Laptop hard drive recommendations?

Livo on 28/11/2012 at 12:12

I've been considering replacing my 500gb hard drive in my HP laptop (from 2010) with either a 750gb or 1TB one, but I'd like some advice on which one to get.

I can't afford a SSD, so I'll be looking at a regular 5400rpm or 7200rpm model. Reliability is my main priority, as it'll be used for mainly university and storing other media on it. I've been looking at a few Hitachi, WD, Samsung and Toshiba models, but I haven't been able to find out any information on their warranty length, which is somewhat worrying. Any recommendations?

Cheers,

bikerdude on 28/11/2012 at 18:51

ok, 2 things -

* whats the make and model of your laptop (I need this to figure out what chipset it has etc)
* whats your budget..?

Livo on 28/11/2012 at 23:47

Quote Posted by bikerdude

ok, 2 things -

* whats the make and model of your laptop (I need this to figure out what chipset it has etc)
* whats your budget..?

HP dv6-2120TX. Specs (http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c02033034&tmp_task=prodinfoCategory&cc=us&dlc=en&lc=en&product=4098683) here
My budget is around $100-220 US. Keep in mind that in Australia, computer parts are usually much more expensive than the US. Thanks,

bikerdude on 29/11/2012 at 17:25

Quote Posted by Livo

Your laptop has sata ports, so that means you can slap an SSD in there! SO in that case I suggest a Samsung 840 250GB drive for €169

- (http://www.pixmania.at/at/de/12891171/art/samsung/interne-ssd-840-series-ba.html)

Review -

- (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/26/review_samsung_ssd840_pro_and_ssd840_storage/page3.html)

Yakoob on 29/11/2012 at 21:41

I have the(http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/laptop-hard-drives/momentus-xt-hybrid/) Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid SSD/HDD drives in both my laptop and desktop and very happy with both (over half a year now). Fast bootups, no failures, good size, decent price.

bikerdude on 29/11/2012 at 22:53

Quote Posted by Yakoob

Those drives are only good in repetitively accessed data and even then cant match the outright speed of an SSD on 4k reads/writes or sequential speed. And on randomly accessed files its just an ordinary mechanical drive. And for the price, seagate are charging a little too much for them.

Spend the extra money on and SSD and it will be faster ALL the time. That 250GB Samsung 840 series is very cheap for the money @ £140/€170 and one of the best bang for buck SSD's in that segment. Fyi the 840 is 10-15% faster than my 830 and in only a few months has dropped in price by £20.