On Mon, 09 Mar 2015 11:18:06 -0500
GlowingBlueMist wrote:

From what I've been able to locate, the existing drive is a standard
2.5 inch laptop SATA drive that is 7mm thick.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822178125

With that in mind, you could use any SATA 7200 RPM drive that is also
2.5 by 7mm in size.

Here is one that is also 500GB and runs around $50.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822178573

You might also consider upgrading to a SSD drive like one of these
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820148946
if speed is your only concern. It is also a drop in replacement for
what you currently have. Then you don't have to worry about bumping
the laptop and crashing the drive as the SSD has no moving parts,
runs cooler, and takes up much less battery usage as well.

You are right, after downloading the manual for the Dell computer, I
found the hard drive is 7 mm thick.

I have decided to go with another Seagate like the one in it, except it
will be an SSD. It's sixty five dollars, pretty cheap for an SSD.

I think I need this ST500LM001 model, but I'm not sure.

What does it mean when the drive has encryption?

My existing drive is SATA 3Gb/s and the drive I'm looking at is SATA
6Gb/s, does it matter?

http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard...d-drive/#specs