Laptop Hard Drive Suggestion

[alex8525]

Hello All,

I am new to this forum, so pardon me if this is not a place for this question.

So, I have this laptop, Compaq Presario V6218TU, which I got about before 4-5 years. I have this hard drive in my laptop, which is original company supplied: 112GB FUJITSU MHV2120BH PL ATA Device (SATA)

Newegg link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822116021

Which is basically 120 GB, 5400 RPM, 8 MB cache, 2.5" Fujitsu drive.

I am pretty much happy with the hard drive, except it's capacity. Recently it started making loud noise (for about 6-9 months now) and it freezes laptop a few times. I think that there may be some problems with the drive, so I am regularly making backups. Now, since the drive can die at any time, I am looking to buy a replacement hard drive. I am lloking for something about 750 GB or more storage capacity. I am confused that which hard drive should I buy. Should I go for 7200 RPM or stay with 5400 RPM? Will 7200 RPM drive increase the speed? Should I buy 8 MB cache drive or go for highe cache? 16 MB or 32 MB? Which hard drive will give me speed and will not be too much costly? I have a budget of around $50 - $70, and amy be $80. Don't want to spend too much since it's a old laptop.

Following is some information I got using Speccy software:

Hard Drives
FUJITSU MHV2120BH PL ATA Device
Manufacturer Unknown manufacturer
Heads 16
Cylinders 16383
SATA type SATA-I 1.5Gb/s
Device type Fixed
ATA Standard ATA/ATAPI-7
Serial Number NW9XT7238SAL
LBA Size 48-bit LBA
Power On Count 5942 times
Power On Time 497.9 days
Features S.M.A.R.T., APM
Transfer Mode SATA I
Interface SATA
Capacity 112GB
Real size 120,034,123,776 bytes
RAID Type None
S.M.A.R.T
01 Read Error Rate 100 (100 worst) Data 0000035AC8
02 Throughput Performance 100 (100) Data 0001DD0000
03 Spin-Up Time 100 (100) Data 0000000001
04 Start/Stop Count 098 (098) Data 00000017A4
05 Reallocated Sectors Count 100 (100) Data 0000000000
07 Seek Error Rate 100 (100) Data 0000000B1A
08 Seek Time Performance 100 (100) Data 0000000000
09 Power-On Hours (POH) 077 (077) Data 0000002EAD
0A Spin Retry Count 100 (100) Data 0000000000
0C Device Power Cycle Count 099 (099) Data 0000001736
C0 Power-off Retract Count 099 (099) Data 0000000181
C1 Load/Unload Cycle Count 098 (098) Data 0000009FD8
C2 Temperature 100 (085) Data 00000D002A
C3 Hardware ECC Recovered 100 (100) Data 000000077F
C4 Reallocation Event Count 100 (100) Data 0019F30000
C5 Current Pending Sector Count 100 (100) Data 0000000000
C6 Uncorrectable Sector Count 100 (100) Data 0000000000
C7 UltraDMA CRC Error Count 200 (200) Data 0000000000
C8 Write Error Rate / Multi-Zone Error Rate 100 (100) Data 0000001723
Temperature 43 °C
Temperature Range ok (less than 50 °C)
Status Good


Please give some suggestions.

Regards,
Alex

 

[smorizio]

alex the largest drive i saw on a google search is 500g drive for your laptop. I would email Compaq and ask what the largest drive the laptop bios will read. myself i go with a 7200 rpm with 8k cache. your not going to see in normal read/write usage with a drive with a larger cache notice that your programs open faster. in bench marking the larger cache drive will be a little faster. but in real world it the drive speed and the seak times. for drives right now wd has lower failure rate the seagate. used to be seagte made better drives then wd. when your looking at drives look at there warranty soem are 12 months some are 3 to 5 years. also have to ask the vendor or google online the formatting of the drives and your os. older drives had 512 byte formatting the newer drives use 4k.
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c02749341&tmp_task=setupCategory&cc=in&dlc=en&lc=en&product=3398097

dont want put a new 4k drive and drop an old os on it and slow the drive down.