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Is 2.5 inch disk drive suitable for desktop?



 
 
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  #1  
Old September 14th 14, 02:16 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
kathy[_2_]
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Posts: 4
Default Is 2.5 inch disk drive suitable for desktop?

Can I pick your brains about a hard drive upgrade.

I have an old desktop PC with a 250 MB hard drive. I would like to
increase the storage capacity and think 500 MB may be enough.

The new drive will replace the old one.

I notice that 500 MB is a size which I can now buy in 2.5 inch format.
Is a 2.5 inch drive likely to be better (faster, lower power
consumption, etc) than a 3.5 inch drive? Are the connectors the same?

Or would it be better to install another 3.5 inch drive?

Thank you for any advice.




  #2  
Old September 14th 14, 02:58 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
David Brown[_4_]
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Posts: 13
Default Is 2.5 inch disk drive suitable for desktop?

On 14/09/14 15:16, kathy wrote:
Can I pick your brains about a hard drive upgrade.

I have an old desktop PC with a 250 MB hard drive. I would like to
increase the storage capacity and think 500 MB may be enough.

The new drive will replace the old one.

I notice that 500 MB is a size which I can now buy in 2.5 inch format.
Is a 2.5 inch drive likely to be better (faster, lower power
consumption, etc) than a 3.5 inch drive? Are the connectors the same?

Or would it be better to install another 3.5 inch drive?

Thank you for any advice.


A 2.5" drive will be marginally lower power than a corresponding 3.5"
drive. It is also likely to be lower speed, but not so that you would
notice much. It will cost more per MB than a 3.5" drive - but you are
talking about such low capacity (for modern drives) that this will not
make much difference either. So it is not going to make a huge
difference either way.

(I assume you mean GB, not MB, in your sizes. A 500 MB disk would be
hard to find outside of a museum.)


  #3  
Old September 14th 14, 03:38 PM posted to alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Rodney Pont[_5_]
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Posts: 77
Default Is 2.5 inch disk drive suitable for desktop?

On Sun, 14 Sep 2014 15:58:30 +0200, David Brown wrote:

I have an old desktop PC with a 250 MB hard drive. I would like to
increase the storage capacity and think 500 MB may be enough.

The new drive will replace the old one.

I notice that 500 MB is a size which I can now buy in 2.5 inch format.
Is a 2.5 inch drive likely to be better (faster, lower power
consumption, etc) than a 3.5 inch drive? Are the connectors the same?

Or would it be better to install another 3.5 inch drive?

Thank you for any advice.


A 2.5" drive will be marginally lower power than a corresponding 3.5"
drive. It is also likely to be lower speed, but not so that you would
notice much. It will cost more per MB than a 3.5" drive - but you are
talking about such low capacity (for modern drives) that this will not
make much difference either. So it is not going to make a huge
difference either way.

(I assume you mean GB, not MB, in your sizes. A 500 MB disk would be
hard to find outside of a museum.)


Firstly are we talking SATA or PATA drives? SATA have a flat data cable
about a centimetre wide whereas PATA are 5 to 6 centimetres wide.

In my experience 2.5inch drives are noticeably slower than 3.5 inch
drives when I've run them on the same motherboard.

If you are SATA have you thought about an SSD? They can be much faster.

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and built in 5 years;
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  #4  
Old September 14th 14, 06:37 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Loren Pechtel[_2_]
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Posts: 427
Default Is 2.5 inch disk drive suitable for desktop?

On Sun, 14 Sep 2014 14:16:57 +0100, kathy wrote:

Can I pick your brains about a hard drive upgrade.

I have an old desktop PC with a 250 MB hard drive. I would like to
increase the storage capacity and think 500 MB may be enough.

The new drive will replace the old one.

I notice that 500 MB is a size which I can now buy in 2.5 inch format.
Is a 2.5 inch drive likely to be better (faster, lower power
consumption, etc) than a 3.5 inch drive? Are the connectors the same?

Or would it be better to install another 3.5 inch drive?

Thank you for any advice.




2.5" drives are slower than 3.5" drives. I would only use a 2.5"
drive if I had to (laptop, USB power only) or if it was a SSD.
(There's no speed penalty with SSDs.)
  #5  
Old September 14th 14, 07:55 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Paul
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Posts: 13,364
Default Is 2.5 inch disk drive suitable for desktop?

Loren Pechtel wrote:
On Sun, 14 Sep 2014 14:16:57 +0100, kathy wrote:

Can I pick your brains about a hard drive upgrade.

I have an old desktop PC with a 250 MB hard drive. I would like to
increase the storage capacity and think 500 MB may be enough.

The new drive will replace the old one.

I notice that 500 MB is a size which I can now buy in 2.5 inch format.
Is a 2.5 inch drive likely to be better (faster, lower power
consumption, etc) than a 3.5 inch drive? Are the connectors the same?

Or would it be better to install another 3.5 inch drive?

Thank you for any advice.




2.5" drives are slower than 3.5" drives. I would only use a 2.5"
drive if I had to (laptop, USB power only) or if it was a SSD.
(There's no speed penalty with SSDs.)


I would concentrate most of my energy, in finding
a drive brand that was reliable. Reading the reviews,
find out how long they last and so on.

The Velociraptor is a 2.5" drive which comes
with its own heatsink and 3.5" carrier. It
is 10000 RPM, and spins faster than many other
desktop drives. The 600GB one, reads out at
180MB/sec. But these boutique drives aren't
for everyone. These ones could be refurbs rather
than new (the low price is a hint).

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822236244

There are even some out there, that come without the cooler,
and the available information suggests to take special care
cooling them.

I think rather than fall in all those sort of
traps, a plain ordinary 3.5" drive for $60 is a
better deal. After looking through the reviews
to find which ones are dropping dead too fast.

In terms of reliability, the 2.5" 5400 RPM ones look
good, but those would be slow (seek speed). The 2.5" 7200 RPM
look like they're a less good deal, as the reviews for
those are no longer 5 out of 5. The 3.5" drives are pretty
well uniformly bad, and finding a winner there involves
a lot of luck. Each generation can be better or worse than
the previous. For example, I had to stop buying my favorite
drive (again), after the new model showed itself to be
a dog (the price drop was a hint something changed).

The hard drive manufacturers know *exactly* what they're
doing. Just like in the car industry, they have tables
for bearing designs, which trade lifetime versus cost.
When a bearing fails on your car, some engineer just
nods his head and checks the tick mark on the chart.
"As designed". At one time, designs used over-engineering
because we didn't know any better. And as the tools improve,
every aspect of quality versus price is known. So whatever
comes from Seagate or WD, they know what the tradeoffs were.
There are no "surprises". If they want to make drives that
last like toilet paper, they can.

Paul
  #6  
Old September 14th 14, 08:39 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
John Doe[_9_]
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Posts: 410
Default Is 2.5 inch disk drive suitable for desktop?

kathy nospam mail.invalid wrote:

Can I pick your brains about a hard drive upgrade.

I have an old desktop PC with a 250 MB hard drive. I would like
to increase the storage capacity and think 500 MB may be enough.

The new drive will replace the old one.

I notice that 500 MB is a size which I can now buy in 2.5 inch
format. Is a 2.5 inch drive likely to be better (faster, lower
power consumption, etc) than a 3.5 inch drive? Are the
connectors the same?

Or would it be better to install another 3.5 inch drive?


If you aren't just trying to increase the storage capacity...

What you really should do, if you are able, is buy a 120 GB SSD
and add (not replace) it to the system as the primary drive.
Reinstall Windows to that primary SSD. Then keep all of your data
files like multimedia on the 500 GB secondary hard drive.

Using an SSD for the primary and a conventional drive for the
secondary provides a huge throughput increase. It's not a whizbang
upgrade, but the speed improvements will be noticed in many
different ways.
  #7  
Old September 14th 14, 08:44 PM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
John Doe[_9_]
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Posts: 410
Default Is 2.5 inch disk drive suitable for desktop?

Paul nospam needed.com wrote:

The Velociraptor is a 2.5" drive which comes with its own
heatsink and 3.5" carrier. It is 10000 RPM, and spins faster
than many other desktop drives.


I have one of those, they sent to me as a warranty replacement.
It's only 150 GB, but that's 7500 times bigger than my first hard
drive.
  #8  
Old September 15th 14, 02:36 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Ed Light
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Posts: 924
Default Is 2.5 inch disk drive suitable for desktop?

Of course, SSD's on old SATA interfaces will be limited in speed.
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  #9  
Old September 15th 14, 03:21 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
John Doe[_9_]
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Posts: 410
Default Is 2.5 inch disk drive suitable for desktop?

Of course how much an SSD increases performance depends on what
exactly the "old SATA interface" is. Most likely it will provide a
very nice boost in speed because it affects so much of the system.
For anybody that wants to keep such a system, it's the only way to
go. Especially since the conventional hard drive is sitting there
ready to be bumped into its useful secondary position.
  #10  
Old September 15th 14, 04:10 AM posted to comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Joe Pfeiffer
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Posts: 121
Default Is 2.5 inch disk drive suitable for desktop?

kathy writes:

Can I pick your brains about a hard drive upgrade.

I have an old desktop PC with a 250 MB hard drive. I would like to
increase the storage capacity and think 500 MB may be enough.

The new drive will replace the old one.

I notice that 500 MB is a size which I can now buy in 2.5 inch format.
Is a 2.5 inch drive likely to be better (faster, lower power
consumption, etc) than a 3.5 inch drive? Are the connectors the same?

Or would it be better to install another 3.5 inch drive?

Thank you for any advice.


Do you really mean MB? You're talking about drives that are, by today's
standards, absolutely microscopic. Multi-terabyte drives are available
for under $100. Checking.... directron.com has a 20GB drive (tiny by
today's standards, huge in comparison to the drives you're talking
about) for $10.99.
 




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