replacing hard drive

[andyjpc]

i've a vgn fs315e and have to replace the hard drive. i have the recovery disks i made from the day i bought it and i know the mechanics of replacing the hard drive, but not sure which hard drive to replace it with. i was going to just get this one

http://www.kikatek.com/product_info.php?products_id=2100&source=froogle

just to test and see if it all worked ok before getting a larger capacity one.

Anyone any advice??

[andyjpc]

help?

[Blencogo]

Hi andyjpc and welcome to Club Vaio.

Your FS315E will take any of the (Parallel) ATA drives on that site all the way up to the 160GB monsters.

There is no doubt that the faster the spindle speed, the faster access times are possible - so if speed is your concern, get a 7,200 rpm drive.

Unfortunately, speed brings some noise - so the faster the drive, the noisier it will be. However, this won't be a problem for most users. Probably a 7,200 rpm drive uses more battery and costs more to buy.

A 5,400 drive is a good compromise between speed and noise but will not give the best performance. It will give you the cheapest cost of storage though.

The decision has to be up to you - only you know how much storage you need. It does seem a bit silly to do the exercise twice and I would certainly go for the biggest drive I would be likely to use - probably around 120GB.

All manufacturers are good and reliable these days. The choice of manufacturer is not as important as it once was. Hitachi Travelstar and Seagate Momentus consistently get good reviews.



EDIT: You will save yourself a lot of work by making an image of your drive, complete with all your updates, added programs and your settings with something like Acronis True Image

[andyjpc]

Thanks a million!!!!

[George.m]

I have a fe21b with 80gb and i have purchased an western digital passport external hdd 60gb and i'm very happy with it