Help with replacing hard drive on Toshiba Satellite L505-S5593

[cb1683]

Hello.

I'm desperately looking for guidance. The hard drive on my 3 year old Toshiba Satellite L505-S5993 appears to be facing eminent demise. I have everything backed up onto my external drive so I'm not worried about the data. At this point, I'm trying to figure out my replacement drive.

At present, I have is 500GB 5400 rpm 8gb cache SATA drive. In shopping I came across Western Digital WD Scorpio Black 750 GB SATA 3 GB/s 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Internal Bulk/OEM 2.5-Inch Mobile Hard Drive but I'm not sure if my computer can handle it. I've done a SIW scan to try and determine if I have SATA3 capability, but it just says SATA. I know that if it only has SATA then the drive will only transfer at SATA speed not at SATA 3. This drive appears good and gets rave reviews so I just want to know if I would benefit from upgrading to it.

I've posted on the Toshiba forums but no one has been kind enough to honor me with a reply. Thanks in advance for any advice offered.

 

[phil22]

Your Satellite has the first generation SATA specification (now called SATA-150).
You can install a SATA II or SATA III hard drive no problem, but it will only perform as a SATA-150 drive on your Satellite.

 

[cb1683]

Thank you very much for your reply. That's what I thought but I just wanted confirmation. I was beginning to think that if your hard drive fails and you post on a tech forum that you don't make a sound. Fortunately, you've proved that theory wrong.