A New Hard Drive

I am considering getting a new hard drive for my laptop. I know the recommendation has been a 7200 RPM harddrive. I have a Gateway M Series 7334u. Any recommendation on what brand to get? Is there anything else that I should consider? I have windows 7 64bit running on the machine. I have 4 gigs of memory. The size of the hard drive I have now is 250 Gigs.

Thanks

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Rich DeRuiter

I am considering getting a new hard drive for my laptop. I know the recommendation has been a 7200 RPM harddrive. I have a Gateway M Series 7334u. Any recommendation on what brand to get? Is there anything else that I should consider? I have windows 7 64bit running on the machine. I have 4 gigs of memory. The size of the hard drive I have now is 250 Gigs.

Thanks

Look for web sites that include user reviews of hard drives (NewEgg, e.g.). If I were buying new, I'd look for as close to a terabyte (1000 GB - yes, I know it should be 1024GB, but that's not how the marketing works anymore), as I could afford. Maybe even more. You would have to look at your Gateway spec's as to type (RAID, EIDE, etc.), as HD interfaces are still changing. I don't know if Gateway offers a web upgrade tool for your machine, but it would be one way to check on spec's, at least, and if you bought from them, you'd have more leverage, in case the drive was the wrong type, or didn't work with your machine for some other reason.

Ben

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/195657#Comment_195657

I'd consider the Seagate Momentus XT. It's a hybrid HD, with 8 Gb flash. It's kind of the best of both worlds.

David Wilson

Looks like your Gateway has an SATA 1.5 HD interface. Most SATA 3.0 drives are capable of running on this interface without any specific steps to limit the drive speed, so you are not limited to an older drive with lower capacity. I recently changed out an older drive which ran warm for a new Western Digital Scorpio Blue laptop drive - much larger capacity, runs much cooler and with longer battery life - ideal for my system.

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?DriveID=685

If your new drive does have some issues, this can usualy be corrected by applying a jumper to teh new HD to limit it to slower data transfer speeds, such as :

SATA-2 hard drives are backwards compatible with SATA-1 controllers. The same is also true with SATA-2 controllers and SATA-1 drives.
However, if you have any difficulty with drive detection using a SATA-2 drive on a SATA-1 controller, install a jumper across pins 5-6 to limit the drive to SATA-1 speeds.

Best prices and local support depend on where you are.
Did not see any of these in the Black Friday sale (on to Nov 30 in US) http://store.westerndigital.com/store/wdus/ContentTheme/pbPage.Promotions_US_2nd

Newegg often give good deals on such as these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136545

Switch hard drives in a laptop is not always easy - have you done operations such as that before yourself ?

Steve Shelton

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/195669#Comment_195669

David

I have done a change out of a hard drvie on IBM Laptops. They were pretty easy. You just pulled out the old one and pushed in the new one. It doesn't appear from my Gateway that it is that easy. I haven't done any much investigation on it. I will probably have it done. I appreciate the info.

To all the others you have responed. I appreciate your recommendation too.

Sam West

I am considering getting a new hard drive for my laptop. I know the recommendation has been a 7200 RPM harddrive. I have a Gateway M Series 7334u. Any recommendation on what brand to get? Is there anything else that I should consider? I have windows 7 64bit running on the machine. I have 4 gigs of memory. The size of the hard drive I have now is 250 Gigs.

Thanks

I replaced mine about a year ago with the one above and it was a piece of cake. it was a 160 hd 5400rpm and i replaced it with the one above and it runs like a jewel watch. it amazes me every day how much faster the 7200 runs,,,,here is the link http://www.tigerdirect.com/indexus.asp?SRCCODE=WEBGOOTD&cm_mmc_o=mH4CjC7BBTkwCjCECjCE

STEVE ALSO TIGERDIRECT WAS REAL HELPFUL IN HELPING ME MAKE MY CHOICE...GIVE THEM A CALL