hd and 7200rpm hd?

and which 5400rpm offers 16mb cache?


Thanks.

[solitude]

No real difference, you may even get more Batt life with the 7.2k rpm drive.

Go for a Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 drive in the capacity that suits your needs (I have a 100GB one).

[pianowizard]

and which 5400rpm offers 16mb cache?

The Toshiba MK1032GAX (100GB), currently $75 shipped on Newegg.com.

[gator]

I use a 7k60 in my X31, and it is great. I suggest a hitachi 7k100 (make sure you get the PATA one) if you can afford it.
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/sto ... 7k100.html

[dc_slim]

I've heard nothing but good things about the 7200 rpm Hitachi drives, but I just picked up a 5k160 very cheaply on Ebay, and I have to say that it's a huge improvement over the standard 4200 rpm drive that came in my X31. Very fast by comparison. A 7200 rpm drive would bring an additional improvement in performance, but for basic office programs and the like, I can't imagine that it'd be worth the additional cost.

Dan

[pianowizard]

A 7200 rpm drive would bring an additional improvement in performance, but for basic office programs and the like, I can't imagine that it'd be worth the additional cost.

On Newegg.com, the 7K100 currently costs only $5 more than the 5K160 priced, $115 shipped versus $110. But to me, disc space is more important than speed, so I too would prefer the 5K160.

Not long ago (2 years?), 160GB 5400rpm drives were ~$250 each! I might buy one when the prices drop below $80 shipped.

[dc_slim]

Wow, I didn't realize the price difference was that small. I'm too cheap to buy new, though. I got a 80gb 5k160 off Ebay for $40, which I thought was a very nice deal.

[Subliming]

The HDD is quite possibly the slowest component in any computer, getting the latency of that as low as possible should be a priority.

Personally, on an X31, I can't tell the difference between the performance of a Toshiba 5400RPM HDD with 16MB of cache and the 7K100 when messing with Office but it can definitely be felt when booting up or when dealing with videos.

To think, the HDD has as much onboard memory as the graphics adapter on this machine heh!

[ragefury32]

The HDD is quite possibly the slowest component in any computer, getting the latency of that as low as possible should be a priority.

Personally, on an X31, I can't tell the difference between the performance of a Toshiba 5400RPM HDD with 16MB of cache and the 7K100 when messing with Office but it can definitely be felt when booting up or when dealing with videos.

To think, the HDD has as much onboard memory as the graphics adapter on this machine heh!

Same here between my X31 with the 5400/8 and the 7200/8.

Heh, well. At least the Radeon on the X31/2 has its own VRAM...the newest X60 models don't even have the luxury - it must play nice and share main memory.

*Sigh*...Lenovo, how about an X61p/X61t with an nVidia Quadro 110 Go? Shared memory doesn't really cut the butter.

[jolly2]

Heh, well. At least the Radeon on the X31/2 has its own VRAM...the newest X60 models don't even have the luxury - it must play nice and share main memory.

*Sigh*...Lenovo, how about an X61p/X61t with an nVidia Quadro 110 Go? Shared memory doesn't really cut the butter.

I dream about this, too