Thinkpads Forum

Hi there,

I recently got a W500 with only 160 GB HDD and I want to replace it by a new drive of 1TB (or at least 500 GB)

What I have now is 7200 RPM, I guess it's SATA I

I'm not very used to purchase hard drives but I guess the most usual drives are now SATA III 5400 rpm, right?
Is the W500 going to take advantage of the SATA III?
Will I feel it slower because the 5400 rpm instead of 7200 rpm?

Thank you

It only has an SATA II port. You really only want to go with an SSD unless you are on a budget or have a spinner drive sitting around. Best case scenario 240-280MB reads with an SSD.

hello and welcome to the forum..

you want a 7200 RPM drive.. obviously, it is faster..

AND an SSD is lightning fast.. but more costly..

OH! please correct your location to your city pr town in basque country, ES..

thanks..

Thanks a lot Hans Gruber and BillMorrow

I don't wanna invest too much money in this laptop so in principle I think I won't purchase a SSD

7200 RPM is your recommendation. Question is: does it need to be a Sata ii or would it also manage a Sata III?

Thank you

The newer the drive the better. In theory a 7200rpm drive is better than a 5400rpm drive. If you have an old 7200rpm drive, a new 5400rpm drive would probably outperform it. SATA III spinner drives just revert to SATA II standard. It doesn't make a difference because your spinner drive will not approach the SATA II bus limit. I just got a 240GB Crucxial Bx300 for $38. I think it's well worth considering an SSD. Some 120GB SSD's can be found under $30.

Even older 7200 rpm drives will have lower access time than new 5400 rpm drives.
You need to look at platter density for throughput.

7200rpm drives run more noisy though.

And for OS; get an SSD.

SATA II or SATA III with HDDs doesn't make a difference. Only the cache will exceed the SATA II limit. SATA is forward and backward compatible; it will just work at the slowest of both.

For SSD's there is not so much noticeable difference either, as the gain comes from reduced access time, not increased throughput.

An SSD in a T500 makes a big difference in performance. I have a T500 that I upgraded to 250GB SSD, 8GB ram and a T9600 processor. Still better than anything Walmart sells.

I would go for a SSD (if not too costly), It would speed things up a lot!