Mobile ATA hard drives compared
 

The slow pace of mobile SATA hard drive adoption has created a massive installed base of ATA-equipped laptops, many of which are ripe for a hard drive upgrade. Laptops generally come equipped with painfully slow drives with as little as 2 MB of cache and spindle speeds as slow as 4,200 RPM. These drives generally don't offer much in the way of capacity, either, with many topping out at only 30 or 40 GB. Fortunately, numerous alternatives exist, including drives with 8 MB of cache and spindle speeds as fast as 7,200 RPM. Greater capacities are available, as well, with most new mobile drives offering between 100 and 120 GB, and at least one leveraging perpendicular recording technology to crack the 160 GB mark.