Hard drive for Toshiba Equium M50-164

reggers

Hi Guys,

My 60 GB hard drive for my Toshiba Equium Laptop M50-164 has gone kaput on me.

I am wondering if I can take this opportunity to upgrade my hard drive to a 120GB when I replace it. Are there any specific makes or models I need to get? My Current hard drive is a hitachi - does my new one have to be a hitachi also? Are there any compatability issues with new hard drives I should watch out for?

Please talk in dumb language as I am pretty new to all of this pc stuff.

I took my lap top to a shop near me and he wanted to charge me £43.00 just to replace my hard drive and £50.00 for the hard drive itself. I took my lap top away and asked one of my mates - he took out a screw driver and gave me my hard drive in my hand after around 3 seconds. Me thinks I would have been getting done if I had paid the £43.00!!

Any help is greatly appreciated

Happy New Year

Reggers

Ghost Train

will be 2.5" drive, only thing to check is the type of drive, is it sata with the flat L shape connectors or is it ide/pata with 2 rows of 20 pins

just install and setup the pc again with an xp disk etc

reggers

cheers pal - so when I have figured out if it is SATA, ATA, PATA or IDE then I can buy any hard drive provided it is 2.5" and it is one of the above - is that it? The I just plug it in where the old one was and format it with XP or Vista?

Do you have any pictures to tell me whether it is SATA,PATA, ATA or IDE?

Thanks for your help matey

student7

2.5" SATA HDD: http://store.generalsales.com/images/Western-Digital-NSATA.jpg
http://www.pconline.com.cn/diy/storage/hq/cq/0606/pic/060608160G1.jpg

2.5" IDE (PATA, ATA): http://www.gebruiktelaptop.nl/images/2.5hdd2.jpg
http://rankingi.chip.pl/zdjecia/c3122a27b6dc5ffe52ae17a4a65c3965_min.jpg

If you can go for 7200RPM HDD replacment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_disk_drive):

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=341973

or

http://www.komplett.ie/k/ki.aspx?sku=313242


Best,
A.

reggers

Mint - mine is defo IDE - which is the best to get then is it PATA or ATA?

Thanks for your help - all the best boys:)

Tom Dunne

Just buy any normal 2.5" IDE drive and you will be fine.

I've replaced laptop hard drives loads of times, it's very straight forward (except for Sony - don't get me started).

reggers

tom dunne wrote: »

Just buy any normal 2.5" IDE drive and you will be fine.

I've replaced laptop hard drives loads of times, it's very straight forward (except for Sony - don't get me started).

I'm getting a bit confused now - is there a difference between IDE, PATA or ATA?? When I search for hard drives many say IDE ATA or IDE PATA

which one do I need - i'm getting in a bit of a tizz

I want the fastest one possible - isn't SATA the best and can you get an adapter for that or not if so what is it called or is it not worth it?

Thanks again guys

Tom Dunne

reggers wrote: »

I want the fastest one possible - isn't SATA the best and can you get an adapter for that or not if so what is it called or is it not worth it?

There are two main types - IDE (older) and SATA (newer/faster).

Most laptops are IDE, newer ones are SATA (same with desktops). I don't believe you can install a SATA adapter into an IDE laptop, though I could be corrected on that. Laptops tend not to be as upgradeable as PCs.

So, bottom line is if you have IDE, you are stuck with IDE. I don't know the difference between ATA and PATA (Parallel ATA?). I dunno.

student7

ATA and PATA it's the same thing:
http://www.answers.com/PATA?cat=technology&gwp=13

If you have IDE interface which is two rows of pins just get 7200rpm hard drive with this kind of interface and trust me it will be the same as you had SATA 7200rpm hard drive - there is no way home user will notice a difference!

Best,

A.

reggers

Good effort guys you have successfully answered all my questions

Legends!!

All the best

Reggers

AlmightyCushion

reggers wrote: »

I want the fastest one possible - isn't SATA the best

Yes SATA has a much higher transfer rate than PATA (300MBps vs 100MBps) but there is no 2.5" drive on the market that will be limited by the transfer rate of PATA so there is no point worrying about the fact it has less bandwidth.