2.5 inch n 3.5 inch harddisk which is better?

xxthunder SG

which one does not generate heat easily,the 3.5 inch harddisk casing is it the same as the 3.5 inch external dvd writer casing.
If I have asked a silly question,please bear with me as I am totally clueless on such things.
My os is window ME with Intel 3 866 mzh,my ram is only 128,can I use a 80g harddisk as this is the smallest volume harddisk I can find on the market.Please offer your kind advice,thanks!

manyu882 SG

3.5 inch generates more heat cos more input power.

FireIce SG

if it's going to be portable, of cos 2.5 lah
if it's going to be permanently on the table or wat then 3.5 loh

Farmerseed SG

To make things straight and simple for someone new to computer and hard disk in particular, the most common of them come in 2 sizes - 2.5" and 3.5" inch.

Generally the 2.5 inch hard disk generates lesser heat and since it is smaller in size it is used in notebooks and any grade of external hard disk flagged as highly portable and light weight.

The 3.5 inch hard disk are now configured to spin up to 7200rpm as compared to the speed of 5400rpm with the 2.5" disks. 3.5" enterprise level ones for 24 hour server and backup system may have disks that run from 10krpm up to 15krpm. So the 3.5" should produce more heat as compared to the 2.5".

When a PC builder assembles the hard disk, it is always noted that the 3.5 hdd should fit into the case internal 3.5" slot although the actual slot width is slightly greater than 3.5". The 5.25 "external" slots of a PC case are usually for the optical drives. Disk drive sizes standards conforms to the width measurement and not the depth. For external hard disk, the different designs can have the manufacturers choose any sizes of casings they want. But they will always quote 2.5" or 3.5" ext hdd for the actual hdd used in the external hard disk. Well of course common sense tells that all external hard disk are mod from internal ones with a case.

As for your question about the 80GB hard disk i would suggest you get an IDE one instead of a SATA. If you would agree with me i think it would be wiser to just get a 30~ 40 GB. The sata ones may be too fast for your system to keep up, unless you want to get a SATA controller card and use it in your PCI2.3 slots.