Laptop hard drive compatibility?

[allfunsparker]

Hello, I was wanting to ask about a few hard drives before I buy one. The laptop I believe to be a DELL Vostro 3500 intel core i3 with windows 7.
One of the hard drives I was looking at was the Seagate 500GB BarraCuda 5400 RPM 128MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5" Laptop Internal Hard Drive ST500LM030.
Another one was WD Blue 1TB 5400 RPM 128MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5" Mobile Hard Drive WD10SPZX.
And the last one was WD Blue 750GB Mobile 9.50mm Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM SATA 6Gb/s 2.5 Inch - WD7500BPVX.
I just wanted to be sure I got the correct hard drive. Thank you for any assistance you can provide.

 

[jgustin7b]

All look good. If you are planning on getting one of the three, go for the 1tb one.

 

[dark_lord69]

If you're considering a new hard drive just make sure it's a 2.5" drive (that is a standard laptop size).
Also, since you are considering a 500GB drive I highly recommend you spend slightly more and get a solid state drive, you'll notice a huge increase in performance.

 

[jgustin7b]

And how exactly do you fit two drives in a standard laptop? If it does have two drives, go ahead. Otherwise...you may want to hold off...

 

[dextermat]

Get a samsung 500 gb, more expensive but on sale right now.
You laptop will run even better especially if you are on win 10

 

[dark_lord69]

And how exactly do you fit two drives in a standard laptop? If it does have two drives, go ahead. Otherwise...you may want to hold off...

Some laptops have more than 1 drive bay, his does not so, he will have to take out the one it came with.

(I worked as a warranty service tech for Dell and HP. Laptop hard drive replacements are easy. Motherboard replacements are the one's I didn't like to do, [even though I got good at it] they typically took up to an hour.)
Look at page 28:
http://downloads.dell.com/manuals/all-products/esuprt_laptop/esuprt_vostro_notebook/vostro-3500_service%20manual_en-us.pdf

 

[Solandri]

In addition to the 2.5" size, there's also the thickness (height) to worry about. That's what the 9.5mm is referring to in your last HDD choice - the height of the drive. 9.5mm is pretty much the standard, but there are also slimmer (6.5mm I think?) and thicker (12.5mm and 15mm). 12.5mm was actually the standard until about 5 years ago; laptops have gradually been moving to 9.5mm since then. As long as your new HDD is the same thickness or thinner, it will fit. Although a thinner drive may require some padding on top to prevent it from flopping around inside the drive bay. Your Dell is old enough it may have a 12.5mm bay, so you might need to tape a bit of foam onto the new drive to prevent it from flopping.

Also, if you opt for a 5400 RPM WD model (I believe all their Blue drives are 5400 RPM), make sure you buy it from a place with an iron-clad return policy. WD implemented an extremely short head parking timer on their 5400 RPM drives. After about 10-15 seconds of inactivity, the drive parks the heads. If Windows is installed on such a drive, whenever the heads are parked and Windows needs to access the drive, the system - display, mouse, everything - will freeze for about a half second while Windows waits for the heads to unpark. Its impact ranges from mildly annoying in office work, to deadly in gaming.

There used to be a fix about 5 years ago (called wdidle.exe) but WD removed it from its website a few years back. There are other ways to work around it, but they are annoying to implement and don't always stick (you may have to do it again every reboot). So it's best just to avoid the drives that have this bug/feature. As of a couple years ago it affected all of WD's 5400 RPM drives (including desktop Blue and Green). But I don't know if they're still doing this on their newer drives.

A SSD is a much better option though. The Samsung 500GB 850 EVO has been on sale for around $130 a couple times this holiday season. Unless you only use the laptop for browsing, email, and office tasks and don't multitask, the extra money for the SSD is well worth it.

 

[jgustin7b]

I can’t quote anything as I’m on mobile, but I have swapped hdds in the past as a diy person. It is easy to do. As long as there is enough storage for the submitter, swap out the drives anytime.