JW said:
Hi all. I have a Vaio VGN-NR10E laptop which needs a new internal hard
disk. Could anyone recommend some good compatible drives? I was hoping
to pay less than around £80 GBP as not that much space is needed (even
60GB would be adaquate).
The current drive, that died, was listed in device manager as a "Hitachi
HTS541616J9SA00 ATA Device".
Thanks!
The reviews for your original drive, note some lifetime problems. So you probably
would not want to buy another one of those. It is a 2.5" SATA by the way,
so there should be plenty of stuff to substitute with. It is a 5400 RPM.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=22-145-113
You can verify SATA by looking at the connector. There is an example of
a SATA connector pattern on the left of this photo. 7 pins data, 15 pins power.
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/storage/Intel/34nmSSD/PerfPreview/oldPCB.jpg
Things I would check.
1) Reputation. Look at reviews for the various brands of drives. Newegg has
reviews, so you can see which drive has more or fewer DOAs or early
deaths.
2) Check the manufacturer site for power consumption. That is one way you can
compare the drives, to see if one uses more power than another. If your
laptop is poorly cooled, then selecting a lower power drive will help.
3) Check dimensions. When buying computer components, nobody likes surprises.
I don't expect there is a surprise in store here, but check anyway. Of the
dimensions, two are likely standard (as defined for a 2.5" drive), but the
thickness might vary with platter count. Maybe all the drives are 9.5 mm,
but I didn't look at all the entries on Newegg to verify that.
This is an interesting comment -
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductReview.aspx?Item=N82E16822136197
"too hot
Pros: It works. it's quiet.
Cons: It's way too hot. My Lenovo 3000 V100 with this HD is so much hotter than
the original Hitachi HD that came OEM. Just about unbearable on my lap. I'm willing
to guess my laptop is 20 degrees F hotter than the Hitachi.
I thought a larger capacity, slow spinning disk would mean less hot. But it's
actually hotter. What an annoying con. I can barely stand resting my hands on my
laptop while typing this it's so hot."
When I look at the power numbers for that drive, it doesn't look out of the
ordinary. What should happen, is volts * amps = power in watts. The idle number
appears to be wrong: 5 * 0.400 = 2 watts idle, not 0.85 watts as listed. The other
attempts at multiplication appear to be OK. It is hard to believe a drive with a
2 watt dissipation, would make the top of the laptop that much hotter. So
maybe that particular drive was defective.
http://www.westerndigital.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=377
5 VDC
Read/Write 500 mA
Idle 400 mA
Standby 50 mA
Sleep 20 mA
Power Dissipation
Read/Write 2.50 Watts
Idle 0.85 Watts
Standby 0.25 Watts
Sleep 0.10 Watts
Have fun,
Paul
