How to Choose a Laptop Hard Drive ~ SANE SCHOLAR

How to Choose a Laptop Hard Drive

Common hard-disk drives rely on rotating platters to store data.

A failing hard drive sends a chill up the spine of any laptop user, and rightly so. Not only are you faced with the added expense of a replacement drive, you have to reinstall your entire system. While certainly a nuisance, failure often brings opportunity, and this could be your chance to upgrade to a faster or higher-capacity drive.

Form Factor and Interface Type

In all likelihood, your laptop uses a 2.5 inch drive with a SATA interface. That's pretty much standard in today's market, but you should verify that before spending your hard-earned money. Look in your laptop's specifications or user manual for the form factor and interface type to ensure you purchase the correct drive.

HDD vs. SDD

Deciding between a hard-disk drive and a solid-state drive boils down to capacity and price versus speed and durability. Common HDDs are considerably less expensive than SSDs at higher capacities; if you're looking for massive storage space without breaking the bank, a HDD is your best option. Massive SSDs, though, can be massively expensive. Smaller-capacity SSDs are reasonably priced, and their impressive boot times, program launches and access speeds are attractive. Furthermore, unlike HDDs, SSDs have no moving parts to increase noise and heat, be damaged by laptop movement or consume more battery power.

Rotation Speed

Most laptop HDDs operate with a 5,400 RPM rotation speed compared to the common 7,200 RPM speed of desktops drives. This slower speed consumes less battery power, but it also slows access times. If you don't run high-performance applications, such as high-end games or video-authoring programs, 5,400 RPM is just fine. However, if speed is a critical issue, or you're always plugged in, you’ll notice a significant improvement with higher rotation speeds. SSDs do not have a rotation speed, because they have no moving parts; this makes SSDs faster than even 10,000 RPM HDDs.

Buffer Size

A hard drive's buffer or cache stores frequently accessed data in a more quickly accessible location. The larger the cache size, the more data can be stored there and the more drive performance is potentially improved. Standard cache sizes start at 8MB, but can be 16MB or even 32MB in size.

Storage Capacity

Your storage requirements depend on your needs. A video producer needs enormous storage space for producing length video files, as does the avid downloader of legally available media files. If your laptop is your primary computer, your storage needs are probably advanced. However, if this is just your temporary, traveling laptop that uses online storage solutions, USB drives or CDs for accessing portable data, you probably don't need a high-capacity drive.

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