Upgrade laptop hard drive

[iminow]

My Acer 5610 laptop has a 60GB IDE hard drive which is full and there isn't much I want to get rid of. I'm considering upgrading the drive.

1) Is there a limit on the capacity of a replacement h/drive I can install?

2) The existing h/drive is a Seagate - are other manufacturers drives interchangeable?

[osprey4]

I see 160GB drives for this model, but some appear to be IDE and others SATA, so you need to double check with Acer support.

Pretty much any 2.5" notebook drive should work.

[ShyguyXPC]

If your Drive is IDE your replacement will have to be as well.

also keep in mind there are TWO different Drive Heights, its been awhile but if I remember right it was 9.5mm and 12.5mm heights or thickness's for the drives.

as osprey mentioned you'll have to check with Acer Support to find out the Heights of the current Drive, and then go from there.

another factor to keep in mind, there's various RPM speeds for the Drives as well, up to 7200RPM, I think there are some faster 10,000RPM drives out there, but these are mainly really high end drives.

but I've seen 4200RPM, 5400RPM, and 7200RPM for regular laptop drives, you'll also have to find out what the max RPM drive the laptop will support as well.

once you have all that info at hand, then you can start looking for Drive Capacities, what the max size is you can get.


Here's some basic Info on that laptops model number: Acer Support - Aspire 5610 Series Specifications

but has nothing of use to go with in regards to the Hard drive Upgrade, just that it states 80GB and up, but varies by model.

[iminow]

Hi - thank you for your help - according to 'My Computer' the drive is listed as - IDE/DISK/ST96812A - I am presuming this is therefore an IDE drive!
I have seen a 250GB IDE drive - I am presuming from what you say it should work OK.

[iminow]

Hi SKYGUY - thank you so much for your help, I have checked on the net and the existing drive is
7 cm x 10 cm x 9.5 mm and runs at 5400RPM so I will bare that in mind when looking for an upgrade.

[ShyguyXPC]

cool, glad it helped. I know how hard it is to find a good replacement drive.

I have a friends (Brothers friend) old laptop, they still have to give me some money for to upgrade the RAM and Hard drive in, as its an older Pentium M laptop and has a 4200RPM IDE drive in it, and its also a 9.5mm drive, a mere 10GB in size

granted it runs Windows 2000, but once I get it upgraded I want to get him on at least Windows XP in it.

I did find a replacement drive for it though, I think it was a 160GB drive, or something similar, just waiting for him to get the money so I can order the parts.

most likely he'll end up buying a new laptop and just give me the old one, I suspect anyways, he's kind of like that LOL. Did that with his first Xbox 360, had a defective DVD Drive and gave the entire fully functional system to me, just needed to replace the drive and I'd have a fully working free Xbox, but when my brother was home on leave last year, before he left he pulled the old switcheroo and swapped it with his fried 360 and took the other one back with him LOL.

[ShyguyXPC]

Your Welcome, didn't need to send a copy of your last post via Private Message, but Your Welcome anyways.


Oh and Yep, its a regular IDE drive, sometimes listed as PATA.

ST96812A Momentus 5400.2 Ultra ATA/100 60-GB Hard Drive | Seagate

ATA 100, which means 100MB/s burst speed for reading the drive, not continous reading or writing, which will be slower.

but if you look for drives, you'll want to look for an IDE or PATA Drive, 5400RPM, 9.5mm thickness 2.5" drive, and ATA/100 for data transfer rate.

[ShyguyXPC]

This Samsung Spinpoint would be an option: Newegg.com - SAMSUNG Spinpoint M5 HM160HC 160GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" ATA Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

here's the specs on it, and its 9.5mm in height

http://www.samsung.com/global/busine...=fea&ppmi=1087



These other drives are listed as ATA-6 drives, but thats the same thing as ATA/100.

for a bit more, this Western Digital Drive at 250GB's will work as well: Newegg.com - Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD2500BEVE 250GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" ATA-6 Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Specs page for it: WD Scorpio Blue 250 GB PATA Hard Drives ( WD2500BEVE )

$10 more gets you a 320GB drive: Newegg.com - Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD3200BEVE 320GB 5400 RPM 2.5" ATA-6 Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

and specs page: WD Scorpio Blue 320 GB PATA Hard Drives ( WD3200BEVE )



All of these drives meet the 9.5mm requirement as well as RPM and Interface connections.

and should work with your laptop.