Upgrading Hard Drive beyond PCs recommended capacity?

January 12, 2008 10:31 AM

Would upgrading my hard drive again be pushing my luck? I'm already beyond my laptop's specifications.

My laptop (ASUS M6NE) came with a 60gb Hitachi Travelstar (7200rpm).

A couple of years ago I upgraded to a 100gb Travelstar (same specs, just more space)

I was worried when I made this upgrade because the ASUS technical documents say my PC supports only up to an 80gb HD. BUT in the end it worked fine, super smooth, and I've been happy with it. (I assume that the technical documents were written before 100gb laptop HDs existed).

Now I'm running low on space and need more (I do audio production on my PC and have many, many GB of sample libraries). Hitachi now has 200gb Travelstars. Is it safe to pop one of these babies in or am I pushing my luck?

Thanks,
chris.

posted by Alabaster to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

Well, if it doesn't work internally, you could always put it in a USB external enclosure, and use it that way. I am in a similar boat to you, and I use external hard drives along with my laptop when I need to do some storage-intensive work.
posted by knave at 10:37 AM on January 12, 2008

Is it possible that they say your laptop can only support that size drive because that was the largest thing available when the laptop was made? I'd put money on the fact that the 200gb would work as long as its the same drive interface.
posted by DMan at 10:40 AM on January 12, 2008

It is possible that your computer cannot handle drives larger than 128 real gigabytes, or 137 phony baloney base-ten hard drive manufacturers' gigabytes.

There's more about this in a couple of my old letters columns, here and here; I actually wouldn't be even slightly surprised if the new drive worked fine, but if it turns out not to, the "137Gb limit" will almost certainly be why.
posted by dansdata at 10:44 AM on January 12, 2008

Response by poster: ORIGINAL POSTER here. I found a comparison of the drives here.

The drives on this page are "The one I want" "The one I have now" and "The one my laptop came with" in that order.

It looks like the only major differences in the new drive are the Cache Buffer (16mb vs. 8mb), Areal Density, Operating Shock (180/350 vs. 160/300). I don't know much about this kind of nitty-gritty stuff -- are any of these factors likely to upset my PC?

Thanks
posted by Alabaster at 10:47 AM on January 12, 2008

No, none of those features will affect compatibility. The capacity is the only potential issue, as dansdata points out.
posted by knave at 11:02 AM on January 12, 2008

I'd definitely try it out, if it doesn't work you can always do what knave said and put it in an external enclosure. I would be surprised if it didn't work.
posted by DMan at 11:10 AM on January 12, 2008

Response by poster: Dansdata -- how can I find out if my computer is limited by the 128/137gb limit?
posted by Alabaster at 11:11 AM on January 12, 2008

Alabaster, I didn't see voltage on there. You might want to check that out too. I recently replaced the hard drive in my old Panasonic Toughbook CF-W2 with a larger drive. The old drive was a 3.3 volt, the new one a 5 volt. I had to break off two pins from the connector to make it work.
posted by JaredSeth at 11:54 AM on January 12, 2008

Go for it. If it doesn't work you can get an enclosure for under $20, and just pop it in there.

External's a smart way to go, anyways. You can make sure your most important data will be safe should anything happen to the laptop.

(I'd almost say not bother and go straight external since you can get a lot more space for less money in a 3.5" than you can in a 2.5" drive).
posted by Kellydamnit at 12:15 PM on January 12, 2008

External's a smart way to go, anyways. You can make sure your most important data will be safe should anything happen to the laptop.


i'd second this: get an SATA hard drive and get an external enclosure with eSATA and an eSATA card for your laptop and the speed difference read/writing to the enclosure might not be noticeable... then you can go wild with the size of the harddrive.

the 128G limit (if you have it) has to do with the ATA controller hardware on your motherboard so it's kind of hard to say before hand whether this is a problem without knowing alot about the hardware of your laptop... if you do have it, your laptop should recognize the new hard drive as a 128G drive though.
posted by geos at 2:57 PM on January 12, 2008

The downside, of course, being that external 3.5" drives typically require an external power source. If you like working on battery power and being untethered, this isn't very helpful. However, there are some 3.5" enclosures support using two USB connections to supply the power, instead of using an external power source.

All of the 2.5" enclosures, as far as I'm aware, work on USB power alone. The drives are pricier, but that might be more convenient in the context of a laptop.
posted by knave at 9:44 PM on January 12, 2008