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Which laptop hard drive is better?

Quick question about laptop hard drives. I just bought an Acer 6292 laptop. I want to buy a spare, or second hard drive, (I know it won't take two hard drive, but I want a spare) but I am wondering which one would be better as far as helping my overall system speed? I am having a hard time figuring out what speed hard drive is in there now (7200RPM or 5400RPM), as the only specs Acer and other review sites have is the hard drive size...not RPM speed. I simply need to take out the hard drive and read the label (which is easy to do, but I haven't had a chance yet). But regardless what is currently in there, I found a couple of choices, and am wondering what would be better. Size isn't really a factor here...they are all plenty big enough for my needs.

Option 1: Hitachi TravelStar 7K200. This is a 7200 RPM drive with 16MB of cache, but it says it's a SATA-150

Option 2: Western Digital Scorpio 320GB 5400RPM, 8MB cache, but it's a SATA-300.

I guess I could narrow down my question to: how much difference does the SATA-300 vs. SATA-150 make, and how much difference does the 16MB vs. 8MB cache buffer make. Then of course you throw the RPM speed into the equation and now I am more confused! :)

Mark Poirier

The choice between SATA150 and 300 would lie with what the laptop can accept. Itmay even be an IDE drive if the laptop is older.
You can use SIW to show the components in the laptop, perhaps it will give you the specs on the hard drive as well.
Its found in the Storage device section when initialized.
http://www.gtopala.com/siw-download.html

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silemone

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