Upgrading a T60 Hard Drive with a retail Seagate HD

[Steerpike]

I quickly outgrew my T60's 60 GB HD and was shocked to see that CDW were asking $400+ for a 100 GB SATA 7k2 drive. I found the same type of drive (ie, SATA) from Seagate on NewEgg for $109, and bought it. I now read all the various threads here about how upgrading the HD on a thinkpad is not as simple as ghosting the disk ... (which I've done hundreds of times on Dells).

There seem to be a number of issues, based on the various threads.

1) Lots of posts relating specifically to T43s and T42s;
2) A lovely FAQ telling you how to flash an Hitachi drive to be Thinkpad compatible (I know Hitachi makes the IBM drives, and all thinkpads seem to ship with hitachi drives).
3) many posts discussing the ability to copy the hidden partitions, and also discussing the need to disable some BIOS security settings.

So - for me, with a T60 -
1) Am I worse of or better off having bought a Seagate Drive? Should I return it and buy an Hitachi drive (I hope I can keep it!)
2) Assuming I have ghost 8, do I have to do anything special with the thinkpad bios settings in order to get the new drive working?

Thanks for the help.

[sugo]

Lenovo puts Seagate drives into T60 as well, just not as common as HGST ones.

Using recovery discs which will rebuilt the hidden partition, you should have no trouble getting a Newegg Seagate drive to work in your T60.

[Steerpike]

Thanks.
In this thread, there are many conflicting processes. The one by 'bootleg2go' near the bottom suggests it really is as simple as doing a disk-to-disk image with ghost 8, which I'm very comfortable with. That post is responded to by 'hhy2k' raising issues of turning off bios security; since I'm the admin, I can't imagine why I care either way - I can turn off the security and then turn it back on if I need to - can't I?

Now, I note you are saying I'd need to use the recovery CDs to rebuild the hidden partition; is that true, and if so, in what sequence? Start with empty disk, run recovery to create hidden stuff, restore windows to create the main partition with boot sector, then ... ghost only certain partitions? Or are you saying I can use the rescue disks to clone the entire source?

So why would I want to flash an hitachi disk with IBM firmware if I don't have to do anything special with a Seagate disk?

I just happened to be reading a whitepaper from IBM on the Active Protection System. The white paper says: "The active protection system functions only with the 2.5″ hard disk drive provided by IBM due to special customization."

The whitepaper is available here, FYI:
ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/pc/pccbbs/mo ... ps2mst.pdf"

I guess this means I'll be losing the APS feature? If I bought a Hitachi (for the next upgrade, perhaps) and flashed it's firmware, do you think I'd retain the APS?

[RealBlackStuff]

If you are so comfortable with Ghost (or Acronis TrueImage or PQ DriveImage), why don't you just copy/clone your existing XP partition and not bother with the RR-partition? A reinstall via image is a lot quicker than the RR procedure.
I put a Seagate Momentus in my T23 and T30, and started from scratch, then took an image. I don't care for recovery partitions.
I was not happy with the junk that came on the original HDs (both TPs were bought 2nd-hand).
Those Seagates are extremely quiet by the way.

[chaukap]

I replaced my original Seagate 7k 100GB with a bigger Seagate 5k drive and it works fine. Although I had trouble cloning with Norton Ghost, Acronis true image worked like magic.

Yes, Active proctection works given its a 2.5". I have tried it with a Toshiba drive too.

[taob]

So - for me, with a T60 -
1) Am I worse of or better off having bought a Seagate Drive? Should I return it and buy an Hitachi drive (I hope I can keep it!)
2) Assuming I have ghost 8, do I have to do anything special with the thinkpad bios settings in order to get the new drive working?

I recently replaced the 80GB 5400 rpm Hitachi drive in my T60 with a 100GB 7200 rpm Hitachi drive (HTS721010G9SA00). I had an extra little wrinkle in my situation, because I wanted to swap the order of the C: and D: partitions. I used Acronis True Image 10 Home for this. You can read about the details here:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=40435

Both old and new drives work equally well in the internal bay and in the Ultrabay SATA adapter. APS works with the new drive, and I did not have to do anything with the drive firmware. Lenovo Canada wanted $509 for the drive. Local discount stores in Toronto were selling it for $155, so that was a no-brainer.

[Steerpike]

I downloaded the trial version of Acronis TI 10 Home, and was able to copy my HD to the new HD at the first attempt, and I'm now using my new Seagate 100 GB SATA 7200 rpm drive with no issues! I posted more details in this thread .

Regarding Active Protection ... I could say that it's still working, based on the fact that I see the icon in the tray, and it still shows 'pause' when I move the device, but ... that does not conclusively tell me it's really working 'fully' - I can imagine that the APS software detects movement, and updates the visual tray icon, and sends 'park' (or 'retract', or whatever) commands to the drive, but that does not mean the drive responds, or responds fully or appropriately. I guess the acid test will be to move my laptop while I'm writing a big file and listen to see if the access sound stops ... hmmm .... am I willing to do that test?!?!

[chaukap]

I guess the acid test will be to move my laptop while I'm writing a big file and listen to see if the access sound stops

I have experienced music getting paused on my machine if I move the laptop suddenly indicating active protection is still working.

[Steerpike]

I have experienced music getting paused on my machine if I move the laptop suddenly indicating active protection is still working.

I just played a video file, and gently moved my laptop until I saw the 'pause' on the hard drive, and then kept moving it ... and the video stopped! So, my APS is working too! It could still be working less than optimally, though - I'm trying to understand what IBM were meaning in their whitepaper referenced above, where they say that the drives are specially modified for this feature. "The active protection system functions only with the 2.5″ hard disk drive provided by IBM due to special customization".

[taob]

I'm trying to understand what IBM were meaning in their whitepaper referenced above, where they say that the drives are specially modified for this feature. "The active protection system functions only with the 2.5″ hard disk drive provided by IBM due to special customization".

That whitepaper is from 2003... it may be out of date. For example, APS works with a third-party drive installed in the T60's Ultrabay via the SATA adapter.

[chaukap]

"The active protection system functions only with the 2.5″ hard disk drive provided by IBM due to special customization".

This customization may refer to IBM using its firmware for the harddrive while user installed hard drives will not necessarily have that.