Rich_S
Member
The hard drive in my daughter's laptop started throwing up "imminent failure" messages, so I blew most of my weekend figuring out what we needed to replace it, selecting and ordering a drive, backing up the system image, creating a repair disc, etc. Ugh. This of course reminds me that the HD in my own laptop is of similar age, and it's probably a good idea to starting thinking about replacing it before it forces the issue.
My laptop is a Dell Inspiron laptop, a moderately powerful machine in its day, but it's a few years old now. It started with 64-bit Windows 7, but I upgraded to Windows 10 a while back. I use this laptop for general-purpose stuff, and for running Reaper with a Scarlett 2i2 interface. To date, it's mostly audio tracks with minimal plug-ins for basic effects.
This is the original HD that came with it from Dell: SAMSUNG Spinpoint M7E HM321HI 320GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal Notebook Hard Drive Bare Drive - Newegg.com
It's only a 320 GB drive, but it's presently less than half-full, so capacity is not really an issue. I wouldn't replace it with the exact same model, since it's probably out of production and its price is really high for what it is. The drive I bought for my daughter meets these specs, has more than twice the capacity, and only cost $50.
But as long as I'm replacing it, should I think about improving upon any of the original drive's specs? If so, what would give me the most bang for a few extra bucks? 7200 RPM? Larger cache? SSD? Would any of these improve Reaper's performance, or allow me to work on larger, more complex projects?
My laptop is a Dell Inspiron laptop, a moderately powerful machine in its day, but it's a few years old now. It started with 64-bit Windows 7, but I upgraded to Windows 10 a while back. I use this laptop for general-purpose stuff, and for running Reaper with a Scarlett 2i2 interface. To date, it's mostly audio tracks with minimal plug-ins for basic effects.
This is the original HD that came with it from Dell: SAMSUNG Spinpoint M7E HM321HI 320GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal Notebook Hard Drive Bare Drive - Newegg.com
It's only a 320 GB drive, but it's presently less than half-full, so capacity is not really an issue. I wouldn't replace it with the exact same model, since it's probably out of production and its price is really high for what it is. The drive I bought for my daughter meets these specs, has more than twice the capacity, and only cost $50.
But as long as I'm replacing it, should I think about improving upon any of the original drive's specs? If so, what would give me the most bang for a few extra bucks? 7200 RPM? Larger cache? SSD? Would any of these improve Reaper's performance, or allow me to work on larger, more complex projects?