Impossible to find new 2.5" IDE 7200 rpm drives now???

[aeridyne]

I need to find a laptop hard drive, IDE type in 7200 rpm flavor.

Reason being for a speed boost on an old Inspiron 2200 for a friend. I'm trying to not spend a fortune on it, I've been able to find a ton of 5400 and also some expensive prices on 100+ gb IDE 7200 drives. (Sata 5400 drives are seeming to be by far the most common now). A 40/60/80 would do fine, something like 40 to 80 dollars a pop or better respectively would be ideal, I can find them on ebay too, but I want 7200 rpm, brand new, brand new being the hardest part it seems, fairly cheap, anything over like 90 bucks is probably too much as I'll be lucky to get 80 bucks for the upgrade as it is.

I've already searched the following places to no avail;
newegg
tigerdirect
amazon
buy
frys
axiontech
geeks
outpost
compusa
bestbuy
staples
officemax
officedepot
surpluscomputers
server supply (is ALL their stuff used/refurb or what?)
zipzoomfly
and a bunch of other places I can't specifically remember.

I need help, its like trying to find long lost treasure at this point, haha, all help is appreciated, I'd love to find some new ones I can pick up for a decent price.

Thanks everyone!

 

[aeridyne]

Oh come on now, really? No one knows where or can find some? Am I really no better at searching for parts than others?

 

[sminlal]

A Google search for "2.5 7200 sata" came up with this Newegg page:

http://www.newegg.ca/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=380&name=Laptop-Hard-Drives

...which has a couple of 7200rpm laptop drives for $79.99 and $69.99.

 

[parleyp]

He is looking for ide not SATA...Since ide is older, it will be harder to find.

I found lots of 5400 rpm drives at cdw...

http://www.cdw.com/shop/search/results.aspx?wclss=T75&Brand=FUJ|SEA|THD|WES&Attr2047=TRANS50024955|TRANS50045602|TRANS50008591|TRANS50005920|TRANS50015537|TRANS50505093&Attr3816=TRANS50090223&SortBy=TopSellers

None of the other usual sites have much of a selection regardless of spindle speed.

 

[sub mesa]

You may also want to look at some PATA flash devices, that plug directly on Parallel ATA port. At least that would give a decent boost to OS performance.

 

[sminlal]

He is looking for ide not SATA...Since ide is older, it will be harder to find.

Why so he is - my bad!

Here's another link with some cheap 7200RPM IDE laptop drives:
http://www.google.com/products?hl=en&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=100&lr=&as_filetype=&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=all&as_rights=&as_occt=any&cr=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&safe=off&q=7200+2.5%22+IDE

 

[aeridyne]

Yes, I have looked over various searches, including that google search with the same search string, it seems the only one in there I could find that was not ludicrously priced was the Hitachi 60gb for sale supposedly new on Ebay. The drive must be new, must be IDE, and I thought 7200 should be a requirement too.

but

Others have raised a few good points, and something I was wondering about actually too, the SSD idea isn't a bad one, but, I think for the money I would sink into a decent IDE SSD device that had read/write comparable to 50mb/sec or so, I don't know how much it would be, which ones I could pick from, and likely that it would be double or more the cost of one of those Hitachi drives, which come close to 50 mb/sec I think.

The other thing I was wondering, is if there are any 5400 rpm drives that are IDE that I could find new right now, that would come close or potentially be even better than these Hitachi drives that came out in 2005. Here is a link to the drives I'm referring to, and also an article on Tom's here about the drives with some numbers;

http://www.drivesolutions.com/cgi-bin/shop/store.cgi?command=features&kind=laptop&pos=0&type=Laptop

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/fast-furious,1169-8.html

I know there are some WD Scorpio Blue drives that are out and still being produced from what I hear, but I'd guess the Hitachi drives to actually be capable of longer life actually, and I don't know how that WD driver performs, or any other 5400 I can get my hands on as I know I've seen lots of 5400s new available.

 

[sub mesa]

HDDs do 0,01MB/s - 0,1MB/s in random read workloads. That's where 50MB/s yields a significant difference.

 

[aeridyne]

I think on another forum, anand that we've basically come to a pretty good conclusion, not sure if I can link to other forums here though or if that is against the rules.

 

[sub mesa]

I can't believe that is against the rules, if it is relevant to the topic. I think you should feel free to post relevant URLs here.

 

[aeridyne]

Cool cool, well for the benefit of all, check this one out then;
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=29746713&posted=1#post29746713

And this is where I got a LOT of really good info on the best of the best in oldschool IDE;
http://forum.notebookreview.com/hardware-components-aftermarket-upgrades/264209-review-samsung-hm160hc-worlds-fastest-ata-ide-mobile-hard-drive-3.html
(really freaking good article, clears up a LOT of stuff)

 

[aeridyne]

My last question is which drive is expected to last longer, and I can find MTBF data on the Samsung here;
http://www.shop.bt.com/products/samsung-spinpoint-m5-2-5--160gb-5400rpm-8mb-cache-64RL.html

Looks like 60,000 parks and 330,000 hours of operation.

The WD on the other hand, I can't find SQUAT for reliability numbers other that the touted 3 year warranty. ???

 

[MRFS]

I would experiment with something like this, to replace
the current 2.5" HDD in that laptop:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820208445&Tpk=N82E16820208445

Just remember that the "133" in ATA-133 refers
to 32 bits x 33 MHz ~= 1,056 Mb/sec / 8 = ~132 MB/sec.

Thus, no PATA/IDE SSD can transmit data over its
parallel channel any faster than 133 MB/second.


Then, save all data files to a large USB flash drive e.g.:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233111&Tpk=N82E16820233111

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=1309439130&Description=Corsair%20USB%20flash&name=64GB

... using one of the 3 x USB 2.0 ports:

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=2254


... and/or use the Internet and/or a storage server on a LAN
to archive private data files.


MRFS

 

[MRFS]

p.s. You may need to shrink the C: partition
in order to be able to restore a drive image
to a 32 GB PATA SSD. We've recently discovered
Partition Wizard, and it works great:

http://www.partitionwizard.com/ (FREE too!)

32 GB should be enough for any modern OS.


Hope this helps!


MRFS

 

[MRFS]

See also: http://www.laptopdrivestore.com/


MRFS

 

[MRFS]

Please excuse the multiple posts:
several ideas have occurred to me
in between the posts above.


FYI: we are having success with this
USB PATA external enclosure sold
by Radio Shack:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=3295841

Because this external enclosure is designed to work with older USB 1.0
ports too, it has 2 USB connectors: so, those 2 connectors need to be
connected first, before the HDD is connected to the other end of the
USB cable provided.


We have a 160 GB Samsung PATA/IDE 2.5" HDD running fine
in that external enclosure:

http://www.samsung.com/au/consumer/pc-peripherals/hard-disk-drive/25-pata-hdd/HM160HC/index.idx?pagetype=prd_detail

Here's the 120 GB version of that Samsung PATA/IDE 2.5" HDD:

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/hdd/productmodel.do?group=72&type=94&subtype=99&model_cd=293&tab=fea&ppmi=1087


So, it would be wise to purchase 2 of these Samsung HDDs,
and format both with 2 identical partitions: C: @ 32 GB for the OS,
and remainder for data. Then, if the internal HDD fails,
the external one can replace it easily.

Just remember to write copies of C:'s drive image to both
data partitions, as a fail-safe measure.


MRFS