M1210 hard drive upgrade

[johnsonVT]

I want to upgrade the hard drive in my XPS M1210, but I'm not sure about performance of the drives I'm considering. I currently have an 80 GB SATA 5400 RPM drive installed, and I thought that I wanted to upgrade to 120 GB at 7200 RPM. So I looked around and found a couple that looked promising, but I found something else too....a 160 GB at 5400 RPM SATA drive. At first blush, the 120 GB drive seems better, but the 160 GB drive offers 3.0 Gb/s transfer rates, while all the 7200 RPM drives I've found are only SATA 150.

First: can my M1210 handle the 3.0 Gb/s transfer rates? (2 parts to this question...1) would it work at all?...If yes, would it work at 3.0 Gb/s, or just at SATA 150 speeds?)

Second: which would have better performance, 7200 RPM at 1.5 Gb/s or 5400 at 3.0 Gb/s?
FYI, the 3.0 Gb/s drive I'm looking at is a Toshiba MK1637GSX.

Any help you can give is appreciated.

[sakor1]

There are currently no 7200rpm 2,5" notebook drives on the market with a capacity greater than 100GB for starters... So re-assess what you want considering this fall in capacity from what you expected.

Stu

[Ryu1976]

Im not positive on this but I dont think our m1210's support the 3.0 Gb/s. I had looked at that same drive. They are rare and as far as purchasing drives in the stor, its hard enough finding a SATA one. I just purchased a new drive for my m1210. I went on new egg and got a Hitachi that is 160 GB with 5400 RPM but uses that new perpendicular. My current drive is 60 GB 5400 so Im hoping its just as fast or even maybe a little faster. Supposedly that new Perpendicular Technology will take less power and run faster but I guess Ill see when I get it. I would like 7200 but the smaller size of those turn me away.

[Yoob@NBF]

The FASTEST drives on the market are either 160GB 5400 RPM drives featuring perpendicular technology or the 100GB 7200RPM drives. Both are fast for different things but still great buys. I would personally prefer the 160GB since the platter size is so much bigger compared to the 100GB drives not to mention the 160GB drives are vastly cheaper.

[Ryu1976]

I wanted to let everyone know I got my 160 Gig Perpendicular Drive Hitachi Travelstar. Put it in my Dell m1210 it recognized right away. Im loading a game on it as we speak. I will say I have ran a few drive tests and it is plenty fast. Its faster then the 5400 rpm 60 gig that came with the notebook.

Anyone looking for a drive I would say go ahead and get the 5400 rpm perpendicular writing. You wont be dissapointed in the performance by any means.

Also if your looking at this model and wondering if it works on your m1210 I can tell you it does. Was easy to installed and recognized right away.

I purchased mine of new egg for about 119 then I slapped a 30 1 year plan on it with rush shipping it was total around 160 way less then you would pay on Dells website