are all HDD's the same apart from 2.5" or 3.5 size (upgrading my HDD)

[Mukflash]

hello,

i am upgrading my HDD to a 7200rpm from 5400rpm

I have a budget Asus X401a.

which model/part number HDD do i need, or are they all the same one fits all, just with different brand names?

also, what does 16mb, 32mb, 64mb Cache mean.

ive viewed some on amazon/ebay, dont know what to buy.

thanks.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

Hey there, Mukflash.

Beside the form factor (2.5" or 3.5") that you've mentioned. You should be aware of the interface of the drive as well, which is SATA for your laptop (at least from what I was able to find out). Also you should make sure what's the appropriate height for that drive. Standard 2.5" drives are 9.5mm, but some of the thinner laptops may use a 7mm one, which would mean that a drive with 9.5mm height won't fit in that slot.
Caching basically makes the drive faster by storing data which you might use next. The more the cache, the more the available space to store such data. But note that this depends on a lot of other factors so it's not necessary for a drive with more cache to perform better than a drive with less cache, depending on the situation. Ideally if everything is the same a drive with higher cache memory should perform faster than the same drive with lower cache memory.
Besides all of that, there are drives for different types of usage, e.g. - RAID environment, surveillance, high performance, etc. They all have different firmware and hardware features which make them perform better for the purpose they are made for. I guess for your needs, having in mind this is going to be for a laptop, you should be OK with a regular usage HDD.

Hope that helps. Please let me know if you have any questions whatsoever.
Boogieman_WD

 

[Mukflash]

I have also read of the benefits of switching to SSD (solid drive) they are a bit more expensive, but i would be willing to drop some storage space as i only ever use around 40gb

its saying I need: 128GB SATA III MLC (SSD) Solid State Drive

are all ssd's 2.5"? and do they all work in any laptop, regardless of brand name.

with hdd, their are different qualities, such as RPM speed, and MB of cache. are all SSD's the same specs?

 

[theyeti87]

I have also read of the benefits of switching to SSD (solid drive) they are a bit more expensive, but i would be willing to drop some storage space as i only ever use around 40gb

its saying I need: 128GB SATA III MLC (SSD) Solid State Drive

are all ssd's 2.5"? and do they all work in any laptop, regardless of brand name.

with hdd, their are different qualities, such as RPM speed, and MB of cache. are all SSD's the same specs?

Virtually all SATA-based solid state drives are 2.5". If a laptop is using a SATA hard drive, then a SATA SSD will also work. For $80-some you can get a beast Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD.

Any SSD would be a vast improvement over any hard drive. The benefits don't stop at Windows boot times and energy efficiency - the hard drive is the slowest component in any PC.

Look at Samsung, Sandisk, Crucial, Intel, or Mushkin for SSD brands.

 

[Boogieman_WD]

I have also read of the benefits of switching to SSD (solid drive) they are a bit more expensive, but i would be willing to drop some storage space as i only ever use around 40gb

its saying I need: 128GB SATA III MLC (SSD) Solid State Drive

are all ssd's 2.5"? and do they all work in any laptop, regardless of brand name.

with hdd, their are different qualities, such as RPM speed, and MB of cache. are all SSD's the same specs?

As @theyeti87 has correctly mentioned, you'll gain a pretty huge boost if you use an SSD for your OS instead of an HDD. Most SATA SSDs are indeed compatible and should work with the laptop, but in order to be sure you might want to contact the laptop manufacturer's customer support and ask if the SSD you've chosen is fully compatible and wouldn't have issues with firmware or anything else at all.

SSDs are static electronic devices. They don't have mechanical parts as the HDDs do, thus don't have RPM (Rotations Per Minute). The RPM is the number of rotations which the platters inside the HDD make for one minute. Besides having a lot higher transfer speeds than HDDs, SSDs have around 100 times faster access time than HDDs. This means that you'll be able to open everything much faster.

The SATA interface is backwards compatible so this shouldn't be an issue if the drive and the SATA port are different versions. However there's something you should keep in mind though. The SATA interface has 3 revisions (versions) - SATA I (150MB/s), SATA II (300MB/s) and SATA III (600MB/s). For example, this means that if your SSD has speeds of up to 400-500MB/s, but the SATA port on the laptop is SATA II, the speed will be limited to 300MB/s.