What kind of hard drives do laptops use?

Answer 1

3.5 inch drives, internal are most common. Most are are standard with a rotating metalic drum. Some are Solid State Drives (SSDs) The SSD drives are new. SSD drives have no moving prices but are pricy at this time. Most have IDE, some newer ones have SATA interfaces. Drum rotation speeds and access times are slower than that of their larger 5.25" counterparts used in desk tops, servers, and workstations.

Answer 2

The term is normally presented as a single word 'harddrive' or hyphenated as 'hard-drive', either is acceptable. Also 'harddisk'.

Almost all notebook / laptop computers use 2 1/2 inch (2.5") drives, compared to desktop machines and servers that usually use 3.5" drives. A few very small machines use the rather rare 1.5" drives. (Metric measurements are not used). The measurement is the width of the case.

Hard-drives are electronically differentiated according to the interface they use, it is vital to buy the correct one if you are replacing a drive.

The older type has a parallel data interface and is variously known as PATA, ATA, ATA100 or IDE - the differences between these are minimal.

Newer drives have a serial data interface and are SATA or SATA2

You can not substitute between the older and newer types, they are NOT compatible though they look the same. Both are advertised together and great care is needed on web-sites to select the correct one.

Other differences are the size of the onboard cache memory - basically the bigger the better the more expensive.

Another difference is the spin speed, faster drives give better response time but use more power and will run down the battery faster. Most are 5400rpm, some 7200 rpm.

A few notebooks are coming out with SSD (Solid-State-Drives) these use silicon chips rather than a spinning mechanical disk. The advantages being speed and low power requirements, but to date are very expensive and limited capacity. One day all internal storage will probably be SSD.

Answer 3

You will see a magnetic hard disk drive in an average laptop/notebook computer, however there are an increase in solid state drives included in newer laptops/notebook computers and there are manufacturers that manufacture solid state drives specifically for laptops that one can install as an upgrade.

Answer 4

Generally you will get 2.5" 5400 rpm hard drive for a laptop. Size (so it fits inside the laptop), speed and power consumption are all issues. You also need to check the specs on your laptop to be sure you buy a hard drive with the correct interface.