im looking to upgrade the hard drive on my laptop, and ive heard conflicting reports about them. ive heard that a higher rpm is good for people that listen to alot of music (like me, of course), but then ive also heard that its smarter just to save your money and get a cheaper, bigger one. which is true, and if rpms do matter, what is a resonable speed? thanks

FWIW

I have half my collection on an old 5600 rpm maxtor and the other half on a 120gig 7200 rpm maxtor.

I put my OS and programs on the faster drive so the system boots quicker etc, but for just tunes,either is fast enough.I can't tell any difference in access time for music files.

Higher rpm does nothing for music listening. I would say it's worse because the computer will be more noisy.

Higher rpm does mean that the drive will be faster. But because of how the data is layed out, a bigger drive with a low rpm can be faster than a smaller one with a higher rpm.

The cache is more important.

so what is a reasonable cache size to get?

I am not sure about laptop HDDs, but for desktops, 8 MB is OK.

What makes a hard drive fast

SilentPCreview did a recent review of a couple of nice quiet but good performing notebook drives. The article was geared towards using them in a desktop system, but the information still applies.

Since your notebook computer's hard drive will be running your operating system and applications, I'd consider performance in your purchase. If the hard drive was used soley to play music, I'd get the quietest drive possible (without regard to performance).

All else equal, the faster drive will use more power... perhaps a consideratin for a laptop.

That's why they put 5400 rpm drives in laptops.

well, because of price, ive abandoned the idea of getting a new internal hdd for my laptop. im looking at an external instead. it would be just for music, so youre saying that rpms are insignificant, but cache size is important, and 8mb is a good cache size?

also, what will the cache size affect for me? will it effect encoding/decoding speed or the delay from when tell a song to play and when it actually plays?

No cache size will not affect you. The argument was about the merits of cache size in a performance application. Since playing music is not a performance application, price should be your main concern.

EDIT: encoding audio is also not a performance application from a hard drive's perspective--it is CPU bound.

They dont have to be expensive and come in standard sizes usually:
Hard drives at Aria Uk

I would say "reliability" first

awsome. thanks guys. where would you recommend me buying one of these? should i go to a local computer superstore (compusa, bestbuy), or go w/ an online outfit? ive never really bought anything online. what sites have good deals that i can trust?

unfortunately, price is still going to have to be my main concern... im a poor college student. looking for one in the 80-100gb range

If you don't mind waiting for a rebate, a brick and mortar store is your best bet. If you can't wait, then try www.newegg.com

is western digital a reasonably reliable brand? best buy has a 120gb western digital hdd for $80 after rebates. that looks like the best deal ive seen. what do you guys think? ive heard that seagate and maxtor are generally considered most reliable, but i need to compromise for the sake of affordability...

edit: i know this is getting alittle off of the "general audio" topic, sorry

weird, i thought there was a hardware forum for this type of thread... <hint>

i liked the 8mb cache WD drives back in the day, i also have had good experience with seagate.

on the other hand, i'm always replacing ibm and maxtor...

experience totally varies tho


later

yeah, sorry, i dont really know what i was doing when i posted in this forum... the hardware forum would have made alot more sense. i must have been really tired.

regardless, any other opinions on a 120gb western digital hdd for $80?
(Western Digital - 120.0GB External Hard Drive)

edit: added url

See:
http://forums.sudhian.com/messageview.aspx...5&enterthread=y

it seems that most that die do so within the first year (like most things), and the one im looking at comes w/ a 1 year warrenty, so i still think im gonna get the wd. thanks for the link tho odious. it was very helpful.

FWIW my oldest hard drive in this computer is a Western Digital 40GB and it's worked flawlessly for 2 1/2 years so from my experience the thing is pretty reliable.

Hope you enjoy the new drive