Gateway Parts

if i install a 40 gig hardrive in my gateway laptop will it function the same as the 80 gigs it came with?

I went on the gateway website and purchased a 40 gig hard drive wich was cheaper than the 80 gig hard drive. I'm wondering if i made a mistake because i need the computer to work the same. Im assuming the laptop came with a 80 gig hard drive. can i still install windows 7 and get on the internet?

Public Comments

1. You should still be able to use it fine, although a 40 gig hard drive for windows 7 is pretty small. You wont be able to install much on the laptop. And you may notice that it runs a little bit slower, since the data will fill up the hard drive quicker it will be written to the slower spinning part of the hard drive. Increasing the amount of time it takes to access the data, and possibly slowing the performance of the computer down compared to what it used to be. You may or may not notice a huge difference in performance, it really depends on how and what you use the laptop for.
2. The computer will work exactly the same, but you will only have half the space to store all your "stuff". Yes, 40 GB is more than enough space to install Win 7.
3. What kind of Hard Drive was inside of your laptop before? At what RPM was it at? Because there's different speeds at which Hard Drives run at. The most common is 5400RPM, but 7200RPM is becoming more popular. If you want to know if your new 40GB HD will run faster or slower etc, you want to look at how fast your HD is. If they're both 5400RPM or both 4800RPM, just as an example, then there will be little to no difference in speed, functionality, or anything like that. And to answer your question about if it will function the same. I'm sure you realize by now that only certain HD's will fit into laptops, so I'm sure you've figured that out by now, and to answer this, no, there will be no difference in the two HD's in terms of compatibility...they will both work equally the same in that category... Hope this helps!
4. Of coarse you can, but you will not have a lot of space left for files. It would be a good idea to get an external hard drive to store your files on, instead of "C:\" anyway. That way, in the case of a bad virus, you can simply reformat your C drive, without losing any files. That's the way I have mine set up right now. Mine, by the way, the one I'm writing this on, has a 40 gyg HD with a 120 gyg ex drive. 40 gyg drives don't take long to reformat. ( About 45 minutes for XP) Large drives take considerably longer. 16 gygs for 32 bit 20 gygs for 64 bit http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/system-requirements.aspx The above is the microsoft site with all critical data for system requirements for Windows 7