want 2nd hard drive 4 laptop, which one ?

[fun4now]

i know my laptop supports a 2nd drive. so i wanted to add one to store all my pic's, tunes, and miscellaneous stuff to keep my OS drive clean, clear and fast.

i know it has a 320GB SATA hard drive (7200 rpm) now, but when i look on newegg for drives they have like 79 Results when i search under "SATA hard drive (7200 rpm)"

they don't all seem the same ??

some are,

Form Factor: 3.5", others are Form Factor: 2.5" ??

then its:

Cache: 16MB,Cache: 32MB,Cache: 8MB

and ;

Average Seek Time: 8.9ms, or Average Latency: 4.2ms

i foolishly thought all i needed to do was look for SATA hard drive (7200 rpm) to get type and speed to stay the same as original install. seems like no such luck.

so what do i look for?? or would i just be best off to drop it off for some one else to do it.

i have replaced hard drives and ram, even a CPU heat sink with built in fan, in my desktop. but only opened one laptop, to change out 2 rams from 1 gig to 2gig each. only one cover and pop them in, but i don't think i got them in all the way and locked down. fear of breaking them kept me from clicking (pushing hard enough) them down ??

so what do you think ?? easy addition ?? leave it to the pro's ??

thanks for the impute.

James

[CoffeeFiend]

You can't put a "standard" 3.5" drive in there, it has to be a laptop drive i.e. a 2.5" drive.

You want lots of space, for cheap? Then you can buy a plain old 1TB drive (the 3.5" kind) for as low as $88, put it in your desktop, and use a network share to access your files from your laptop (you can even map a network drive if you want to). It's plenty fast for pics, mp3s, movies and the like. A 320GB laptop drive would cost you about the same despite only having 1/3 of the space, and would drain your battery faster too.

[fun4now]

that was my first thought, well actually was thinking an external drive for the desktop for both to share.

i put a 2nd drive in the desktop for the wife to keep all her stuff on. now i want to get all my junk off it without dragging down my laptop. i have a lot of books on cd i like to keep in my windows player for quick load to my mp3 to take the books with me.( about 25gig's compressed and converted to mp3 file type.) the desktop is old so its mail drive is only 60gigs and filling up fast. thats part of why i added a 2nd drive for the wife, but its only a 20 gig i had from an old comp.

any way networking to a central drive would be fine till i left the house, then no access.

could i turn off the 2nd drive when i did not want it to save battery ?? seems like i have that option in my power plans program. this is a nice laptop setup for lots of expandability, so i thought i would take advantage of that.

i will be building a new desktop some time be for long as its going down hill fast, so the external HD option seemed like a good idea for it. just wanted to look into filling the extra bay in my laptop for all the extra stuff i don't use all the time to help keep the operational HD clean for utilities. just seems like there are so many options, just don't know where to start looking.

wow!!! don't know how i did that ?? started to type in a last minute thought and all of the sudden i was posting over and over ????

any way i wanted to say the laptop has an extended battery, but i suspect thats to help power the graphics and extra cooling for it. but i don't use the battery much any way, so an extra drive should be OK. even better if i can set it to turn off when not needed.

how do you delete a post ??? so i can clean up this boobooo

Edited March 27, 2009 by fun4now

[submix8c]

Chances are, the way you describe it, best bet is an external drive that can be powered-down via manual external power (the "box") or lappie shut-down via usb (no power to usb, no power to external).

Not having investigated these (nor have any), I have no clue as to how they may "power down", but an external seems to be the logical choice.

[puntoMX]

how do you delete a post ??? so i can clean up this boobooo

You can't but I can .

[CoffeeFiend]

any way networking to a central drive would be fine till i left the house, then no access.

Well, if you plan on traveling a lot with the laptop, you could get a 2nd laptop drive indeed. Or you could VPN home, and access your files over the internet (assuming you got internet access of course).

the external HD option seemed like a good idea

Still cheaper than a laptop HD. But it's hardly a perfect solution. Most enclosures suck hard and will die on you (improper cooling is extremely common in them). And it's all too easy to just drop it over, or have it fall off of a desk, killing the HD in the process (data all gone forever, yay!), and it's a pain to lug around with a laptop too.

3rd option is the laptop drive indeed. By far the most expensive solution (in terms of $/GB). I've never seen a laptop with 2 HDs, but if it's anything like any old PC with more than 1 HDs, you don't get to pick which hard drives spin down separately... Your battery life will suffer somewhat regardless.

[fun4now]

assuming i'm looking for a 2.5" drive i can get a 200GB for $59 or a 320 GB (same as in it now) for $79

the part that confuses me is the huge $ diferences between drives, some are even the same maker, same size and huge $ diference ??

Fujitsu MHW2120BK 120GB 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive - Retail $189.00

Cache: 8MB

Average Seek Time: 10.5ms

Average Write Time: 12.5ms

Average Latency: 4.17ms

Model #: MHW2120BK

Item #: N82E16822116071

Return Policy: 30 Day Return Policy

HITACHI 0A57546 250GB 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive - OEM $69.99

Model #: 0A57546

Item #: N82E16822145234

Return Policy: 30 Day Return Policy

SAMSUNG HM161JJ 160GB 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive w/FFS - OEM $99.00

Cache: 16MB

Average Seek Time: 11ms

Average Latency: 4.17ms

Model #: HM161JJ

Item #: N82E16822152129

Return Policy: 30 Day Return Pol

if average seek time is only 0.5ms faster its not worth an extra $90.00. and i would think a larger cache: would be a good thing, but the lower $ has 2X the cache:

seagate has a 500GB for $139 thats seems like enough to keep me coverd till i die. and again if compaired to the first 120GB for $189.00 its 4 X the storage 2X the cache and still $60.00 less.

so what am i looking for ??

this sounds right, but is it just there marketing ??

Western Digital Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT 320GB 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive - OEM

Cache: 16MB

Average Seek Time: 12ms

Average Latency: 5.5ms

Windows Vista: Works with Windows Vista

Features: Desktop-class performance for notebook computers Massive capacity Low power consumption Quiet Reliable and rugged Tested for compatibility

Parts: 5 years limited

Labor: 5 years limited

Model #: WD3200BEKT

Item #: N82E16822136280

Return Policy: 30 Day Return Policy

here is the page i'm looking at :

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList....y=30&Page=1

new egg seems to have every thing for comps, and is the only comp seller i know of so far.

i already know my local computer repair people dont have a clue as they told me it was not possible to network an XP comp with dial up to a laptop with Vista wireless. sounds simple enough, and is with the right info, so how do i trust them ??

see my dilema, one really lost newbe here.

thanks for the help

P.S thanks for the delete, sorry for the booboo, i was just typing along and all of the sudden there was 5 posts ?? must have hit a wrong key i guess ??