Hard Drive space within 12 months

[realtadiquantu]

I have my laptop (IN SIG) with 100GB SATA Hitachi 7200RPM hard drive.

I need to upgrade to Windows Vista (for work unfortunately), and need more space.

My question: What are my best options now? I know some hard drives are shipping with 16MB cache now, will that on a 5400RPM be faster than a 7200RPM. I haven't been looking for a while, so I don't know who is on top for speed, reliability, and size.

Let me know folks!!

~Thanks, Sterling

[Daleon]

From what I've been reading the high density 5400 RPM 200GB and 250GB drives are the best overall right now. Less power and heat than the 7200s and the higher density brings performance pretty close.

[realtadiquantu]

Ok, I'm looking at either
a 200GB drive:
HITACHI Travelstar 7K200 HTS722020K9SA00 (0A50940) 200GB 7200 RPM

or

250GB drive:
SAMSUNG Spinpoint M Series HM250JI 250GB 5400 RPM
HITACHI Travelstar 5K250 HTS542525K9SA00 (0A53329) 250GB 5400 RPM
Western Digital Scorpio WD2500BEVS 250GB 5400 RPM


Does anyone have any suggestions between these four? All are very large, but the 200GB one has a 16MB cache and 7200RPM, would that be noticeably faster than these 250GB 8MB cache 5400rpm drives?

Links to found reviews are welcome also..

~Thanks,
Sterling

[realtadiquantu]

Ok, after reading this review from Storage Review:
http://www.storagereview.com/HTS722020K9A00.sr

I will pick up this drive most likely:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145160

Anyone have any bad quarrels with Hitachi?

Sincerely,
Sterling

[Daleon]

Hitachi is known for great laptop drives. Thats likely the one I'm going to get also here in a few days.

[realtadiquantu]

Jumped on the boat, and ordered one at 7am this morning from Newegg with Fedex Express Saver, only downside is it's shipping from TN instead of CA (where my items usually ship from).

Note: I saw the PAYPAL20 Coupon around the net and it did not work, so I LiveChatted a rep and they told me that the coupon was expired but they gave me a $15 discount for paying with a NON-paypal medium.

Rock on Newegg and Fedex!

[RangerXLT8]

72000rpm makes a big difference wait and see....

[FLCLFan]

You could get 2 WD 150gb raptors and raid them :)

[realtadiquantu]

You could get 2 WD 150gb raptors and raid them :)

Not inside my laptop :eek:

[realtadiquantu]

Ok, it has been a couple weeks since I have put the Hitachi 200GB in, and it runs amazingly fast... I don't notice the wait for printing Adobe PDF's anymore, CS Source loads faster, Windows loads faster... =D

I put my original Hitachi 100GB into an external USB 2.0 enclosure from newegg and that runs fine =).

I'd recommend this hard drive to anyone!