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Faster Hard Drive for Inspiron 8200 Needed

post #1 of 9
5/27/07 at 5:26pm
Thread Starter 
Hey All,

Looking to speed up my old Inspiron 8200 and am thinking that a newer hard drive, while giving me more space, would also give me more speed since that hard drive just runs and runs for upwards of 5 mins from the time you start the computer to the time that you are really able to use windows. I know hard drives have come along way since that notebook was made with faster rpm and larger caches so I wanted to ask all the assembled geeks what they thought the fastest hard drive (without getting silly like the new solid state drives) was that would work with this notebook (so no sata). Size is not my biggest concern, I am using a 40GB now and at least a 60GB would be nice, bigger if it is not a hugh price increase, my biggest goal right now is simply speed of the drive.

I have run the ram up as high as it can go, and the startup programs are stripped down to the ones I really want so this is the next step. Any thoughts, ideas and/or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Lets see if we can crank a few more horse power out of this old gal.

Doug
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post #2 of 9
5/27/07 at 5:58pm
60GB 7200RPM drives are the sweet spot for a notebook of your age if you really want to go all out you can also still get 100GB 7200RPM notebook drives as well.
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post #3 of 9
5/27/07 at 6:06pm
Thread Starter 
Like I said in the initial post, if the 100GB is faster than the 60GB, i believe I would go with the 100GB. Speed is my real concern here and I know it is not all about the rpms tho those definatly help. I want speed, so I believe that is a combination of plater density, rpms, and cache (or I could just be talking out my ass here and not knowing what I am talking about) any more thoughts would be appreciated.

Doug
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post #4 of 9
5/27/07 at 11:13pm
Quote:
I know it is not all about the rpms
For hard drive, it almost is all about rpms. Sure there's some with more cache, and some with denser platters due to the bigger size, but deep down, the rotational speed is where it counts. The 100 is slightly faster, but not that much faster to merit extra money for un-needed space. If you can go with 60gbs of storage, by all means go with that in the 7krpm, you will not see a difference between that and the bigger one.
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post #5 of 9
5/27/07 at 11:28pm
Thread Starter 
Any brand recomended over another these days, I see segate has nice warranties, but was unsure if there was a perfered of the nerds here.

Doug
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post #6 of 9
5/28/07 at 11:21am
Hitachi is generally the best way to go for PATA they have a long history of producing great 7200RPM products and at the moment for SATA its the ONLY way to get a 200GB 7200RPM drive.
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post #7 of 9
5/30/07 at 6:25pm
For reference, I have two Hitachi drives. A 80GB 7Krpm HDD and 160GB 5Krpm HDD and because of the higher density of the 160GB drive, even with lower RPMs, it's about identical in speed as the 80GB drive. I've have even run HD tach to confirm this and they were about identical. So keep in mind that RPMs isn't always a good reference as far as hard drive speed when comparing two different hard drives. I'm sure other people here would a agree with me.

Also, if your computer is taking 5min to boot up, I think it's time to reformat and reinstall windows. Maybe even doing a simple defrag will help a little bit. But 5mins is ridiculous and thats just poor maintenance on the user end.
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post #8 of 9
5/30/07 at 6:43pm
Thread Starter 
First let me clarify, when I say boot I refer to the time from when I hit the power button, to when the hard drive stops trying to spin apart at max rpm (ie light lit solid). I have upped the ram to 2GB, defraged with Diskeeper (not windows defrager), stopped all but 3 needed startup programs. I believe there is a 5400 Hitachi 40GB in there now. just trying to get things sped up a little more.

Doug
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post #9 of 9
6/5/07 at 4:27am
yeah a 60, 80, 100gb 7200rpm drive will reduce your load up time by a noticeable amount.
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