You will like a portable external hard drive. I bought a Toshiba portable from Amazon for a good price. It is so quiet when I do backups that I have to touch it to feel that it is actually running.

Not sure you can get a laptop hard drive for a 5 year old machine with a speed faster than 5400rpm. Even the new ones are still using 5400rpm drives. You are right in that a new laptop would be faster, and it will have Win 7 as the OS, which has many good features over XP (and I love my XP).

My personal preference would be the new laptop and then spring for the portable hard drive later, if money is a consideration. Don't get too cheap a laptop or it won't have much memory or a large HDD.

if everything seems to be working on it then getting a bigger hard drive is not a very expensive thing to do, you would need to know what type it takes, I would run a belarc scan on it to see exactly what is in the laptop and what it takes, the RPM does not necessarily have to be the same no.
Belarc Advisor

There are several free imaging programs you can use to clone the drive which would copy the entire drive including the operating system so you could just put it all on the new drive exactly as it is on the old one.

If you think you could benefit from an external hard drive I do think it is worth the investment as they have really come down in price and can be used to back up any pc. I personally would prefer to do that than back it up to the mini, but you could do that also since you seem to have the room available.
I would use an external hard drive to back up the original old drive clone to then install the new drive in the laptop and install the cloned image to it.

on another forum I am on some of the folks there have done a couple of tutorials on using one of the free imaging programs and one using Acronis true image, you might look at that info.
Imaging with Macrium Reflect Free 4.2

Acronis 2011

Creating a Hard Drive Image using Acronis True Image

Using Acronis True Image 10 Home

8 free software to image/backup/ghost your computer (free alternatives to Acronis True Image, Norton Ghost, etc.).

and another free option is
EASEUS Todo

You can get a drive with different RPM. Higher is better because that means it's faster.

The important thing is the interface. Is it ATA (sometimes called IDE) or SATA? If you get the wrong one, it won't connect inside.

It's also possible that the computer can't handle a drive above a certain size, but if that's the case, it will adjust to the largest drive size the BIOS can handle.

If your current drive is making noise, it may be getting ready to fail. You may want to create an image so you can restore to the new drive.

Here is a thread with links to some free image programs. I used the one by paragon last night to go from a 160gb drive to a 640. I had the option of automatically adjusting the size of the partitions, but that would have given too much space to my recovery partition, so I did it manually. It would be easier to let the software do it for you. The easiest way to image a drive is to create the image on an external drive, but if your laptop has a DVD burner, you can backup to DVDs. You can also backup to CDs, but it will take a lot depending on how full your drive is (could be 50-100).

I travel a lot and usually carry two external drives with me. There are enclosures that hold laptop drives and get their power from the USB port. I think you can get a 500 gb external drive for around $60.

How does the external drive become your main drive if I choose to go that route? My one about that is I only have 2 USB slots and one I use for a wireless mouse. I do have a USB expansion hub but that thing is a pain. Maybe because its a cheapy..

I do have the DVD burner on it and when I first got my laptop I created a disc but I cannot remember if it was a clone of my hard drive or just a boot disc.

I don't care to expand it too much really. I think a 160GB would work good for me. But I would buy a larger one if it isn't much more money.

Thanks for all the great advice so far,
Kevin

once you find out if you need IDE or SATA go to newegg.com and do a search for that type and you can get an idea of prices.

I have never used an external drive as the actual main drive I only use external drives to back up or store my stuff on, my main drive houses the Operating system and essentials.

and you also need to be sure you are only looking at laptop hard drives as replacement drives, you would probably want the one that includes cables and screws too which many just come bare only the drive.

I may be wrong, but I think you can only use external drives as main drives if they're SCSI or SATA. If you're dealing with USB devices, they're too slow. Some programs will not install on external drives.

I may be misreading Ravencajun's last sentence. If you're looking for an external drive, you want to make sure you get something that is a portable drive. It would probably include all the cables. For a laptop replacement drive, you don't need the cables.

What is probably the easiest way to upgrade a laptop hard drive is to get one of these EZupgrade enclosures with a drive. The nice thing about the enclosure is that it will work for either SATA or ATA. It includes software so that you can basically do the image and restore in one step, then just swap drives.

Since your laptop is 5 years old and had a 6 gb drive to start, it's probably ATA/IDE/EIDE rather than SATA.

You could get something like this with the EZ upgrade for less than $100. You'd put the new drive in the enclosure, run the software to clone the drive, turn everything off, pull the current drive, put in the new one and if all goes well, you can just start right up.

Are you sure the noise is from the hard drive? I would expect a laptop of that age to be getting a bit clogged up with dust inside, causing the fan(s) to run noisier.

meggypeggy, I just came here to say that after looking into it more closely I believe the noise is coming from my fan, LOL I have taken the laptop apart 2-3 times and blew it out with one of those cans of air. Hard to believe it needs it again but maybe its been longer than I think. ( thought I just did this last summer ) In between the taking it all apart I normally blow the air through the fans exhaust and intake areas maybe ever month or so..Guess I know what I will be doing later today..Hope that is what it is..

BTW, anyone ever have to change just the fan? Just wondering what happens if the fan itself is bad..I have never heard of anyone changing the fan before.

I will update if that is the problem

Thanks,
Kevin

Kevin you might well find that going to Youtube and searching for your computer make there could well be a short video showing how it is done. There are a surprising number of these very useful videos out there.

my statement was only if he was looking for an internal replacement hard drive for the laptop not one for external use. I like the ones with new cables and screws because cables can go bad and putting in a new one when replacing the drive makes sense and believe me those screws are easy to disappear LOL

sure fans go bad and can be replaced most just plug in and out, would check brand model and also mounting method to match. Of course in a laptop space is limited and makes it much more difficult to work.

I agree I have found youtube videos for pretty much any task involving the computer and replacing parts

Thanks for all the replies, I blew some air in the cooling system and it does sound better. However when I have done this in the past the fan would spin some from the air. Did not do that this time. I bet the fan is getting bad and will need replacing pretty soon. I am going to take the laptop apart and clean it out good in the next day or so. Any good place's to get these fans? This would be for a HP DV5000 laptop. I think I will get a external HD so I can free up some of my HD too. I do create art work and blueprints on my laptop and have several drawings that I create and cut out in wood. If you want to see what I am talking about you can check out my shop at the link below.

Any good advice for a external HD for storing my drawings would be great.

Here is a link that might be useful: KevsKrafts

Good advices from everyone.

1. Hard drives should not make noise. It could mean that you have not defrag your hard drive for a long time and the read/write head is going crazy back and forth to seek data.

2. Don't buy a bigger drive if you never will need the capacity. Use the money to buy more memory. Older laptops don't have enough memory.

3. Go to YouTube and find a video on how to replace a hard drive for your specific model, if you have not done this before.

4. If you are replacing other parts like fans, key board, etc, look on eBay for the same model non-working ones to salvage the parts. Much cheaper. Computer fans are polarized + -.

5. It may be worth your while to consider a factory refurbished newer model laptop instead of investing more money on a very old laptop.

dcarch

dcarch, Thanks for all the advice, Everyone has given some good advice.

I had already upgraded the ram to 2gig (maxed out) a few years ago. I did some snooping around and found a new fan online for $25 if I end up needing one I think that would be the better route to take than a used laptop that probably has as many hours or more than mine.

Thanks again everyone for all your great advice,

Kevin

One more quickie:

Problems with older laptops are not the hard drive, nor the memories. They are cheap nowadays.

The batteries go bad much quicker and they cost a fortune.

dcarch

Fan bearings do dry out and become noisy and may slow the fan. If you are adept with little fans, you maybe able to re-lube and get a little more time out of it, or simply replace it. The trick is discovering how to get the lubricant into the bearing, and do not over-lube. Most of these fans are cheaply made and have simple sleve bearings. Sometimes, the end of the shaft is hidden under a label. The label also keeps dirt out of the bearing and keeps the lube from flinging all over the place. Replacing the fan is best if you can find a replacement.