Windows 7 - Dell Insipron 15r - HDD Upgrade Suggestions

Hello All,

Currentley, sitting infront of me, I have a Dell inspiron 15r N5010 - FirstGen i5 M460 + 4GB RAM (Not the swap lid one), bought in Feb 2011, current Windows Index: 5.9.

About 2 months after buying, i got a Momentus XT 500gb and stuck it into the laptop, kicking the Seagate 320gb 5400.6 out.

So, 2 days after installing the XT, I cloned all data off the 5400.6 and put it on the Momentus XT, and it seemed reasonably fast. A month after, things slowed down, alot.

I run the full CS5.5 Suite on my laptop, along with a load of other programs (166 installed), I usually have my laptop on like 4-5 hours on weekdays, and then all day saturday and sunday, so im looking for a hard disk thats actually fast, quite big and not too expensive (Under £150 and more than 500gb).

Can someone recommend a hard disk thats fast, QUIET!, and reasonably cheap and doesnt get too hot. (As the fan in the dell is a complete nutcase all the time). I dont need one for gaming, as im not a big gamer on my laptop (PS3 all the way!), and only use the laptop for webdesigning on photoshop, coding html, tonnes of coursework and general teenage stuff.

(As im on 6 weeks holiday, Il reinstall Windows 7 (dell version) cleanly on the drive to see if makes it faster, I did that before, and it didnt do much)

Thanks in advance,
Aman

what do you mean it has "slowed down, a lot"? have you defragmented the drive recently? i know the XT's don't take well to defragmentation, since it removes the "frequently accessed" files from the embedded FLASH memory, however, you might want to see if the drive is very fragmented, at which point, you'll be better served defragmenting it.

however, if you are dead-set on speeding up your computer, my suggestion is what i did with my personal laptop (Dell Studio 1557 - Core i7 720), which is to move the primary drive into the DVD drive bay, and use a SSD as the primary drive. i had to purchase a stand-alone DVD player, but considering how often i use the drive, it's no major loss for me. now, i have all my OS files and frequently accessed stuff on an Intel SSD (80GB), and my personal files and less frequently accessed programs on my old HD.

'Slowed down a lot' basicilly means that the boot time is taking a minitue and a half instead of the original 30seconds with all programs loaded, and photoshop takes ages to load.

It was around 20% fragmented before, i defraged, and nothing happend.

Ive been looking into the solution you've offered, where the Optical Drive is taken out and replaced by a adapter thingy where you can slot in a 2.5in Hard disk.

Its worth it, I might end up doing that soon.

Thanks for your help,

Aman.