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So, my PowerBook 17" harddrive finally died (luckily I was able to most of all the data) and it's out of warranty and I don't want to part with it or pay for a costly repair. I downloaded the guide from PBFixIt and will try and assemble all the tools to do it. I'm not a stranger to hardware upgrades having installed a couple of harddrives and RAM-chips in my time (mostly in towers and external cases though). This looks like a challenge, and I think I'm up to it.

Question is, which harddrive should I purchase for it? I want a good balance between space, speed but emphazise battery-life. I figure price won't matter much as I'm saving the external repair-cost for it.

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For instance, how much does cache matter? Any brand that's more reliable than others? I'm looking at the Toshiba 100GB model with 16MB cache versus the Hitatchi with 8MB.

I also found a Seagate Momentus 5400.2 120GB 5400RPM IDE ATA/100 2,5" 9,5mm, anyone have experience with this one? Still only 8MB cache on that one.

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Performance wise I believe the hitachi 60gb 7200rpm 2.5" is the best bet for current PB's. I forgot how much cache it had, I believe 16mb? I think it's about $220, and I hope to pick one up soon for my PB, unfortunately they seem to be sold out at newegg.

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How will the 7200rpm affect battery life? I'm getting a new iMac for my video work and already have an external FW800 disk for these things.

[hypnognosis]

7200rpm review

It seems to be ok. I really need it for lower access times due to my heavy data-set/DB use.