[WeirdClayJisKOO]

I am looking to upgrade my laptop's harddrive, and I basically want to know what the fastest, highest capacity drive i can get is. also, i think i know what interface and everything i need, but if someone could clarify that would be great.

[b1gapl]

You can get like a 7200rpm 100GB hard drive, well that's the highest I've seen on newegg, but the hard drive at that speed will probably create too much heat inisde a laptop. So next is 5400rpm, theres 160gb hard drives at newegg:
Newegg.com - Buy Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, Digital Cameras and more!

[Alvin.C]

Hello,

From what I've seen, the highet capacity of 2.5" hard drives on the market is 160GB. The fastest spin speed I've seen is 7200RPM.

b1gapl makes a good point about increased heat on drives that spin faster. In addition, faster RPM drives will consume more power, and hard drives already use a fair chunk of batery power. So, if battery life is of importance to you, I'd go for a 5400RPM hard drive.

Just to be sure, for the interface, if it's for your Acer Aspire 5102WMLi, then you'll want a PATA (Parallel ATA) / UDMA / IDE hard drive that is 2.5 inches (not SATA or Serial ATA).

[WeirdClayJisKOO]

yea, i was looking at newegg and was thinking of a 160gb 5400rpm drive, but i thought there may be something better elseware. would going from 4200 to 5400 be a significant increase in performance?

at newegg there are a few 160gb 5400rmp drives. how do i know which one is best?

[b1gapl]

Theres not really a significant increase in performance from 4200 to 5400, but I'd go for Seagates.

[WeirdClayJisKOO]

ok what would be the best way for me to increase performance? when i asked on another forum they said hard drive speed because thats where the actual data is stored..is that correct, or is there a better way i can increase performance?

also, what is the difference between these drives, and which would i be better off getting?
Newegg.com - Seagate Momentus 5400.3 ST9160821AS 160GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA150 Notebook Hard Drive - OEM

Newegg.com - Seagate Momentus 5400.3 (Perpendicular Recording) ST9160821A 160GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache ATA-6 Notebook Hard Drive - OEM

Newegg.com - Seagate ST9160821A-RK 160GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache ATA-6 Notebook Hard Drive - Retail

[b1gapl]

I think the second one, because it's the cheapest one and has perpendicular recording. I'm not sure what that is, but I think thats good to have. And also your current hard drive is PATA, which is another name for ATA.

[WeirdClayJisKOO]

yea. i know some systems can use pata, ata and ide are all the same i think? so i just can't use sata. but if going from 4200 to 5400 is not a big increase in performance, what would be the best way to increase performance?

[b1gapl]

Are you using this new hard drive to run Windows or just storage for music, videos, and such?

[WeirdClayJisKOO]

i was going to replace my current hard drive with the new one, and then use my pld one as backup. so yes, i will be running windows on the new one