The age of that lappy would very likely mean that any internal drive choice would have to be IDE type and not SATA.

Be careful when shopping, the larger capacity drives all seem to be of SATA type.

Good news is that the IDE interface laptop drives, while being typically smaller in capacity, are also available at many sources at lower prices these days. But such is often not the case at retailers and large outlet stores, where the supply and demand side must kick in or something, causing them to price the IDE drives higher than I can get them at certain online sources. So shop around.

***Many earlier laptops shipped with less-than-wonderful-for-audio-work hard drives in them in the first place. 5400rpm w/only a 2mb buffer is one of the most often encountered, also, depending on the age of the laptop, it may even be a 4200rpm drive in there, which is less than borderline and certainly not optimum.

***Many are tempted by the laptop replacement 7200rpm drives out there. Do your homework. Cooling is a big issue. Lots of reports of failures due to this problem. The 5400rpm drive that has an 8mb or larger buffer will do the job just about as well and like as not won't suffer from the heatstroke that many 7200rpm laptop installations report.


--Mac