I'm thinking about upgrading my laptop's hard drive in the next month or so. This laptop is to last my through University (or as far as possible) and I like upgrading things. Its currently got a 5400RPM, 500GB harddrive in it (a Hitachi TravelStar drive, not sure the exact model). With my 40GB Ubuntu partition I'm sitting with about 40GB free on the Windows drive (I'm terrible at cleaning out... I like my videos downloaded rather than streamed).
My first thought is to aim for the usual 1TB mark. Something like this http://www.ebuyer.com/192247-wd-1tb-scorpio-blue-oem-hard-drive-wd10tpvt A bog standard 1TB 2.5" HDD I can chuck into a caddy, copy my entire HDD over then stick in my laptop. This might be a little slower than my current drive though but would the overall futureproofed storage make it worthwhile? Truth be told 1TB might be too cavernous even for me.
As its a laptop getting an SSD outright is a bit out of my price range (a 512GB SSD would cost me in excess of £300 as it stands) but while I was looking this came up http://www.ebuyer.com/321969-seagate-750gb-momentus-xt-ssd-st750lx003
A 750GB hybrid SSD/HDD combination. It basically caches up to 8GB of data from the 750GB harddrive to the SSD. The result should be that more frequently accessed data (e.g. Windows boot files, Firefox) should be loaded as fast as it would on a standard SSD while still retaining the capacity of a standard HDD. My one issue with this would be how well it copes with my dualbooting habits. I tend to mess with Ubuntu a lot and often need to reinstall it. My worry is that this constant change between Windows and Ubuntu could slow down the drive as it overwrites cached files with ones it thinks are accessed slightly more. Anybody have experience with a drive like this?
The other thing is that I'm looking for a nice eSATA 2.5" caddy to do the copying. My laptop has an eSATA port so I figure I may as well aim for the faster transfer speed and my budget is in the range of "Not much over £100" if it can be helped.
My first thought is to aim for the usual 1TB mark. Something like this http://www.ebuyer.com/192247-wd-1tb-scorpio-blue-oem-hard-drive-wd10tpvt A bog standard 1TB 2.5" HDD I can chuck into a caddy, copy my entire HDD over then stick in my laptop. This might be a little slower than my current drive though but would the overall futureproofed storage make it worthwhile? Truth be told 1TB might be too cavernous even for me.
As its a laptop getting an SSD outright is a bit out of my price range (a 512GB SSD would cost me in excess of £300 as it stands) but while I was looking this came up http://www.ebuyer.com/321969-seagate-750gb-momentus-xt-ssd-st750lx003
A 750GB hybrid SSD/HDD combination. It basically caches up to 8GB of data from the 750GB harddrive to the SSD. The result should be that more frequently accessed data (e.g. Windows boot files, Firefox) should be loaded as fast as it would on a standard SSD while still retaining the capacity of a standard HDD. My one issue with this would be how well it copes with my dualbooting habits. I tend to mess with Ubuntu a lot and often need to reinstall it. My worry is that this constant change between Windows and Ubuntu could slow down the drive as it overwrites cached files with ones it thinks are accessed slightly more. Anybody have experience with a drive like this?
The other thing is that I'm looking for a nice eSATA 2.5" caddy to do the copying. My laptop has an eSATA port so I figure I may as well aim for the faster transfer speed and my budget is in the range of "Not much over £100" if it can be helped.
