Hard Drive Questions

[kobra500 1]

Hello Xisto I have some hard drive based questions which I hope you all can answer for me: let's start at number one.Number 1) I have a laptop it takes 2.5" hard drives, will any 2.5" hard drives do? At the moment for example I have a 250gb hard drive running at 5400rps. Could I replace it with a 2.5" 500gb hard drive running at 7200rps or are there certain limits that prevent this? I am assuming yes!I have about 200gb (including OS) files on my current hard drive (which with formatting has roughly 225gb space, some of those are very large files games that I have downloaded from steam; the EA online store and "other" inferred places. Downloading them at 300-500kB/s is a laborious process and I'd prefer to not have to do it again, the steam and ea download games do not have installation or iso files and I have long since deleted the isos for my other games, now I know I can simply move the files from "my programs" to the new "my programs" but will there be any issues caused by this such as issues with the registry and if so how do I solve these. Certain software also I would prefer not to download again, how can i transfer them.(Incidently I'm on vista and plan to reinstall the operating system from scratch. I know where the relevant downloads and drivers are located).

[truefusion 3]

1. Yes, any hard drive will do. It does not need to be of the same size unless you are planning to replace the internal one. However, do keep in mind that if you are replacing in the internal one, it has to be of the same connection unless the motherboard supports multiple connections (i.e. IDE, SATA, etc).(2) Steam allows you to back up and restore your games. I have not tried doing so for my games, but i would expect it to be a feature that allows you to copy your game ''database'' from one computer to the next without having to download everything again. As for any other random software, you may have to download them again.

[minimcmonkey 0]

1) Yes, you can use any capacity or speed, but you must only use a 2.5" drive, and it must use the same connector. Check your computers documentation to find out what connector you need to use?2) steam will allow you to backup games, then reinstall then on another system with steam installed, anything else (unless it uses a similar client which allows backups) must be reinstalled from scratch, so if you cant find the disks or installers, you will have to buy new games. Copying them over wont work because of the associated registry entries and links into the operating system.

[kobra500 1]

Thanks Truefusion, yes I do intend on replacing the internal so I know it needs to be the same size and don't worry I know about IDE/SATA etc. Thanks about the Steam feature, I didn't know about that but I will see about copy pasting files from one to the other to see if I can.

[BuffaloHelp 24]

Some laptops have specific hard drive height requirements. Majority of hard drives are about 19-23mm tall (when installed). Some hard drive caddies are only for >17mm and thus not just any laptop hard drive will do. Please search and know the dimension requirements before purchasing/installing.Another requirement can be the spinning speed (5400 RPM vs 7200 RPM). Some laptops have separate drive caddy that can absorb the extra vibration caused by high spinning hard drive. If you install high spinning hard drive it can cause unwanted vibration to your laptop. Consequently there are high speed hard drives with low vibrating ratings. Higher spinning hard drives tend to draw more power so know that your laptop may not last long under battery power.Be careful or be aware of extra heat produced by modified equipment (non-OEM replaced part). You can pickup a software to mirror/ghost your old hard drive to new hard drive regardless of the size difference. That means you don't have to reinstall your programs from the beginning, including your operating system.A good rule of thumb is to always, and I mean always have about 15-20% free space of your total hard drive capacity. Windows (especially Windows) is notorious for using your hard drive for paging. And if you max out your "reserved" space your hard drive can crash any time.

[rpgsearcherz 5]

Some laptops have specific hard drive height requirements. Majority of hard drives are about 19-23mm tall (when installed). Some hard drive caddies are only for >17mm and thus not just any laptop hard drive will do. Please search and know the dimension requirements before purchasing/installing.
Another requirement can be the spinning speed (5400 RPM vs 7200 RPM). Some laptops have separate drive caddy that can absorb the extra vibration caused by high spinning hard drive. If you install high spinning hard drive it can cause unwanted vibration to your laptop. Consequently there are high speed hard drives with low vibrating ratings.

Higher spinning hard drives tend to draw more power so know that your laptop may not last long under battery power.

Be careful or be aware of extra heat produced by modified equipment (non-OEM replaced part).

You can pickup a software to mirror/ghost your old hard drive to new hard drive regardless of the size difference. That means you don't have to reinstall your programs from the beginning, including your operating system.

A good rule of thumb is to always, and I mean always have about 15-20% free space of your total hard drive capacity. Windows (especially Windows) is notorious for using your hard drive for paging. And if you max out your "reserved" space your hard drive can crash any time.

By height requirement do you mean that even if you are looking at 2.5" or whatever drives they may still be different heights? I assumed that the 2.5" was the height of it.

Also, when it comes to adding extra vibrations/heat, are there any ratings you can see that give that information? I never really considered those as being relevant but it would definitely explain why a lot of laptops come with 5400 RPM's instead of 7200+. It makes me a little happy I didn't get the 15k RPM HDD I was going to for an old PC of mine that was overheating at the time!

Lastly, do you happen to know if SSD's emit a lot of heat? My understanding is they do not have any moving parts, so sound should be negligible, but would heat be a factor?

[BuffaloHelp 24]

I guess "height" is a relative term.Yes, 2.5" is also known as the height of the drive. That would make my measurement as depth of the drive. In the hard drive, you have your size (3.25 or 2.5 inch drive) and then you have the width, followed by how thick your drive.Some specific laptops have drive thickness requirements such as less than 17mm or some 15mm drives only.There is no vibration rating except you'll know when your laptop vibrates. Some laptops equip with CD silencer to suppress unnecessary vibration when CD or DVD is spinning. SSD is an excellent alternative choice. However, the price is so high that it may not be worth it. For example, 200GB SSD is almost 3 time the SATA or IDE hard drive's price. SSD has very low power consumption and low heat.

[rpgsearcherz 5]

I guess "height" is a relative term.
Yes, 2.5" is also known as the height of the drive. That would make my measurement as depth of the drive. In the hard drive, you have your size (3.25 or 2.5 inch drive) and then you have the width, followed by how thick your drive.

Some specific laptops have drive thickness requirements such as less than 17mm or some 15mm drives only.

There is no vibration rating except you'll know when your laptop vibrates. Some laptops equip with CD silencer to suppress unnecessary vibration when CD or DVD is spinning.

SSD is an excellent alternative choice. However, the price is so high that it may not be worth it. For example, 200GB SSD is almost 3 time the SATA or IDE hard drive's price. SSD has very low power consumption and low heat.

Wow, I thought all HDD's were based solely on 2.5" or 3.5" and never knew there were other differing measurements.

As for SSD I haven't really been able to justify the costs yet. The last I heard (which was months ago) they suffer data loss on occasion and have a much higher failure rate than standard HDD's. I'm not sure if those issues have been fixed yet but that was a huge deal-killer for me (at least for my desktop, where my stored information is of great importance to me).

I have been thinking about getting an SSD for my laptop though as I heard it can speed up older systems quite a bit, but have not made the jump yet.

[BuffaloHelp 24]

I have read nothing but good things about SSD (now we're going off the topic) :)I replaced one of my laptops with SSD and it does speed up. However, the initial booting time and the computing power, such as creating large PSD or working on fill-able PDF is the same--because it's CPU related and not hard drive related.Retrofitting an older laptop with SSD, with the high price of SSD, does not make a practical upgrade. Majority of netbooks are sold with SSD and they seem to be reliable and making battery last longer. I suppose if your laptop is worth upgrading SSD would be one of the wise choices. I would rather sell the older laptop before it depreciates further and purchase newer laptop with SSD as an option. It's better to have motherboard with SSD connector rather than fitting SATA to SSD with a kit.

[aulty 0]

hey any before buying a hdd first check whether its sata or the old one (ide)also check you motherboad data online whether is supports 500gb.... coz when i tried upgrading my ide hdd to 300 gb on my laptop which had a 80gb hdd. it didnt support it and on searching the net i found my motherboad only support a maximum of 200gb.also check ur harddisk height otherwise it may not sometimes fit into the hdd slot or case if ur laptop has one