Hard drive dilema

[britishsligean]

My current 2.5 year old 7200rpm Hitachi 320gb travelstar notebook hard drive is starting to show its age, boot times are taking a couple of minutes as are shut downs, and reboots have taken god knows how long, yes I've done virus scans, disk def rags and registry scans, that aside i'm looking for something new but on a budget i'm looking to spend around €70 which is about $90us, ideally i would love something like an ssd or seagate momentus xt, but they're out of my budget, anyone got any suggestions? I've been primarily looking at seagate momentus 7200rpm drives and western digital blacks. 

Also when i do replace i plan on doing a fresh install of windows 7, i know a clone would be allot easier but i have allot of junk files on there that can't be removed by deleting them and i think some directoryies have become slightly dodgy from it's 2 and abit years of use, only problem is i don't have any install disk, like most companies now a days my hp dv6-3032sa never came with any, apart from a recovery partition which i see as pointless if your drive fails, how would i be able to go about doing a fresh install? in particular without all the hp bloatware. 

Sorry for all the questions i am a first time hard drive replacer, at least with a PC, any help or adive is greatly appreciated.

[Godlygamer23]

For a hard drive replacement, I've been using two WD Caviar Blue hard drives for about a year or so. Working with no issues. One's a 320GB and the other is a 500GB. You can get the 500GB off of Newegg for $60. If you want, I can do a quick benchmark to see if the performance is up to par with what you're looking for.

 

Link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136769

[britishsligean]

thanks godly, i'm in need of 2.5" not 3.5 as it's going in a notebook

[Godlygamer23]

thanks godly, i'm in need of 2.5" not 3.5 as it's going in a notebook

Woops. I didn't see that part. Lemme see what I can find.

[SkilledRebuilds]

You are fed up with it, but have been putting up with it for a bit already, on that note, could you wait longer still (to save money) so the budget is of a smaller concern, you'd be happier throwing a little more money at it for an SSD/Momentus cache drive compared to another traditional hdd.

 

I think doing a format-refurbish from the recovery, getting it back to stock, remove bloatware yourself, then clone that to your SSD/Momentus.

Just something I thought could be possible if you can save a bit more..

[Dath9]

if you dont need that much storage you can afford an SSD i think about 120gb, it depends on where you live and where you can buy it

[Godlygamer23]

Just found a Scorpio Blue 750GB for $70. It's 5400RPMs, so not sure if that's a problem for you. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136546

 

Also, an SSD might be a better idea, but it looks like the drive is on its way out. The only thing that might happen is the hard drive might fail before British can get an SSD. 

 

Also, here's a Kingston Hyper-X SSD. It's a 120GB, and it's $100 at this point. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239045

[Rhizo]

My current 2.5 year old 7200rpm Hitachi 320gb travelstar notebook hard drive is starting to show its age, boot times are taking a couple of minutes as are shut downs, and reboots have taken god knows how long, yes I've done virus scans, disk def rags and registry scans, that aside i'm looking for something new but on a budget i'm looking to spend around €70 which is about $90us, ideally i would love something like an ssd or seagate momentus xt, but they're out of my budget, anyone got any suggestions? I've been primarily looking at seagate momentus 7200rpm drives and western digital blacks. 

Also when i do replace i plan on doing a fresh install of windows 7, i know a clone would be allot easier but i have allot of junk files on there that can't be removed by deleting them and i think some directoryies have become slightly dodgy from it's 2 and abit years of use, only problem is i don't have any install disk, like most companies now a days my hp dv6-3032sa never came with any, apart from a recovery partition which i see as pointless if your drive fails, how would i be able to go about doing a fresh install? in particular without all the hp bloatware. 

Sorry for all the questions i am a first time hard drive replacer, at least with a PC, any help or adive is greatly appreciated.

Have you tried to reinstall windows? I did the same for a 5 year old harddrive and it runs perfectly. I tried defragging, reg fixing before, but it seems windows breaks itself somehow with age.

[Eric1024]

If I were you I woud hold out as long as possible and then get something like a samsung 840. That, or reinstall your operating system when you get your new drive. Windows just gets fat and slow after a while.

[britishsligean]

interms of storage space a 120Gb ssd would be pushing it for me, i would feel more comfortable with about a 240Gb+ as i have allot of games that aren't on clients like steam and i have a sizable music collection that is growing, i haven't tried doing a re-install but part of me thinks the drive is actually on the way out due to the amount of usage it has got, especially with powering on and powering off, when i had noticeable performance issues it came out of the blue, plus applications like chrome, office 2010, adobe reader and LabView experienced stalls which then lead to a not responding and subsequently had to be ended via task manager, plus i am pretty sure i heard an almighty screech although i was wearing headphone at the time. i have seen a seagate sshd thin 500gb going around my budget only downer is it's 5400rpm not 7200rpm like the xt.

[SkilledRebuilds]

Maybe start backing up the stuff you do really want to keep now, just in case it decided to fail before you work something out.

 

Go through the "Documents" folder and backup your gamesaves.

I use firefox addon "password exporter" so I can have my site passwords saved, like exporting saved bookmarks, so you can simple re-import them on a new firefox install. I'm sure alternativer browsers have the same thing that can be done.

 

Each to their own but getting the files/settings you use off the drive makes life easier down the track... like remembering passwords, having to start the game from scratch again...

 

The Seagate SSHD is a hybrid drive, while its 5400rpm is uses SSD caching for enhanced read/write speeds, it will be faster than what your using, and probably great for notebook gaming.

You could use one of the powered external USB drive for music/movies if you wanted to save space.

[Dath9]

i think then cause of your budget you can only go with a HDD 1TB WD or Seagate at 7200 rpm, if you search a bit youre gonna find a good one ;)

[britishsligean]

Maybe start backing up the stuff you do really want to keep now, just in case it decided to fail before you work something out.

 

Go through the "Documents" folder and backup your gamesaves.

I use firefox addon "password exporter" so I can have my site passwords saved, like exporting saved bookmarks, so you can simple re-import them on a new firefox install. I'm sure alternativer browsers have the same thing that can be done.

 

Each to their own but getting the files/settings you use off the drive makes life easier down the track... like remembering passwords, having to start the game from scratch again...

 

The Seagate SSHD is a hybrid drive, while its 5400rpm is uses SSD caching for enhanced read/write speeds, it will be faster than what your using, and probably great for notebook gaming.

You could use one of the powered external USB drive for music/movies if you wanted to save space.

thanks for the advice, i'm more than likely going to get the seagate sshd, as for my current hard drive i backed up all the files i want, it's probably just as well as i tried to write a 50mb folder to the drive from a usb stick and got a time remaining of nearly 8 mins, i know they're only estimates but for something like 50mb i never get them. 

i allready use a wd 1tb external for music and movies, as well as keeping exact duplicates of important files such as my college notes/assignments, it's probably just as well i did that seeing as i have my last paper due in on Friday.