Should I upgrade my laptop's internal disk drive?

[Noivern]

My laptop's 5400 RPM disk drive feels... lethargic during boots and app loads, and I see some freezing during first loads of applications after boot.

Should I replace the disk drive? If so, what should I get? A 7200 RPM disk drive, a hybrid disk drive, or a pure SSD, knowing that the 750 GB drive is currently filled with over 210 GB of data, and I'm actually looking to improve boot times and app load times only. Factor cost and the fact that there is only one standard SATA drive bay (9.5 mm high), no PCI-e slots, and a non-user-removable optical drive (I need it anyway).

 

[Aggron Amarth]

I'd suggest defragging, running disk cleanup, etc. first and seeing if that improves things any. It could be more of a memory issue; how much RAM do you have?

If you ultimately decide on a new hard drive, you can get a ~320GB 7200 RPM drive for $60 on Newegg. Don't go for an SSD; a 320GB SSD drive will cost you $300+.