Computer upgrade help.
 

I have a pretty new HP laptop and I installed Vista a few days ago. When I ordered my laptop I pretty much went all out and decked it out. The only thing I didnt was my hard drive. I got an 80 GB HD. With HP, they also include a "recovery drive" This is great and I absolutely love it, however it takes up about 18 GB's, so my main "C" Drive only has about 60GB of total space.

I'm looking to upgrade to a new internal hard drive with at least 200GB. Can someone point me in the right direction of what I should need and be looking at? I'm not really a computer wiz, so help me out. If you need anymore info, I have it.

Haven't seen any 200gb notebook hard drives but here's a couple things that might help. The first link is to a 160gb internal.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1155848367616

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage....=1152837300262

The second link is one that I have, except it's a 120gb. Just check your local Best Buy and they should have it. Should run about $140 if not cheaper. It doesn't need a power supply like many others; it just uses the power from the usb. My laptop has a 120gb hard drive but I wanted something portable to store vids, pics, and programs.

I know we don't carry internal laptop HD's that are 200GB in our BBY store... 160 is the biggest we have, that's if we still have it in there floating around somewhere.

Most likely your HD is a IDE drive, but you might wanna double check the specs to make sure it's not a SATA drive (have seen a few of those in notebooks)

It is SATA.
"80GB 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
With this hard disk drive you can create, edit and archive your memory-intensive files as well as store a multitude of applications without worrying about space. (1GB = 1 billion bytes. Actual formatted capacity is less. Up to 9GB of the hard drive is reserved for the system recovery software.)"

I was looking at newegg. What is this "cache" supposed to mean? I know there is 8mb and 16mb, I'm assuming 16mb is better?

Will this work? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822144701

I don't know what you would need or which of these would work however, this website usually has pretty decent deals.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ubCategory=380

EDIT: Oops didn't read your last post.. looks like you already went to newegg

That won't work because those HD are for a PC. click on the link that I posted those are all Notebook (laptop) harddrives

Well this is the only SATA drive they even had listed: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822149058

Would I notice any kind of improved performance or anything?

16mb is the way to go.. but 8mb isn't too bad either.. also watch the RPM rating.. higher the better.

Prob only going to find a 5200 - 7200 rpm for a laptop. But yeah, faster rpm the better, but for a laptop faster is more unstable. I would only feel safe with a 7200rpm for a laptop.

200GB is the largest 2.5" HD out right now, but it was just released and is extremely expensive. If you really think you need it, get a 160GB and don't make a huge deal about the cache size/RPM--the average user won't be able to tell the difference.

Just so you know, computer upgrades are probably one of the biggest wastes of money out there. You just spent $160 on Vista, with all of about 4 new features over XP. Now you're looking to get a bigger HD which is gonna run you about $200 if you get a 160GB.

Have you figured out how you're going to copy everything from your old drive to the new one, or even install the OS for that matter? Your HP didn't come with restore CDs, and since you've only got an upgrade version of Vista, you can't use that either.

I do have re-store CD's. In fact, I have every program that came with the computer down to every last file. Something like 15 CD's that I can re-install and will be like it was the first day I received it. Then upgrade to Vista again.

it's all about the gadgets man... lol.. i hate life