Is a 200GB 4200 rpm internal hard drive bad?

I've got a really good deal on a "scratched" Dell E1705 from the outlet site. It has a great spec but has a 200GB 4200 rpm hard drive. Is this really slow? Can I use an external hard drive if I want faster?

Machine is to be mainly used for internet, music, photos, video (not video editing), word processing.

Spec
T7200 core 2 duo
8X DVD/RW
2048MB 667MHz ram
200GB hard drive
17" ultrasharp WUXGA screen
256MB NVDIA Geforce Go 7900 GS graphics
Vista home premium

Thanks for any advice.

while it's ok for storage of movies, etc... it will run agonizingly slow. Don't use it for a primary drive.

4200 or 7200

I doubt it's 4200 if it's 200 gb.Where did you get that description.
I think it's possibly 5200 ( the norm before 7200 arrived,)
but they whern't that large either.:wave:
200 MB maybe.
Whatever if it's not 7200,then it's ok as a 2nd storage drive,not for
Windows OS install.

No, it's 4200RPM.

It's a notebook. Notebook HDD's run at 4200/5400. As LNCPapa mentioned previously

You can get 7200 SATA drives but not at 200Gb that I've seen.

For what you intend to use it for and with 2Gb of RAM I doubt you'll notice the difference to be honest. It's only when you start moving or handling multiple large files that things really start to slow down.

personally, I would get a 5400 rpm replacement drive for the notebook and a 2.5 USB enclosure to put the 200gb 4200 rpm drive in and use it for a external storage drive. but you would need the XP disk to reinstall the OS on the new drive.

Many thanks everyone for your replies. I'm going to see how I get on with the 200GB 4200rpm drive. Not familiar with external hard drives or USB drives - if I wanted a faster drive, what do I need exactly and what do I need to do to make it the primary drive? Can I actually change the drive within the laptop or is it better to use an external or USB drive and how do these work to be a primary drive??

Many thanks in advance for your help.

I had a 5200 in my laptop. Then I upgraded to a 7200. The 5200 was painfully slow. I can only imagine how slow a 4200 is. In any case I haven't seen 7200s in 200gb size.

All you have to do, it get a faster drive and swap out with the current drive. Of course, clone your data onto the new drive before swapping. Some HD makers have kits with software to do this. The one I bought for my system did.

My experience

I've been around since the first hard drives arrived , useing floppys first.
It may be 4200,but i doubt it's 200 GB.20 Maybe.
Like i said earlier,it's not suitable for an OS install.
You don't need external,get an internal IDE 7200 and connect it as Primary Master.
Then the other whatever it is,Make it a Primary Slave for storage.

zipperman: maybe use the amazing power of the internet and see that 200GB 4200 RPM laptop drives are common?

It is 200GB and it is SATA, putting in a 7200 IDE drive isn't an option in SATA laptops unfortunately (check out the dell site for the technical specs of the laptop in question).

You should be able to get a 7200 SATA disk around 100GB in size which should be fine as a primary disk if you so wish, as mentioned by Tedster you would need to clone your current drive on to it, or, failing that perform a clean install on the new disk. This could work out as an expensive option though, 7200 SATA disks seems pretty hard to come by in 2.5" for laptops.

You can buy 2.5" Drive Caddies that you can use to convert your 200GB 4200 disk into an external removable storage device then.

With the 200Gb disk in the laptop being SATA instead of ATA it is perfectly suitable to install an O/S on. If it wasn't then manufactureres wouldn't supply there computers with them built in 4200 SATA performs better than 4200 ATA over IDE

Post titles and first thread info

I don't have a clue about laptops or i would not have replied.
BY :wave:
Laptops need a seperate Forum.
Or at least entered in topic title.

Darn, how much are they retailing at? (they're SATA i assume?)

Where ?

Dell E1705
Am i supposed to know every model # by Dell ,or search for it.
I don't think i should do what the poster should explain better.
Sorry but i need a better description.
HD and storage is quite different with laptops,so i don't reply if i know.
But 200 GB is still hard to believe.

Thanks for putting it nicely

Sorry if i seemed Grumpy.Try this,
See if you can update the Firmware.It improved mine.