Q: I have a Dell Inspiron 9400. Is it built for 2.5" or 3.5" internal hard drives? I was looking at this, but I'm not exactly sure if it is made for my laptop. http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-ST310005N1A1AS-RK-Internal-3-5-Inch-Cache/dp/B0012YXWWQ I was also considering this product: http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3564505&CatId=139 But again, I'm unsure if those SATA hard drives were built for my Dell, and I am unsure what the difference between a 2.5" inch and 3.5" inch is. Obviously one fits in the appropriate aforementioned laptop. Also: Is it better if the buffer memory of the internal hard drive is 32 MB or 16 MB? (I am new to these peripherals.)
A: The Dell Inspirion 9400 uses a 2.5" mobile hard drive. The stock one is a 120GB 5400rpm Hitachi Travelstar HTS541612J9SA00. More cache on a hard drive is generally looked for as to give you better performance, some benchmarks show though that if you get too much cache it can actually slow down a machine.