Big-space hard drives always arrive first for desktop PCs simply for the reason they can run hotter without issue, and the fact you can add in cooling in several different ways should the heat become an issue.
Laptops are typically 2 to 3 years behind when it comes to drive technology, or at least the platter-based ones are. The wait exists it takes the OEMs that long to develop a system that will run cool enough not to literally melt the insides of your laptop computer.
A 1TB drive these days sounds small – but only for the desktop. On a laptop, 1TB is huge. And if you were biding your time waiting for the right moment to go big on your laptop, that time has come.
The 1TB HDD for a laptop is officially under 100 bucks. At the time of this writing, NewEgg is selling one at that price point. It’s a Samsung Spinpoint. Yes, it’s only 5400 RPM, but the point is that it’s a 1TB for under 100 bucks for your laptop. And that’s with free shipping so it’s a true under-100 price.
Yes, you will either have to image your drive and copy it over or reinstall your OS from scratch, but for 1TB on a laptop it might just be worth it – especially if you lug around an external drive now for your laptop which you probably won’t need after bumping up your internal laptop HDD to 1TB.
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If you think 1TB drives are small. You’re insane with videos. I produce 3 HD shows for youtube and I still haven’t filled a TB drive yet.
I don’t think running an os on a 5400rpm drive is worth the 1tb internal storage.
I would spend the same amount of cash (maybe little bit extra) for a 60gb SSD and stick to an external drive for storage
I used to demand 7200 RPM drives in my laptops, but as I grew older and wiser I realized that 5400 drives are actually not as bad as I thought considering the amount of heat that’s created from 7200 RPM drives. So in a small machine — especially in a small machine — think twice about 7200 RPM,
Y’know… Laptops are great – I run two (one Xp and one Win7)… the convenience and portability is great but for working with huge files/videos or whatever, I prefer to use my bigscreen desktop at home with multi 1+ TB drives and much more CPU power than the laptops. Only thing is, I guess, is if the laptop is your only computer; THEN maybe a 1TB drive would make sense. Is the desktop computer REALLY a thing of the past..? I don’t think so.