[kjbenner]

I've been having issues with bad sectors on my hdd, and have been putting off getting a replacement. After a couple of near-misses, I'm finally getting around to replacing it.

I'm having issues figuring out what type of drive I need. It's marked ATA/IDE, which by my understanding might mean any number of different standards.

I've posted pics below of the info label on the HDD, as well as the male and female connections on the HDD and my laptop. My computer's an acer TravelMate 4222WLMi if that's helpful at all.

Any help's greatly appreciated.

[Triple6]

Its a standard 2.5" laptop Parallal ATA or IDE drive, ATA -6 standard but you may also see (ultra)ATA-100 mentioned or a few other naming conventions but they will work too, as will older standards just as long as its not a Serial ATA(SATA) drive which is completely different. All the connectors for 2.5" PATA drives are the same.

In any case here are the drive thats should work: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...889&name=ATA-6
Drives over 120Gb may not work if its a really old laptop as there is a 127/137GB cap on older systems.

Things to look at are:
- spindle speed(RPM) - the faster the better the performance; 4200, 5200, 5400, 7200 RPM.
- cache size - the larger the case the faster the burst speed from the drive.
- seek and latency times; the lower the better, meaning it will access the data in a shorter amount of time.

[wfwsew]

you need an ide pata hard drive for a laptop. you might try this one: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applicati...132&CatId=1277 it has more storage than your old one, or something similar to this. newegg or tigerdirect will have several to pick from.

frank

[Mumbodog]

Any IDE (Parallel ATA) laptop hard drive will work.

IDE actually is the connector (interface) standard. PATA is the true type for that drive, but the term IDE seems to be used the most.

Generally speaking there only 2 kinds of hard drives for consumer PC's now

PATA and Serial ATA (SATA) yours is PATA

[kjbenner]

Thanks for the quick replies, guys. I think knowing its not SATA is a big help.

As far as the 127GB limit, what do I need to check to make sure that's not an issue? I've heard it has to do with anything from the motherboard to the BIOS version to OS. The computer's about 3 years old, running XP SP3 now, but I may change to Vista soon.

[Triple6]

If its only 3 years old then you should be fine, that barrier was more of any issue prior to 2003.

No point in getting Vista when Windows 7 will be out in October and runs better then Vista.

[kjbenner]

Thanks again, Triple6.

I may hold out for windows 7, I can get vista free through school and was figuring replacing the hdd would be a good time to change OS.

[Triple6]

One think to check is that your computer specs are up to running Vista or 7, ideally you want a dual core CPU and preferably 2GB of RAM. While it will work on much less, 1Ghz single core CPU and 1GB of RAM(800Mhz and 512MB for Vista capable) the performance will be less then desired.