Thinkpads Forum

I recently purchased a used T23 off of Ebay which was supposed to have had a 13 gb HD but the seller appears to have inflated the size to say the least - it turns out that all I have is a 5.5 gb HD - that is not going to be big enough.

So does anyone have a used one that one that they are selling for a reasonable price? I might even take a slightly smaller one than a 20 gb - let me know what you have.

I don't have a spare hard drive, but recommend you not to leave a negative feedback for the seller yet. Instead, contact him/her and try to resolve the problem. The easiest way would be to request a partial refund of say $15. Say that if s/he gets it resolved satisfactorily, you will leave a positive feedback.

when I received the computer - it was working fine and other than the hard drive issue (I did not realize at first how small the HD was) so I left him positive feedback.

A few days later, aftre loading some programs onto the t23 - I found out the true size. I did send him an email suggesting that it would be fair if he refunded a small amount ($20) but (surprise) - he has not responded.

Life is too short to get an ulcer over this so I decided to chalk this up to experience and just to try and pick up a bigger one.

I'm not aware of any recent laptop hard drive being 13GB so I'm assuming that what the seller claimed he had was actually a 15GB drive.

By the same token, if you actually have a 6GB drive, then 5.5GB could be correct for that one as well.

If the drive contains the original IBM hidden recovery partition, that can take a GB or two.

Also, be sure to check that the drive has not been partitioned into two (or more) sections. Assuming you are running Windows, simply double-click the "My Computer" icon and check what's listed under the "Hard Disk Drives" section. Anything more than the C: drive means for sure it's been divided up. You can right-click on the drive and choose Properties, then the Hardware tab to see what Windows thinks is the manufacturer and model number or you can remove the disk drive and check what's on the label. Most drives will state what the size is and if not, search for the model number online and see what you can find.

If you have discovered that you are missing a significant chunk of the disk drive, then it's possible that somebody has purposely partitioned the drive up. That can happen if there is another operating system installed (i.e., dual-boot) or if there is a known problem with a portion of the disk (bad sectors).

rkawakami wrote:Also, be sure to check that the drive has not been partitioned into two (or more) sections.

Excellent suggestion, as usual. However, I suspect this isn't the case because the seller would have responded and explained that to DonM. But you could be right!

DonM wrote:I recently purchased a used T23 off of Ebay which was supposed to have had a 13 gb HD but the seller appears to have inflated the size to say the least - it turns out that all I have is a 5.5 gb HD - that is not going to be big enough.

So does anyone have a used one that one that they are selling for a reasonable price? I might even take a slightly smaller one than a 20 gb - let me know what you have.

I have a 20GB Hitachi drive that I might be trading, but I'll let you know if it doesn't go through. I'd be asking $25 shipped.

Unfortunately it is not partitioned - thanks for the suggestion though.