Hello all.
I've been looking to upgrade the hard drive on my E521. I've narrowed my search to a few options that I am able to afford and which I think look like good drives. I plan to do a fresh install of Windows XP Pro. I use my computer for graphic design work using software like Adobe CS5 and such, and also basic video editing, (I also have a new nVidia 9400GT video card that's working like a charm). I also play mid-level games, nothing too hardcore.
My current hard drive is about 372gb. I'm not sure of the cache size or the rpm.
I was looking a Western Digital drives, particularly the Caviar Black series. I searched a few and chose a couple Black and a Blue that I'm interested in.
My question is: Is there a recommended size for a boot/system drive? In other words, is it recommended to have a main drive be 1TB, or is that too 'unstable' as a boot drive? I read somewhere that a 640gb drive is more stable as a system drive, so that sparked my curiosity as to know what I should really get.
The drives I'm looking at are:
(please refer to attachment. I could not post links since I don't have enough posts in this forum)
From these, which one fits best for my system? Also, does it really matter if the main boot drive is as large as 1tb? Should I get a Black instead of the Blue?
Another thing is since I'm planning on installing WinXP Pro, should I try to install a fresh SP3 version from the start, since the base XP only recognizes about 127gb?
Thank you in advance for any and all advice on this, since I want to buy the drive that would offer me the most bang for buck and reliability. Your help is greatly appreciated.
-Alfie
I've been looking to upgrade the hard drive on my E521. I've narrowed my search to a few options that I am able to afford and which I think look like good drives. I plan to do a fresh install of Windows XP Pro. I use my computer for graphic design work using software like Adobe CS5 and such, and also basic video editing, (I also have a new nVidia 9400GT video card that's working like a charm). I also play mid-level games, nothing too hardcore.
My current hard drive is about 372gb. I'm not sure of the cache size or the rpm.
I was looking a Western Digital drives, particularly the Caviar Black series. I searched a few and chose a couple Black and a Blue that I'm interested in.
My question is: Is there a recommended size for a boot/system drive? In other words, is it recommended to have a main drive be 1TB, or is that too 'unstable' as a boot drive? I read somewhere that a 640gb drive is more stable as a system drive, so that sparked my curiosity as to know what I should really get.
The drives I'm looking at are:
(please refer to attachment. I could not post links since I don't have enough posts in this forum)
From these, which one fits best for my system? Also, does it really matter if the main boot drive is as large as 1tb? Should I get a Black instead of the Blue?
Another thing is since I'm planning on installing WinXP Pro, should I try to install a fresh SP3 version from the start, since the base XP only recognizes about 127gb?
Thank you in advance for any and all advice on this, since I want to buy the drive that would offer me the most bang for buck and reliability. Your help is greatly appreciated.
-Alfie