upgrading a laptop HD

[Yousuf Khan]

Got an old P3-450 Toshiba Satellite laptop with a 10GB 5400RPM drive
(hell, I'm only certain about the 10GB part, for all I know the speed
could be 3600RPM, the system is certainly old and slow enough). Have
seen a place selling a 40GB 7200RPM 2.5" laptop drive, so everything
would be much better with this upgrade: speed and capacity. Or would it?
My lap already gets burned as the system now exists, is this modern
higher-speed HD going to make my lap roast, and melt everything inside
the case?

Yousuf Khan

 

[Arno Wagner]

Got an old P3-450 Toshiba Satellite laptop with a 10GB 5400RPM drive
(hell, I'm only certain about the 10GB part, for all I know the speed
could be 3600RPM, the system is certainly old and slow enough). Have
seen a place selling a 40GB 7200RPM 2.5" laptop drive, so everything
would be much better with this upgrade: speed and capacity. Or would it?
My lap already gets burned as the system now exists, is this modern
higher-speed HD going to make my lap roast, and melt everything inside
the case?

Additional problems:
- Will the BIOS recognise it?
- Will it fit (mechanically)? (I had this problem with a really
stupid interior design in a Sony Vaio SR11k. By now it has
died of other causes and I have less stylish but far better
ebgineered hardware from IBM...)

As to whether a new disk will get hotter, look into the datasheets
of the old and new disk. No other way except to try and potentially
fail.

Arno

 

[RusH]

Have seen a place selling a 40GB 7200RPM 2.5" laptop
drive

sounds ok

, so everything would be much better with this upgrade: speed
and capacity. Or would it?

it may have a 32g barrier (not likely), but thats a small problem you
can fight with modding bios / jumpering the drive / using HDD
manufacturer tool

My lap already gets burned as the
system now exists, is this modern higher-speed HD going to make my
lap roast, and melt everything inside the case?

no but remember to keep the 'laptop' away from your laps, 'think of
the children'



Pozdrawiam.

 

[RPR]

Look up the power consumption specs for the old and the new drive and
compare them. I upgraded a Dell Inspiron (P3-500) to a 60 GB 7200 rpm
Hitachi disk, no problem. The new drive doesn't use any more power
than the old one (12 GB 5400 rpm or something like that.)

 

[Rolf Blom]

Got an old P3-450 Toshiba Satellite laptop with a 10GB 5400RPM drive
(hell, I'm only certain about the 10GB part, for all I know the speed
could be 3600RPM, the system is certainly old and slow enough). Have
seen a place selling a 40GB 7200RPM 2.5" laptop drive, so everything
would be much better with this upgrade: speed and capacity. Or would it?
My lap already gets burned as the system now exists, is this modern
higher-speed HD going to make my lap roast, and melt everything inside
the case?

Yousuf Khan

Laptop disks are usually about 5W power, but check the specs & compare.

What roasts your nuts is the CPU, and I'm not sure if power-stepping
features were available for that cpu model, maybe only for +600MHz
mobile P3 (not celerons though).

/Rolf