Laptop: Hard Disk Upgrade

[Guest Reimar]

Just upgraded my Laptop's HDD from an Hitachi 250 GB 5400 rpm to an WD 320 GB 7200 rpm!

The performance Index was jumping from 4.4 (Hitachi) to 5.6 (WD) which is quite a lot.

First impression is that the laptop starts now much faster. Will see with programs like Photoshop CS3 and others but the huge Excel Worksheet (192 MB) loads nearly double fast!

So, overall a big improvement.

Cgeers.

[NHJ]

do you notice a change on battery(regarding energy) ?

[Guest Reimar]

do you notice a change on battery(regarding energy) ?

I didn't use normally the battery if I've power around. Several reason but mainly because of full performance.

My laptop is an 2 year 2 month old Acer 5593 WXMi with just Intel Core 2 Duo 1.66 and 4 GB memory DDR 2 667. So in case I use the battery instead of power, the performance goes down a lot: CPU to 768 MHz instead of 1.66 GHz, that's just 50%!

By the way, I run Vista Ultimate since November 2006 without problems.

But I had notice one fact: the WD 320 isn't get that hot as the Hitachi 250! I had both of them on an desktop PC for to clone the HDD via SATA and the difference in temperature was more than 10 C!

Cheers.

[slackula]

Did you have to do anything to re-authorise or re-verify the Vista installation after changing the disk or did it just recognise the hardware and go on OK?

[Guest Reimar]

One thing why the speed is much faster is for sure because of the Cache of 16 MB the WD has instead of the 8 MB the Hitachi has, I mean beside of the rpm.

As most of the regular Windows users know, while changing the HDD and use the cloning from the old HDD to the new one, there isn't any need for to re-activation of Windows. This applies for all windows version.

But if change at the same time the MB as well, special to an different brand, than a re-activation is required.

[slackula]

<snip>

As most of the regular Windows users know, while changing the HDD and use the cloning from the old HDD to the new one, there isn't any need for to re-activation of Windows. </snip>

Cool! And usefult to know, thank you.

[nikster]

Is this a WD "black" edition? Did you get it in Thailand? The speed gains come mostly from the much better small random read/write performance. The 7200 drive is somewhat faster on large file transfers too but for small files the difference is huge. System boot up is mostly reading small files, for example.

I have a Hitachi 7k320 320GB / 7200 drive which is very fast, but overheats in my system. It seems to have a built-in overheating protection because from what I can see is that when it gets too hot, the hard disk stops working. On an OS level it looks like everything is frozen. But when I then let the laptop cool off - without shutting it down - it resumes normal operation. Never had this with my 5400 drive.

The 7K320 is supposed to have the same heat/power characteristics as a 5400 drive but I think they lied. I'd be interested to hear if the WD has similar problems. Backup operations while on a high CPU load are particularly tricky...

Anyway, make sure your laptop has good ventilation and clean the vents. And enjoy

[Guest Reimar]

Is this a WD "black" edition? Did you get it in Thailand? The speed gains come mostly from the much better small random read/write performance. The 7200 drive is somewhat faster on large file transfers too but for small files the difference is huge. System boot up is mostly reading small files, for example.

I have a Hitachi 7k320 320GB / 7200 drive which is very fast, but overheats in my system. It seems to have a built-in overheating protection because from what I can see is that when it gets too hot, the hard disk stops working. On an OS level it looks like everything is frozen. But when I then let the laptop cool off - without shutting it down - it resumes normal operation. Never had this with my 5400 drive.

The 7K320 is supposed to have the same heat/power characteristics as a 5400 drive but I think they lied. I'd be interested to hear if the WD has similar problems. Backup operations while on a high CPU load are particularly tricky...

Anyway, make sure your laptop has good ventilation and clean the vents. And enjoy

Yes, it's the Scorpio Black!

About the heat, seems to be not that hot as the Hitachi 250/5400 I had before running! While cloning the 250 to the 320 at the end of that process the 250 was much more hot than the 320!

I'll let run a test program for several hours on the laptop to see what the heat usage will be and the system slows down or not. but from working yesterday at the laptop, the HDD feels more cool. I can tell that because of the location of the HDD in the laptop which ios below my left hand while typing and rest the hand at the case below the keyboard.

By the way, the transfer speed while cloning was about 60 MB/sec (from 5400 to 7200 rpm) while cloning on the same type and speed of HDD the speed is below 50 /sec!

Cheers.

[Digitalbanana]

Just upgraded my Laptop's HDD from an Hitachi 250 GB 5400 rpm to an WD 320 GB 7200 rpm!

Where did you buy a 320Gb 7200rpm in Thailand? I looked around Pantip today and nothing on sale or listed at 7200rpm, tho I did see some 250GB 7200rpm drives listed.

[Guest Reimar]

Just upgraded my Laptop's HDD from an Hitachi 250 GB 5400 rpm to an WD 320 GB 7200 rpm!

Where did you buy a 320Gb 7200rpm in Thailand? I looked around Pantip today and nothing on sale or listed at 7200rpm, tho I did see some 250GB 7200rpm drives listed.

I bought from my Dealer because I'm in the computer business. But I'll not post a name of any of our Dealers or customers or anybody else we have business too on this or any other public site.

Think you'll understand that.

Cheers.

[Digitalbanana]

Ok so basically Joe Public cannot buy them in Thailand. 'nuff said.

[Guest Reimar]

Ok so basically Joe Public cannot buy them in Thailand. 'nuff said.

I think you didn't want to understand something?!

First at all: It's against the forum rules to promote the own business in anyway on the open public forum!

Secondly: I would never post or give the names of either Dealer, Supplier or customer on an open public forum!

Third: I would even not privately give that names out because they some base of my business and wouldn't like that my connection would spoiled by others. That was done in the past.

Fourth: I will also not give any prices out on public or private forums (see: Third)

I haven't mentioned that you can't buy that HDD in Thailand, but I'll not give you the name of my dealers or suppliers. You have to look for yourself or you buy from my company and that's totally up to you.

Cheers.

[surface]

I bought the WD 7,200 RPM (black?) two months ago in Fortune. Shouldn't be hard to find now. I was upgrading from a 4.5k RPM disk, so it was like night and day. Disk bench marks put me at about double what the old disk was capable of. I get around 90MB/s on the outer tracks, and latency is much lower than 4.5k. Boot times are less than half, maybe 1/3. Was definitely worth the upgrade.

I actually have the reciept right here. It's a Western Digital WD32000BEKT. I think the BE stands for Black Edition which is written on the drive so it's easy to spot. 5,970 out the door from HWH? All I remember is it was a stand in the middle of the walking area on either the 3rd or 4th floor (not the top, 1 lower) that has a lot of USB flash drives and accessories for sale. Very nice salesman too.

[Digitalbanana]

I bought the WD 7,200 RPM (black?) two months ago in Fortune.

Thanks for the helpful reply. I am planning to visit Fortune & Zeer in near future so will check your recommendations out. I am looking for another 320GB HD and wanted to try a faster model.

[JetsetBkk]

I bought the WD 7,200 RPM (black?) two months ago in Fortune. Shouldn't be hard to find now. I was upgrading from a 4.5k RPM disk, so it was like night and day. Disk bench marks put me at about double what the old disk was capable of. I get around 90MB/s on the outer tracks, and latency is much lower than 4.5k. Boot times are less than half, maybe 1/3. Was definitely worth the upgrade.

I actually have the reciept right here. It's a Western Digital WD32000BEKT. I think the BE stands for Black Edition which is written on the drive so it's easy to spot. 5,970 out the door from HWH? All I remember is it was a stand in the middle of the walking area on either the 3rd or 4th floor (not the top, 1 lower) that has a lot of USB flash drives and accessories for sale. Very nice salesman too.

Thanks very much for saying where you got your drive from, precisely what the model number was and how much you paid for it. Very helpful. Clearly you have no reservations about helping others on this forum.

[Guest Reimar]

I bought the WD 7,200 RPM (black?) two months ago in Fortune. Shouldn't be hard to find now. I was upgrading from a 4.5k RPM disk, so it was like night and day. Disk bench marks put me at about double what the old disk was capable of. I get around 90MB/s on the outer tracks, and latency is much lower than 4.5k. Boot times are less than half, maybe 1/3. Was definitely worth the upgrade.

I actually have the reciept right here. It's a Western Digital WD32000BEKT. I think the BE stands for Black Edition which is written on the drive so it's easy to spot. 5,970 out the door from HWH? All I remember is it was a stand in the middle of the walking area on either the 3rd or 4th floor (not the top, 1 lower) that has a lot of USB flash drives and accessories for sale. Very nice salesman too.

Thanks very much for saying where you got your drive from, precisely what the model number was and how much you paid for it. Very helpful. Clearly you have no reservations about helping others on this forum.

JetsetBKK:

As you're claimed many times to be a very well educated human, and even was like to "teach' me, YOU should really understand that I can't publish any data related to my company or give that data to anybody!

On the other hand I had bad experiences while even just gave the suppliers name to someone, had "cost" me my relation to that suppliers because of the bad talking of the person and telling to the supplier even lies.

Do you really think that I would ever gave that data out again?!

And that I use my real name, which is very well known, is an other point NOT to give any of my company data!

If I give any named out, that has and is certified with the owner of that name before incl. for to give them the infos about the details.

So, your claim that I have "reservation to help others" is quite a bit out of line and if you that very well educated human you not understand only, you would do the same if it's your business!

[Digitalbanana]

Guys, I couldn't give a rats arse about Reimars Co or some of the replies posted by same, I just wanted to know where one can buy a 320GB 7200rpm notebook in Bangkok as I have never seen one on sale?

Thanks to one other poster who suggested where this might be possible at Fortune (I haven't been there yet, but I have been to Pantip this week) and thanks to Reimar for suggesting that they are available in BKK even if thats all the information that poster wants to share.

When I do buy one, I'll let everyone know, inc Reimar:-)

Like I said 'nuff said:-)

Edited December 9, 2008 by Digitalbanana

[jeffer]

Digitalbanana, I'm probably taking a big risk in posting this highly confidential information to the forum so read it quick before it gets deleted... 

WD3200BEKT 320GB SATA II Transfer Rate 300MB/s 7200RPM Buffer 16MB 3360 baht

Listing taken from Hardware House pricelist, branches located in almost every IT Mall across Thailand. It might not be stocked in every branch but just ask and I'm sure they will locate one for you while you wait. 

[Guest Reimar]

Digitalbanana, I'm probably taking a big risk in posting this highly confidential information to the forum so read it quick before it gets deleted...

[surface]

Digitalbanana, I'm probably taking a big risk in posting this highly confidential information to the forum so read it quick before it gets deleted...

WD3200BEKT 320GB SATA II Transfer Rate 300MB/s 7200RPM Buffer 16MB 3360 baht

Listing taken from Hardware House pricelist, branches located in almost every IT Mall across Thailand. It might not be stocked in every branch but just ask and I'm sure they will locate one for you while you wait.

Wow, just checked out their website and that's a pretty sharp dive from 2 months ago. I wonder if it was just marked up a lot when I bought it since it was pretty new or if the state of the world economy is driving down prices.

Anyway, that's a great price such a large 7.2k 2.5" drive!

I guess I bought mine from this booth.

http://www.hwhinter.com/picture/Shop/Bangk...06/3P99_big.jpg

[Guest Reimar]

The official list price is US $ 99.00.

Hardware House is the WD Master Dealer and Importer for Thailand.

If you compare the price for the 2.5" 320 GB 7200 rpm with an also 2.5" 300 GB 10,000 rpm HDD (Veloci Raptor), there is a huge difference!

Unfortunate the 10,000 rpm HDD is 12. mm thick and you can't place in an Laptop while the max thickness should be 9.5 mm.

Cheers.

[Digitalbanana]

I bought the WD 7,200 RPM (black?) two months ago in Fortune. Shouldn't be hard to find now. I was upgrading from a 4.5k RPM disk, so it was like night and day. Disk bench marks put me at about double what the old disk was capable of. I get around 90MB/s on the outer tracks, and latency is much lower than 4.5k. Boot times are less than half, maybe 1/3. Was definitely worth the upgrade.

I actually have the reciept right here. It's a Western Digital WD32000BEKT. I think the BE stands for Black Edition which is written on the drive so it's easy to spot. 5,970 out the door from HWH? All I remember is it was a stand in the middle of the walking area on either the 3rd or 4th floor (not the top, 1 lower) that has a lot of USB flash drives and accessories for sale. Very nice salesman too.

The above information is totally correct and the newer price listed by Jeffer

>WD3200BEKT 320GB SATA II Transfer Rate 300MB/s 7200RPM Buffer 16MB 3360 baht

is also true.

After walking around Pantip without luck, but I dont know where Hardware House is in Pantip, and a while around Fortune with out of stock replies, I found the above stand in the middle of the walking area on 4th floor. They are an Hardware House outlet and had several of the discs for sale and a helpful sales clerk as mentioned.

[ungcas]

<br />Just upgraded my Laptop's HDD from an Hitachi 250 GB 5400 rpm to an WD 320 GB 7200 rpm!<br /><br />The performance Index was jumping from 4.4 (Hitachi) to 5.6 (WD) which is quite a lot.<br /><br />First impression is that the laptop starts now much faster. Will see with programs like Photoshop CS3 and others but the huge Excel Worksheet (192 MB) loads nearly double fast!<br /><br />So, overall a big improvement.<br /><br />Cgeers.<br />

<br /><br /><br />

bought one of those last month.. Now have a raid 0 setup on my laptop. It really zips through everything.. Unrar a dvd in 90 seconds. I would highly recommend it as well. The prices of hds are so cheap now

[gcrutcher]

Hi All,

Just purchased a Western Digital WD3200BEKT from Hardware House, Central Pinklao, for 3,100 baht.

Will be installing it next week after school is out for XMAS holiday.

Will let you know how well it works.

Gary

[gcrutcher]

Hi All,

After upgrading my laptop hard drive from a 100GB 5400 rpm sata to a 320 GB 7200 sata (WD3200BEKT), the results are in.

The install was a piece of cake - approx. 20 minutes to remove the old drive and install the new drive.

Installed VISTA OEM for Acer Laptops - complete install took 20 minutes ( I have an Acer 5674 WLMi).

My boot up time went from about 5 minutes (the point where I could actually do something on the laptop) down

to about 90 seconds. I also tweaked the boot up using msconfig.

Installs were amazingly fast - about the same speed as my desktop (same configuration as my laptop: 2 GHz Dual core

Intel CPU, 2GB ram).

Opening applications is very quick (especially photoshop which took about 40 seconds to get up and running and

now takes about 10 secs.).

The one thing that annoyed me with my old drive was when opening explorer, I could not scroll through a directory

until all the small icons were displayed - sometimes waiting up to 30 seconds. Now, it's pretty much instantaneous

with a slight hiccup at the beginning. Still a lot faster than the old drive.

Some people may not like vista, but I had been using it on my desktop for about 5 months, playing some great games

while continually downloading movies. Never a crash. Not even when left4dead kept crashing - vista still remained running

strong. I am NOT a Microsoft fan, but I must say this operating system is much better than XP.

All of the acer drivers I downloaded for vista work great - no problems at all.

If anyone has any questions about the install, drop me a note.

Gary

[Digitalbanana]

the results are in.

The results are somewhat distorted however since it sounds like you have reinstalled everything from scratch, though I am glad you are happy and the increased speed is clear to see. However you did not tell us the status of your original 100GB drive? Was it full, fragmented, full of bloatware etc? Had you done a direct clone of it onto your new faster 320GB drive you might not have seen the new speeds you get? So it is good you have started from fresh with a new install of everything it seems, something most of us have no time to do.

Had you reinstalled everything on your old 100GB drive, that might have increased performance also, though I wouldn't waste time doing that now we you have the newer drive.

And thanks for sharing kindly where you able to buy this hard drive in Bangkok like some others are willing to do;-)

[Digitalbanana]

the results are in.

The results are somewhat distorted however since it sounds like you have reinstalled everything from scratch, though I am glad you are happy and the increased speed is clear to see. However you did not tell us the status of your original 100GB drive? Was it full, fragmented, full of bloatware etc? Had you done a direct clone of it onto your new faster 320GB drive you might not have seen the new speeds you get? So it is good you have started from fresh with a new install of everything it seems, something most of us have no time to do.

Had you reinstalled everything on your old 100GB drive, that might have increased performance also, though I wouldn't waste time doing that now we you have the newer drive.

And thanks for sharing kindly where you able to buy this hard drive in Bangkok like some others are willing to do;-)

[Digitalbanana]

The results are somewhat distorted however since it sounds like you have reinstalled everything from scratch, though I am glad you are happy and the increased speed is clear to see. However you did not tell us the status of your original 100GB drive? Was it full, fragmented, full of bloatware etc? Had you done a direct clone of it onto your new faster 320GB drive you might not have seen the new speeds you get? So it is good you have started from fresh with a new install of everything it seems, something most of us have no time to do.

Had you reinstalled everything on your old 100GB drive, that might have increased performance also, though I wouldn't waste time doing that now we you have the newer drive.

And thanks for sharing kindly where you able to buy this hard drive in Bangkok like some others are willing to do;-)

[Digitalbanana]

.

Edited January 3, 2009 by Digitalbanana

[Digitalbanana]

Apologies for repeated replies... I have no idea what happened there! Mods, pls clean it up... ooops