Laptop drive for a desktop

I put together a Pentium II box for use on my brother-in-law's lobster boat. It just runs a navigational system and works perfectly except that the hard drives don't live more than a year. I'm thinking of putting a laptop drive in it, should be more durable, maybee? Heat, cold and vibration from a big rumbling diesel engine.
What do you think? will a laptop drive survive a boat enviroment? Will I need any special adapters for the power and/or IDE connectors?

Nah, I dont think it will buy you much. Laptop drives have some improvment in parking the heads in response to a drop. But I am unaware of anything for vibrations and heat/cold extremes.

How much drive space do you need. Could you use a 1gb or 2 gb pc card flash?
I made my kid a game machine laptop in the car, that uses those, be amazed once you strip fluff how much can be done in 1gb

Yes you will need a adapter, they usually come with a molex connector for power, they can be had cheap enough

It should help a bit, just make sure you get one with FDB (almost all new ones have it) and the adapters are only $5 off the web. I'll see what I can find for you.

Remember those hard drive silencers that suspend the hard drive with rubber bands to reduce vibration? Something like this: http://www.bytewizecomputers.com/products/7/70/428/5454

That might be worth looking in to.

Cable Club.Com Corp. has them for $4 w/Free shipping (1-888-880-0686)
*When Ordering Mention Price Watch http://www.bonuscable.com/product_info.php?products_id=1046

Thanks for the replies and the info. NewEgg has got Toshiba and Fugitsu 20 gig laptop drives for $69. I think I'll try one of those with an adapter and maybee try mounting it with some foam rubber and velcro. Don't need much for storage space it's running with an old 2-gig seagate right now.