Replacement hard drive for laptop

as long as it is a laptop sized hard drive, you can fit whatever you want. There are laptop sized 7000+ rpm available or a nice Crucial M4 SSD when they are on offer is another great alternative.

Brilliant, just what I thought.

I was reading about the SSD...they do need to be on offer!!

Is there any real benefit to getting a faster rpm? Can the difference be detected?

Thanks very much  

Yes it can. You'll notice a difference in load times on applications, boot, basically anytime your laptop has to go to the hard drive to gather data it'll be faster. Personal opinion thou.. Look or wait for a nice ssd to be on sale/bargain. You'll notice the biggest difference with an ssd. Worth every penny.

Just remember if you go HDD, the higher RPM drives draw more power and shorten battery time.

Yes, faster RPM, faster load times.

No RPM, though, can match an SSD which is why VelociRaptor harddrives are no longer sought after.

Why do you need to replace your hard drive?

Yes, 2.5" sata is what you need. Other specs do not matter.

If a SSD has the capacity to hold your data, then do what you must to to get one.
It will absolutely transform the performance of your pc, regardless of the power of the cpu.
A SSD is 50x faster than a hard drive in random access which is what we do mostly. It is also 2x faster in sequential than any hard drive.

thanks for all those answers  

Hard drive had died hence replacement.

Would love the SSD and the speed but really can't justify the extra cost. Might have a look around at them though. Do they connect in the same way as the SATA?

Yes they connect the same way.