Laptop HD upgrade questions

[akaSM]

Hi, I got my laptop about 2 years ago because my desktop sucks at running games of college, and since it doesn't suck at running games AND Steam's offers are quite nice, my hard disk is filling up. I want to get a new hard disk for it.

Basically, I know nothing of laptops HDs (size, whatever) and I'd like some help, speciffically:

• Does this thing need a 2.5" HD?
• What's a reliable HD brand?
• Where can I get the HD? (pages with worldwide shipping)
• Anything I could've missed related to this

My laptop is a Dell Studio XPS 16 (1640)

Yeah, I've messed with other stuff before so, I think I can handle this one. I've opened my PC, got a second HD in it, reused and old CD drive and so on. Also, I've opened stuff for the funsies (phones, watches and several other stuff lying in my room), and so far, there have been no casualties

[Nikose Tyris]

IIIIIII would try and lead you away from tampering with the insides of your laptop! I don't like opening them up and it's a pain to change out the internal HD.

Would an External Hard disk be an option for you? They're fairly cheap and you can store all non-high speed transfer stuff on 'em, like your music, movies and junk, and keep your hard drive purely for games.

Just a thought in that direction.

Also, -always- a fan of Western Digital for the low fail rates. Seagate comes in second in my books, with higher failure rates but low prices.

[akaSM]

I got an external HD but, I use that mainly for backup and old stuff that I don't use but, I don't want to delete either. I want to upgrade the HD so that I don't have to carry around an external HD.

BTW, I found this about my current HD model:

Hard Drive, 320GB, Free Fall Sensor, 7.2K, 2.5, WD-MX160

I think the WD thing is "Western Digital"

[Eltargrim]

Three things:

1) 2.5 is likely what you would need.
3) 7200 RPM drives will be faster, but consume more power and be louder, than 5400 RPM drives.
3) I really need to agree with Nikose here. While upgrading laptop hard drives is one of the easier laptop mods, messing with the innards of a laptop is completely different than messing with the innards of a desktop.

Honestly, external hard drives are only getting physically smaller, while increasing their capacity. I'd strongly recommend getting an external hard drive over upgrading your internal; if you carry your laptop around in any kind of case, you'll be able to fit a hefty external HD in with no problem.

For example, the WD passport: 500 GB with the following physical dimensions:

Height 15 mm
Depth 83 mm
Width 110.0 mm
Weight 0.14 kg

[akaSM]

I found this. It doesn't seem that hard :3. My external HD is actually 500 GB :P.

Also, it seems I already have a 7200RPM HD O_o

[rpgdemon]

Laptop upgrades really aren't hugely difficult if you're careful. It's just a matter of knowing what to hit with which hammer.

The annoying part is that all of them are different, so to change a hard drive on one might be much easier/more accessible than a hard drive on another. But as long as you're careful/know what you're doing, you can be fine. I've cracked an old laptop open and replaced the screen, and had everything go smoothly and fine. The most annoying part is that because it's so compact, you have to pull apart almost everything in order to get at the inner components, and the case is sometimes a huge pain to get off.

[bluestarultor]

I dunno why you guys all act like this is open heart surgery. I've never seen a laptop where the HDD wasn't in a bay easily accessible from the outside. Take out no more than two screws, slide it out, unscrew it from the sliding piece, secure the new one in, slide it back into the bay, screw it in so it doesn't fall out, and presto.

Really, it's easier than changing out your RAM.



That said, Western Digital I hear good things about, and Seagate makes decent drives for good prices. Avoid Hitachi, or skip the middle man and format your files while throwing out an appropriate sum of money.

[synkr0nized]

Originally Posted by bluestarultor

I dunno why you guys all act like this is open heart surgery. I've never seen a laptop where the HDD wasn't in a bay easily accessible from the outside. Take out no more than two screws, slide it out, unscrew it from the sliding piece, secure the new one in, slide it back into the bay, screw it in so it doesn't fall out, and presto.

Really, it's easier than changing out your RAM.

This. Dell is pretty consistent about putting their drives in easily-accessible bays on many of their laptops. It's practically as mindless as swapping an optical drive out for an extra battery in a modular bay or swapping PCMCIA cards. Cloning your drive and/or starting from a fresh install on the new drive and importing your data/reinstalling your applications is definitely more of a worry here.


And in laptops that are more involved, it just requires patience and an understanding of the machine's layout. But I've done it a few times and am comfortable with computers, so it's likely my perspective is biased towards being OK with playing around inside a laptop.



As to the original question, as noted you are looking at laptop drives which conform to the smaller physical size. Beyond that you just have to make sure what you decide to purchase is compatible with your laptop (for HDDs, usually this is just making sure you can use SATA [though only old ones now are IDE] or the laptop supports 7200RPM (though do any not anymore?).

I have had various WDs over my computers' lives and Seagate drives and have been quite happy with them. The only brand I came to distrust was Maxtor, but I have no idea who owns them now.

[akaSM]

Thank you everyone, I'll get either a WD or a Seagate HD . Now, does anyone know of a reliable online shop that has worldwide shipping?

EDIT: If anyone has any personal recommendations, please tell me. I have a budget of about 100 USD. Also, I want to keep using my current HD as an external drive, there are cases for that, right?

EDIT 2: Since my laptop already has a 7200 RPM HD, I want one of these because I don't want to get something higher capacity while downgrading something else.

[synkr0nized]

Originally Posted by akaSM

EDIT: If anyone has any personal recommendations, please tell me. I have a budget of about 100 USD. Also, I want to keep using my current HD as an external drive, there are cases for that, right?

I see that Newegg isn't going to work for you, but this is an enclosure I have and use. In fact, it has the drive from a Dell laptop that died in it serving as my Powerbook's additional data and backup drive. I am sure similar enclosures, by the same company and others, are out there for a similarly cheap price in stores you can use. Just note that brick-and-mortar prices are often a few dollars more; the convenience may or may not be worth it to you.