Most modern laptops use 2.5″ hard drives. Older laptops use IDE hard drives, newer laptops use SATA hard drives. SATA and IDE drives are not interchangeable, they have absolutely different connectors. If your laptop came with an IDE hard drive you cannot replace it with a SATA drive. The connector on your drive will not mach connector on the motherboard. As you see on the pictuer above, a SATA drive has two flat connectors and an IDE drive has two rows of pins.
SATA hard drives has faster data transfer rate then IDE drivers. SATA – 150MB/s and IDE – 100/133MB/s. Laptop hard drives spin at different speeds and most common are 4200RPM, 5400RPM, 7200RPM. The RPM number indicates how fast the hard drive platters spin. Hard drives with high RPM number are quicker than hard drives with low RPM number because they can access data faster.
SATA connectors on a laptop hard drive are similar to SATA connectors on a destkop hard drive. You can connect a SATA laptop hard drive to a desktop computer using same SATA cables. WHERE HARD DRIVE IS LOCATED IN A LAPTOP. Windows Xp Sp3 Dark Edition 2012 Free Download. On most laptops the hard drive can be accessed from the bottom. On some laptops the hard drive is burried inside the case and it’s necessary to disassemble the laptop in order to access and replace the hard drive. HARD DRIVE UPGRADE. A hard drive is the slowest part in any laptop.