Replacement hard drive for HP Pavilion ze5700 laptop

  • Thread starter Thread starter Daave
  • Start date Start date
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Daave

I just inherited an HP Pavilion ze5700 laptop. Other than the hard drive
being shot, it seems to be in good shape. It even runs a live Linux
distro quite well.

I'm thinking of purchasing a replacement hard drive. These two in
particular caught my attention:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148128

Seagate Momentus 5400.3 ST980815A 80GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" ATA-6
Internal Notebook Hard Drive - OEM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148073

Seagate Momentus 5400.3 (Perpendicular Recording) ST9160821A 160GB 5400
RPM 8MB Cache ATA-6 Internal Notebook Hard Drive - OEM

Questions:

1. The latter seems to be a much better value: twice the size for only
$5 more. I noticed, however, that the ratings weren't quite as good. Am
I overthinking this?

2. The original drive was this one:

http://sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Pa...dDiskDrives/MK4025GAS/MK4025GASSpecifications

MK4025GAS 2.5" 40GB HDD

The original drive's rotational speed is 4200 RPM. The two Seagates are
both 5400 RPM. Will they work? I would imagine they would, but I figure
it can't hurt to make sure.
 
They both should work fine.... and remember NewEgg does have a return policy
if it doesn't work. The larger the hard drive, the hotter it runs... but
Seagate guarantee notebook drives for three years and they have an excellent
replacement service. Of course, they only replace the drive, so remember to
backup your data OFTEN!
 
Go with the 80GB drive, buyers give
it a 90% score (and that very high for any
product) for the 4 and 5 Star reviews.
 
If your computer will take the 160 I would go for it. Larger drives are
inherently faster as well as more capacious, since with higher data density
the heads don't have to perform as many seek operations per data read.

Just be aware, though, that some older laptops won't accept a disk over
137GB, or will only format a 160 to 137GB. When I say older, not all that
old either, I've encountered 2005/6 models that, surprisingly, still have
this restriction.

HP's site may give some info on the largest disk this model will accept. If
'48-bit LBA' is supported, then the 160 should be fine.
 
I already looked for any 48Bit LBA issues and could
not find a definitive answer the HP ze5700.

48Bit or not, a better solution would be to add an external
USB drive for backup purposes as any hard drive can fail
(new or old) unexpectedly.
 
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