Replacement Laptop hard drive

[Pob255]

It's for a friends dell (Inspiron 1520 if I remember correctly) Just out of warranty

I've not been able to give it a full check over, but she copied all her data off it and ran the built in diagnostic which came back with read errors

I'll give it a full shake down soon but it does seem like there's a fault with the drive.

The current drive in there is a Samsung Spinpoint HM250JI
Sata 250gb 5400rpm DC+5v 0.85a

For a replacement i was considering sugesting this
Western Digital WD2500BEKT 250GB 2.5" Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146084...ctype=extended

Is it worth the extra?
Or just get a new Samsung HM251JI 250GB 2.5" Hard Drive SATAII 5400rpm 8MB Cache for £32.80
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/173024

Or something else?

[Pob255]

Well unless I find no issue with the hard drive the Western Digital WD2500BEKT will be got as I can find no reason not to.

EDIT: with all the i5 stuff it's a bad time to ask about anything else

[circuitmonkey]

with twice the cache and a faster rotational speed I would think it would offer much better performance. you could also spend a bit extra and get the black edition with the free fall sensor, a bit of extra security to ensure drive doesn't get damaged again.

benchies here...

[Pob255]

Ah I thought that was the one with free fall sensor but it's just Shock Guard & SecurePark
only 7200rpm 250gb with free fall sensor ebuyer have is the Seagate ST9250410ASG
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/161677
seagate is no longer a name that inspires me with confidence and the WD has a nice 5year warranty :/

[circuitmonkey]

only a 160GB but has the free fall sensor

but scan has the 250GB

[Smasher]

There is a slight possibility of a WD/Dell incompatibility - having purchased a WD drive for a Dell laptop it kept corrupting data. The drive eventually was replaced by WD (after Scan told me it only had a 1 month return window) but I'm not entirely convinced that it was a drive issue.

Also WD had issues with Scan's method of packaging the drive (should be in a specific shipping case but Scan just wrapped it up in bubble wrap). If I could turn back time I'd buy from somewhere else and not WD. Just my two cents

[woody_294]

IMHO I'd stick with a straight swap. You may not notice the difference unless you do some data intensive stuff, encoding etc, and if it's not an uber spec laptop so it may be bottlenecked elsewhere (Southbridge etc) plus the 7200 WD will drain you battery a little quicker

Just my tuppence!

[Pob255]

Actually i'm not so sure looking at WD's spec sheet
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=483
Read/Write 2.50 Watts at +5vdc
so that's only 0.5A

Ah found the spec sheet for the Samsung Spinpoint HM250JI
http://www.samsung.com/global/busine...&model_cd=299#
Read/Write 2.0W at +5v
So why the heck has it got 0.85a written on the outside of the drive

The laptop is the inspron 1525
with, T8300, ram 2gb 800mhz and a 9cell battery
Also the original HM250JI is only sata 150mb/s not a sataII 300mb/s would that be an issue for the old GM965 Express chipset?

[Pob255]

only a 160GB but has the free fall sensor

but scan has the 250GB

Have finally had the time to run some full tests on the HD it's faulty alright
So I've talked to my friend and she's happy to pay £60 for the extra performance.
The 250gb WesternDigital WD2500BJKT Scorpio Black, 2.5", SATA 3Gb/s, 7200rpm, 16MB Cache, 12ms, FreeFall, should arrive on monday from Scan