The following is a write-up of my two posts on TabletPCBuzz. Since not
too many people might watch the Acer forum over there I re-post here
what is of general interest. I suppose there must be quite a few
owners of ~4 year-old tablets around that are facing the alternative
of either upgrading or exchanging their tablet.

I had recently upgraded the memory of my trusted Acer C314 to 2 GB.
After that the hard disk reached its limits when going into or waking
up from hibernation. Copying the 2 GB to HD seemed to take forever on
the old 4200 rpm Seagate drive.

I looked at the Hitachi travel star 7200 rpm as well as some solid
state disks. Both are quite expensive (the later especially if one
wants to buy the fast SLC based devices) and do not offer very much
capacity.

The article on 'computerbase.de/forum/showthread.php?t=354706'
compares the Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 80GB to the Samsung SpinPoint
M5P 160GB (HM160HC). (The article is in German, though the relevant
information is the graphics).
Surprisingly, the 5400 rpm Samsung performs much better than the 7200
rpm Hitachi. As far as I understand, this is due to the higher density
on the platter in the more recent Samsung disk.

The Samsung disk being twice as big and cheaper (~70$), I decided on
buying one. The harddisk upgrade was performed using the following
Linux based GUI-software which all can be downloaded as Live-CD
versions:
o GParted for inspecting the old disk and partitioning the new one.
o PING for copying partition images of the old disk to an external HD
and restoring them to the new disk.

I recall reading some folks' post somewhere that the Acer recovery
partition (~2.25 GB) should not be removed so I did as advised.

The upgrade went flawless. The Tablet now wakes up from hibernation
noticeably faster. The response when starting software is quicker as
well. So the investement was well worth the cash and effort.

Everything works just fine and I am very content with the result in
performance. Plus there is 60 GB extra space that I will use for
installing some additional Linux OS. Prices for 1 GB memory banks
sinking lower and lower, the overall investment (memory + HD) was less
than $150 and made my Tablet ready for the next two years of fulll
performance. I use it as a desktop workhorse more than for travelling.
So I cannot say much about the impact on battery life but I suspect
that the 5400 rpm drive must consume a little less energy.


Cheers!
St. Müller, Switzerland

> So I cannot say much about the impact on battery life but I suspect
> that the 5400 rpm drive must consume a little less energy.

.... than a 7200 rpm drive would. (:

Stefan Müller schrieb:

> The following is a write-up of my two posts on TabletPCBuzz. Since
> not too many people might watch the Acer forum over there I re-post
> here what is of general interest. I suppose there must be quite a
> few owners of ~4 year-old tablets around that are facing the
> alternative of either upgrading or exchanging their tablet.

Thanks for your interesting report!

Gruss
Rainald