Upgrading my Laptop Drive, Help Needed

coolgeorge · TweakNOOB Joined: 02 Mar 2007 Posts: 1

Hi,

I'm looking to upgrade laptops harddrive from the 5400rpm to 7200rpm. Anyone done this before? Any noticeable gains in performance on a Celeron 1.6M? I already got a quote from www.rescuetechusa.com that they will do it for $130.

Thanks,
George

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HoseB · SirTweaksabit Joined: 03 Oct 2003 Posts: 260

Performance gain will be small, battery life will be less, and you'll have more heat.... probably not worth the effort.

sickofsoyo · Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 8:11 am Post subject:

there is mostlikely a hatch on the bottom of the computer which holds the hdd, you have to unscrew the panel, take out the caddy, removed cables, and install new one. Some though, have a tray which slides out, make sure you unscrew it first and it should slide out the side.
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smith.p.sean · Posted: Mon Apr 09, 2007 2:46 pm Post subject:

Your load times and save times will be significantly faster on games and other applications that do not run in memory. The heat will increase slightly, but not enough to worry about. Your OS startup will be faster as well. To see a side by side comparison, find the seek times on both the currently installed drive and the one that you are looking to get.

Your battery life will decrease slightly as HoseB said, but if your looking for performance then this is not something to write off as not worth the effort. Hard drives at 5400 rpms are the biggest bottleneck found in Laptops today. It should be the first thing your looking to upgrade, even over ram for increased load speeds.

Sean

fussnfeathers · Lord of the Tweak Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 2763

I'll agree here. I recently upgraded my mom's work laptop from a 5400 to a 7200, and the performance gains are very noticable. Battery life is barely impacted, as well, but your mileage will vary on the machine you have.

Installing one is easy as well, no harder than installing a desktop hard drive. Do a search for your model of laptop, and you should find instructions on how to replace the drive. Usually, it's a large-ish hatch on the opposite side from your optical drive.

It's well worth the upgrade, IMO.
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