andruoid

Usually, this is not too big of a deal. You do research on what hard drives fit your budget and narrow it down further by comparing specs and reviews. That's what I did.

My laptop came with a surprisingly nimble Hitachi 5K500.B which spins at 5400rpm and has a 8MB cache. However, I really like SSDs due to them being 3x-5x faster than a spinner and adding life to a laptop's battery. Being full time at school and a family I have a strict budget. Great timing, NCIX had a sale on, Corsair F80 (80GB) SSD had a rebate of $35, bringing the price to $115.00 Cdn. Perfect for my laptop, Home Premium 64bit fully patched is 28GB and my apps another 4-5GB plus room for a virtual OS or 2.

I get the SSD home, install it and get out my 3 recovery DVDs I made. 3 steps into the recovery it stops a says: The disk doesn't have enough room, this install needs a minimum of 100GB for temp files. I nearly spit my coffee on the screen. 100GB? WTH. I used my wife's computer and Googled the issue to see why the laptop manufacturer needs 100GB to install. Turns out its true and the SSD went back to the store.

So, for the next 5-6 months I need Windows. Hate to say it but I do. Damn labsims I view for my course use Silverlight and Moonlight (linux version) just doesn't work, even the nightly builds. Why am i mentioning this? Well, I could have just installed Mint 11 and everything would have installed without an issue and would been blazing fast.

I can't afford a 120GB SSD, I'd be murdered in my sleep never to post here again, maybe some of you would like that. Well, too bad, I live. The 2 other drives I had in mind were spinners. The WD Black series 500GB , 7200rpm, 16MB cache which is $79.00 and the Seagate Momentus XT, 500GB 7200rpm, 32MB cache and 4GB fast access memory, yup, its more or less a hybrid spinner/SSD for $109.00 Cdn.

After seeing the above Seagate beating a WD Velociraptor which runs at 10,000rpm I went for it. I'm glad I did, everything is noticeably faster. As an example, my Win7 boot time was 32 secs with the stock Hitachi drive, its now at 18secs. I highly recommend the Momentus XT.

Last edited by andruoid; July 29th, 2011 at 01:31 AM.

SUroot

I always go seagate. If you've got sizable removable storage, create an image next time

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andruoid

That would have been ideal, I wish I had done that. No worries, I like this Seagate, the performance is fantastic and I have loads of room.

johnlgalt

With my Desktop, I'm sticking to my spinners for storage, but I'm debating on whether I shuold buy a new Intel 510 series SATA 3 ^ GB/s HD for the OS drive. Currently, the Intel X25-M 80 GB Gen 2 is on its way to Intel to be evaluated and replaced under warranty after getting fried (and I sincerely hope that it gets replaced, else I'm out the $200 I paid for it last year) but it looks like I may have extra cash this month to spend on something....

Nice to see the Hybrid drive giving great results like that - I might consider it for a future laptop build, unless I get a laptop that supports dual drives - then it will be an SSD and a spinner.

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Files for the Motorola® DROID® BIONIC®:
Motorola USB drivers v5.5.0- 32bit | Motorola USB drivers v5.5.0- 64bit | Motorola RSD Lite v5.7

andruoid

John, you must be looking at an Alienware or similar laptop, I'm envious

So far, battery life seems about the same when comparing the stock Hitachi 5k500.B vs the new Seagate Momenus XT. My class is from 8 to 12 in the mornings. I can make it through without being plugged in on a 6 cell battery. I'm not doing anything heavy, standard day is reading a PDF, using Cisco Packet Tracer simulation software and WiFi for about 1 hour.

Its a great timer, the battery gets to 10% I know its time to go home

johnlgalt

For dual drives, yeah, but that is in the future. For now, I like my desktop.