hard drive upgrade question

Hi, have a laptop-dell lattitude c610, w/hitachi 40 gb hddrive.
I've started doing vhs to dvd on it and have quickly used up the 40gb. Want to purchase an 80gb w/7200 rpm. I've seen hitachi 80 gb for $59.00, but the review of them is pretty poor. My laptop stays in its docking station, so i assume using 7200 rpm will be safe, while being a step up from the 5400 rpm i currently have. I've heard sata is faster, but i am assuming i must go with the ultra ata-133/eide? as is my current hard drive. Also, if I went to 120 gb, would that degrade overall processing speed, since i only have a 1200 mhz processor, w/785kb ram? Is Maxtor or seagate a better route to take? You folks are great, have helped in the past and I'm back again. . .

 

I have installed many Hitachi hard drives in PC's (both laptops and desktops) over the years, and had very few failures. They are one of the few HD makers that make many different sizes of ATA drives in the 7200rpm speed; I think Seagate makes them too. In laptop PC's the drive speed seems to make more difference in overall performance when compared to desktop PC's. So a 7200rpm drive is highly recommended. If you have a choice between a fast 80gb and a standard 120gb, the 80gb drive will offer better performance because of the 7200rpm. Hard drive size has no bearing on a PC's speed as long as there's enough free space for everything to do what it needs to do. I recommend keeping at least 15% or 20% of the drive space free at all times for optimum performance. Don't get a maxtor drive; I've had real bad luck with them over the years. If your current hard drive is a standard ATA drive (and NOT a SATA drive) then you must get another ATA drive; SATA will not work or even hook up correctly in your system.