Thinkpads Forum

I'm looking for an IDE hard drive for my T41, which has a 40GB Toshiba that makes a most annoying click (not a death click; I think this is a heads-parking click). In any case, I'm not looking for anything too capacious; I'd say 80GB maximum. 7200RPM would be nice if anyone happens to have one (I see Newegg no longer even carries 7200RPM IDE drives), but I'd take a 5400RPM drive too. One priority is that it does not click like this Toshiba does...it must be a quiet drive!

Looking to spend around $55-60 or less, if possible. Please PM or post with offers.

Thanks!
Brendan

If you want a really quiet drive, the WD Scorpio 5400rpm is very quiet. No access noise, no spinup/down noise, no parking noise, no SMART noise. This is the quietest drive I've ever had the pleasure of owning (I own 4 of them now!). Newegg sells them for $64.99 and you would need the PATA version... FREE SHIPPING TO BOOT right now!!!

Link... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136130

I have owned several different manufacture drives and by far this WD is the quietest! Fujitsu, up to 80gigs is fairly quiet too, but beyond that, seems to be noisy. Hitachi 7200rpm drives... STAY AWAY! Too noisy and prone to vibration. No real gain for the pain you have to put up with! Seagates are not bad although I only had a 40gig version. I do run Seagates (Sata 320gigs x 4) on my desktop though and they're excellent drives so far.

I was considering buying the 160gig WD, for just $5 more, but then decided against taking the chance that a drive this large may be noisy. The reviews are good, but you never know!

Anyways, if you're willing to spend a little above $60, I highly recommend the Scorpio. Good luck!

edited... ahem... had to add my disclaimer... "ymmv"... but I think you'll be happy!

makai

I may be willing to spend that if I have to, but I'd rather not since the T41 is not my primary laptop.

I am a WD fan as well; I have almost exclusively WD drives in other machines (4 in my desktop, 3 in one server, 1 in another).

As for your comment about 7200RPM Hitachi drives, I have a 200GB 7K200 in my X61t and couldn't be happier...

Thanks for the info and the recommendation.

Well it's possible that the Hitachi drive I have is just a POS. It's not something I would ever recommend. You commented on "quiet", thus my remark about 7200rpm drives. Good luck!

I think the Samsung Spinpoint MP0402H has been tested by many sources and I think considered the quietest drive available for laptops in the 5400rpm category (at least it was...)

Here is some serious test data --> http://www.silentpcreview.com/article207-page1.html