is there any difference in quality at the moment of  chose a hard drive?
405025
Yes there is!! Difference in quality is due to the quality of bearings, quality of platters and quality of coating used in manufacturing. But you can't check them yourself easily. So I'll like to suggest you to go for a reputed manufacturer and get the drive having 7200 rpm and 8 MB buffer.
109141
There is nothing like that - ITS A MYTH.\nThe only thing that you should look for is \nA CPU above 2.0\nMemory above 1 GB\nHard Drive with 7200 RPM\nDVD-MULTI DL Drive with 16X Writing speeds.
180036
You should be fine. Referbs on hardware with out moving parts usually work well. I do not recommend any refurbished disk drives or hard drives. A network adapter should work fine as long as it looks like it has no obvious physical damage.
622136
128KB average\n196KB better\n196KB < best
470423
external harddrive, or change out the old one to a larger one
784403
i would go for Maxtor, Seagate or WesternDigi\nalmost same quality, but i think WesternDigi is the cheaper one..\n80Gb or 100Gb should be below 100$ with a normal casing
1095721
Sounds good, but I would make a suggestion...\n\nGet 2 of the HDD's and configure it in a RAID 0 for better read/write speeds.  Or get at least 2 more and configure it into a RAID 0+1 that would give you the speed benefit and provide data protection, too.\n\nMy system speeded up tremendously when I did that.  It once took about an 1.5 hours to copy a DVD movie.  After I configured my system with a RAID 0, the time was reduced to about 25 minutes.\n\nJust a thought.....
449849
I got a 128 mb Kingston.  It is the silver one.   Nice looking and no data has ever been lost.  If you have usb2, it can use that kind of port, so transferring files are fast.  If you can afford it, then get a 1 gb, or 4 gb.  But for saving files that don't amount to much memory, 128 mb is sufficent.   Kingston is the only one that I have ever used.  There is no splash screens that pop-up everytime you put the drive into the usb device, so that eliminates time wasted.
917032
You will get the right answer from the vendor when you buy a new hard drive by giving the following details.\n\n1.The make and model of the motherboard and\n2.The version of Windows you are  using.\n\nAll new hard disks now come with SATA (serial ATA) connection.  The preferred speed is 7200 rpm but for laptops many people settle for lower speed of 5000 rpm since they are cheaper.\n\nOld motherboards like Socket 7 can recognize hard disks with maximum 20GB capacity in LBA mode in 2-5GB capacity running Windows 98SE. \n\nWhen you use Windows 98, disk fragmentation in partitions with only 2GB capacity can be be done faster than the larger size partitions of 3-5GB. \n\nLatest motherboards like ASUS P4V8X-X running Windows XP can read large capacity hard disks. The speed depends on the RAM. Older SD RAMs are slower but DDR RAM modules run much faster.\n\nAll external hard drives are recognized instantly by Windows XP but you have to install a driver if you are using Windows 98SE.\n\nWhen you buy a new hard disk, you must always ask for the vendor's confirmation about the compatibility by giving the version of Windows you are using and also the motherboard maker's model number. Otherwise, you may have difficulty getting the replacement.
172639
My personal favorite brand is Seagate.  It helps to go to sites like Circuitcity.com and read the user reviews of any products your interested in since they all sound good on paper but the problems with them are usually mentioned by a lot of people in reviews.\n\nI just got a 160GB a month ago.  Been loving it, works fine for playing music, video and games from.  You should make sure you have a version 2.0 USB port if you want to play games off of it.
403316
The change I would make is to upgrade the hard drive. You can get 160 gig hard drives for $75 or less. You can never have too much hard drive space.
702874
the hard drive is a standard size and can be upgraded but not easily.  That is to say, if your carefull and done it before then its not really a big issue.  If you have never done it before then you will be tempted to use more force then needed and then things will go wrong.  Laptops use hidden tricks to keep screws limited and bezels fit into hidden grooves into one another.  Once you have done it once you will understand.  If your tempted to try it yourself, then go slow and never apply too much force.  A dental pick will come in handy for removing the little rubber pads which hide the screws.
3270
Check the link below.  I like Seagate and Western Digital.
238382
I think it matters on what you plan on doing with your computer, and there are plenty up grades for both, it also matters if it needs to be high speed for games or just for the simple stuff such as this(answering questions) and what has a better warranty, or where you live who will repair it with out shipping. maybe I should of kept my mouth shut,I'm not exactly sure my self other then the facts I've already stated
613642
One, your age doesn't matter.\n\nTwo, how do you know HD is good? Try a diagnostic tool for whatever brand. Is the windows cd good? You may have problem if your Windows is already installed on another system, as your windows license is good for one motherboard.\n\nAre you getting any error messages? You can edit the message in your original question. Remember this much details yield no analysis. Best I can tell you to do is run these different diag tools. Also, make yourself a Ultimate Boot CD and check system with that.
207704
check out the wesite below, you should be able to use either depending oon how many hdd you already have installed.
486751
what ever one is on sale that has the storage you need.  There is little to nothing you will notice between the brands.  I would go with at least 300gb, or it can fill up way to fast