Laptop HD question: Will it fit?

[cjolley]

Well the HD on Becky's laptop has gone to heaven (or possibly the other place )

The laptop is a Dell Inspiron 600m

I've never shopped for a NB HD I don't know if they are all the same size.

I am looking at a TOSHIBA Super slimline MK4026GAX 40gb 5400rpm 16mb cache. for $70

Thanks,

[Wombat]

You should consider a 7200rpm drive. The performance difference is more noticable than you'd think.

[J1NG]

You should consider a 7200rpm drive. The performance difference is more noticable than you'd think.

Kinda depends on the interface it uses though. If that notebook is rather old (doesn't have faster than ATA33 connection), having a better hard drive won't boost things much. (After seeing a 7200 8MB Cache 40GB HD perform really crappy on brother's old laptop)

J1NG

[az]

Don't notebook HDs come in different heights?

[ZokesPro]

Well the HD on Becky's laptop has gone to heaven (or possibly the other place )

The laptop is a Dell Inspiron 600m

I've never shopped for a NB HD I don't know if they are all the same size.

I am looking at a TOSHIBA Super slimline MK4026GAX 40gb 5400rpm 16mb cache. for $70

Thanks,

Yes, they are all the same size, 2.5". Any new laptop HDD should work in a 600m without problems.

[Jammrock]

Let me guess, it was a Hitachi/IBM Travelstar that was 20 or 40 GB...

Stupid ass Dell will never f'n learn.

Toshiba HDDs seem to be pretty reliable in the systems we put them in. I hear good things about the Seagate Momentus 5400.x line, and the new Western Digital Scorpio line has gotten some fantastic reviews.

Only get a 7200 RPM laptop HDD if battery life and heat are not a major concern. While they aren't too much power hungry at their 5400 RPM counterparts, they are still more power hungry than their 5400 RPM counterparts...

Jammrock

[az]

The new Momentus 5400.watever uses perpendicular recording and is therefore a bit faster than other 5400 rpm drives (higher data density).

[ayoub_ibrahim]

hmm, I've been using the hitachi 7k60 7200rpm 60Gb hdd for over 2 years and find it reliable as well as being cool & quiet.

In your position I would go for the hitachi 7k100 model which comes in 60, 80 or 100Gb flavours. the review I've read rated it as the #1 performance laptop hdd. the seagate momentus was second.

just so you know, the hitachi comes with a 3 year warranty whilst the seagate momentus has a five year one

Oh and it's 9.5mm high so it will fit in your dell.

[Fat Tone]

Yes there are different heights, there are also different screw hole locations! It's been a few years since I changed one myself but I have known occasions where I had to drill new holes in the mounting cradle to match the new drive.

[cjolley]

Thanks guys!

The OEM part is a Fujitsu MHT2030AT 40gb


1, Heat is a MAJOR consern.
I dissasembled it and the heat transfer stuff was pretty well baked on the proc.
(arctic silver to the rescue)

And the HD has NO provision for cooling.

2, I doesn't need to be extra fast, she (we) just use it for storing photos, email, and the web when we aren't in our home office. And ChooChoo can watch DVDs on it when we travel by car.

3, And reliability, of course.

I'll take a look at the other drives you all mentioned

[ayoub_ibrahim]

whichever hdd you eventually decide on, don't forget to remove the blade-like adapter on the old hdd's ide pins and transfer it over to the new hdd.

[cjolley]

whichever hdd you eventually decide on, don't forget to remove the blade-like adapter on the old hdd's ide pins and transfer it over to the new hdd.

Thanks for the tip!
It was so tight I would have assumed the new drive was just mechanically incompatible.

Chuck