Notebook Hard Drives. What types? Also, external enclosures.. (1 Viewer)

[CRyan]

My Notebook currently has a 4200 RPM ATA 100 2.5" 100GB Hard Drive. I need to go 7200 RPM (not worried about battery life).

I see there are ATA 150 and ATA-6 drives out there that fit my needs. I assume the ATA 150 will work. However, will the ATA-6? Never heard of it and I will have to buy this online and don't want to have to return something that does not work.

Secondly, I am going to put this old drive in a 2.5" enclosure. I see there are a ton of brands now. What is a good brand to stick with?

Thanks for any help.

 

[Mike_J_Potter]

ATA 150 is serial ATA, unless you have a newer laptop most likely your laptop will use a ATA -6 drive which is the equivlent to IDE ATA 133 but the connector is smaller for notebook use. Just to be safe I would pull the drive and check it before ordering, or look up the specs of your laptop. As for the enclosure just stick with a namebrand model, if your are planning on having it on all the time get one with a fan built in to cool the hard drive

 

[CRyan]

It is a fairly new laptop (5 months). I have taken the drive out to look at it and it has ATA 100 printed on it. The connector looks like a normal IDE connector with one pin missing but, as you said, is smaller.

I see two drives one by Hitachi and one by Seagate that have either ATA-6 listed or ATA 150. Are both of these compatible?

 

[Ken Chan]

Confusingly, ATA-6 defined Ultra DMA 5, which is 100 MB/s. UDMA6 is 133. At least some hard disk makers have gone to the more descriptive "Ultra/100" or "EIDE 100". OTOH, Newegg for example lists their notebook drives as "ATA-6" and "Serial ATA150", perhaps to doubly distinguish parallel -- small one-digit number that doesn't really mean anything -- from serial.

The old ATA-100 is ATA-6. Only those drives are compatible.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Drive Solutions has a good look-up feature that will let you identify drive options that are compatible with your laptop and they have terrific external drive enclosures and file transfer/back-up kits. I upgraded the hard drive in my laptop last year and they made it very easy for me. (And two friends have since used my external drive enclosure to uprade their drives. )

Regards,

Joe