hi all, kinda in need of a 2.5" sata hdd for my brother's laptop. which brand should i be looking at? umart is probably easiest to get to.
does anyone have one they need to get rid of for $?

ah i think that one is ide doh

http://umart.com.au/pro/products_listnew.phtml?id=10&id2=132&bid=2&sid=23333
good brand, cheapest one umart has, plenty big enough

the samsung I mentioned wasn't, same price - http://umart.com.au/pro/products_listnew.phtml?id=10&id2=132&bid=2&sid=73616

Both are poor suggestions unfortunately. First one has bad reviews (ignoring the IDE bit), and the second one has both bad reviews and not enough in total - a bad combination.
Also while Samsung make some of the most reliable desktop drives (I have several and love them!), their laptop drives are one of the worst.

kinda in need of a 2.5" sata hdd for my brother's laptop. which brand should i be looking at?

Forget brand. Brand means nothing, as my earlier sentence hinted.

Have a look at Western Digital's WD3200BEKT model user reviews: massive satisfaction rate out of >1000 user reviews. Umart sells it: link.

I actually bought the higher up notebook model (WD5000BPKT) a few days ago as it had similarly good reviews. All of this is despite them having some of the worst desktop drives - so no correlation with brand. Just judge a drive based on its model, not the brand behind it.

Compare that to the ratings of the Hitachi (click) and Samsung HM160 Variant (click) - expand the ratings and compare the 1-star percentages between the WD, Samsung and Hitachi.

Just have a look at the SSD failure thread on this forum if you aren't convinced that looking at user-review ratings helps :)

last edited by parabol at 23:39:13 19/Jan/12

perfect timing. the 500gb seagate momentus 5400 in my laptop failed after less than a month. chucked in the ssd from my desktop and it booted in 5 seconds, everything working fine.

that wd drive looks the go