andruoid
Android Expert
Usually, this is not too big of a deal. You do research on what hard drives fit your budget and narrow it down further by comparing specs and reviews. That's what I did.
My laptop came with a surprisingly nimble Hitachi 5K500.B which spins at 5400rpm and has a 8MB cache. However, I really like SSDs due to them being 3x-5x faster than a spinner and adding life to a laptop's battery. Being full time at school and a family I have a strict budget. Great timing, NCIX had a sale on, Corsair F80 (80GB) SSD had a rebate of $35, bringing the price to $115.00 Cdn. Perfect for my laptop, Home Premium 64bit fully patched is 28GB and my apps another 4-5GB plus room for a virtual OS or 2.
I get the SSD home, install it and get out my 3 recovery DVDs I made. 3 steps into the recovery it stops a says: The disk doesn't have enough room, this install needs a minimum of 100GB for temp files. I nearly spit my coffee on the screen. 100GB? WTH. I used my wife's computer and Googled the issue to see why the laptop manufacturer needs 100GB to install. Turns out its true and the SSD went back to the store.
So, for the next 5-6 months I need Windows. Hate to say it but I do. Damn labsims I view for my course use Silverlight and Moonlight (linux version) just doesn't work, even the nightly builds. Why am i mentioning this? Well, I could have just installed Mint 11 and everything would have installed without an issue and would been blazing fast.
I can't afford a 120GB SSD, I'd be murdered in my sleep never to post here again, maybe some of you would like that. Well, too bad, I live.
The 2 other drives I had in mind were spinners. The WD Black series 500GB , 7200rpm, 16MB cache which is $79.00 and the Seagate Momentus XT, 500GB 7200rpm, 32MB cache and 4GB fast access memory, yup, its more or less a hybrid spinner/SSD for $109.00 Cdn.
After seeing the above Seagate beating a WD Velociraptor which runs at 10,000rpm I went for it. I'm glad I did, everything is noticeably faster. As an example, my Win7 boot time was 32 secs with the stock Hitachi drive, its now at 18secs.
I highly recommend the Momentus XT.
My laptop came with a surprisingly nimble Hitachi 5K500.B which spins at 5400rpm and has a 8MB cache. However, I really like SSDs due to them being 3x-5x faster than a spinner and adding life to a laptop's battery. Being full time at school and a family I have a strict budget. Great timing, NCIX had a sale on, Corsair F80 (80GB) SSD had a rebate of $35, bringing the price to $115.00 Cdn. Perfect for my laptop, Home Premium 64bit fully patched is 28GB and my apps another 4-5GB plus room for a virtual OS or 2.
I get the SSD home, install it and get out my 3 recovery DVDs I made. 3 steps into the recovery it stops a says: The disk doesn't have enough room, this install needs a minimum of 100GB for temp files. I nearly spit my coffee on the screen. 100GB? WTH. I used my wife's computer and Googled the issue to see why the laptop manufacturer needs 100GB to install. Turns out its true and the SSD went back to the store.
So, for the next 5-6 months I need Windows. Hate to say it but I do. Damn labsims I view for my course use Silverlight and Moonlight (linux version) just doesn't work, even the nightly builds. Why am i mentioning this? Well, I could have just installed Mint 11 and everything would have installed without an issue and would been blazing fast.
I can't afford a 120GB SSD, I'd be murdered in my sleep never to post here again, maybe some of you would like that. Well, too bad, I live.
The 2 other drives I had in mind were spinners. The WD Black series 500GB , 7200rpm, 16MB cache which is $79.00 and the Seagate Momentus XT, 500GB 7200rpm, 32MB cache and 4GB fast access memory, yup, its more or less a hybrid spinner/SSD for $109.00 Cdn. After seeing the above Seagate beating a WD Velociraptor which runs at 10,000rpm I went for it. I'm glad I did, everything is noticeably faster. As an example, my Win7 boot time was 32 secs with the stock Hitachi drive, its now at 18secs.
I highly recommend the Momentus XT.
