Thinkpads Forum

As a hoarder of older Thinkpads I have always assumed that hard drives would be available for these old fellows for the foreseeable future. Discussion of SATA drives had passed me by as I tapped happily on my 701, 770, T30 and A31. Leaving aside the issue of even older Thinkpads - two 360s and (well, it looks like a Thinkpad) a N33 SX PS/2 Note - I never gave the hard drive issue a thought.

Recently, looking for an 80GB+ replacement drive for my A31, I received the distinct impression that (i) these are getting thin on the ground; and (ii) that quality control of the larger 2.5" PATA HDDs (120GB+) seems to be unacceptably poor (lots of DOAs, for example, for Seagate, which seems to be the most popular).

I was also concerned to find that Hitachi - my brand of choice despite the "Deathstar" label that has become misleadingly attached to their laptop drives - seems to have left the PATA hard drive market altogether. It was easy enough to find two 80 GB drives at Tiger Direct, but Newegg was out of stock.

There still seem to be plenty of PATA drives available in the lower GB ranges, but things are changing rapidly. So my question is, what are other people doing to ensure that they have a small stock of _reliable_ PATA drives for their old Thinkpads. Any preferences, given that reliability and longevity, rather than speed and size, will be the most important considerations?

Derek

I think many people are just replacing what they have to for the time being, and are looking toward solid state drives as future replacements when prices come down and reliability goes up.

i've got one of these in my a31p: http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDe ... ode=100809 and it's holding up quite nicely. i'm thinking about picking up 1 or 2 more just to have in reserve. $56 is pretty nice. not sure what the wd 250gb drives are costing these days.

^^^
interesting. do you have any experience with the scorpios? i've read some reports of reliability issues. by comparison, i've been buying and using travelstars for what seems like forever and have had only one fail. and that was after 4+ years of extensive use.

Scan eBay and get lucky . I've found good deals (40GB 5400 Seagate drives that were brand new for $20) and I've also gotten shafted (dead drives that the seller never accepted back).

I have used Hitachi/IBM, Fujitsu, Seagate and Toshiba. From memory, I think the only drives which have failed have been Toshiba and Hitachi. Don't know if it was a matter of operator error (bouncing the laptop around) or a mechanical failure but both have been from the same daughter in a 600X and T23.

Best thing I can suggest when buying used drives (or even new ones, for that matter), is to run them to the manufacturer's own diagnostic program; DFT, FJDT, SeaTools, etc.

Always been a long time fan of Hitachi Travelstar but needed to upgrade the disk in my T30 and as mentioned above, they are no longer in production.

Quite happy with my Seagate Momentus (160GB) but the performance is not as good as the Hitachi was. This is not a real problem as my T30 is now only a backup/test machine.

sarbin wrote:^^^
interesting. do you have any experience with the scorpios? i've read some reports of reliability issues. by comparison, i've been buying and using travelstars for what seems like forever and have had only one fail. and that was after 4+ years of extensive use.

The 250 GB 5400 rpm WD Scorpio is discussed quite a bit in the thread Western Digital Scorpio 2.5" 5400 Hard Drives..Any Opin.

Johan

Zipzoomfly had some fujitsu 120gb drives for $40 a couple of weeks ago but they are out of stock now

Harryc wrote:I think many people are just replacing what they have to for the time being, and are looking toward solid state drives as future replacements when prices come down and reliability goes up.

Thanks for pointing this out. I hadn't been keeping up with SSD development (apart from the usb thumb drives). But will they be backwards compatible? The Crucial CT32GBFAB0 32GB, for example, seems to require a SATA connection if it is to be a drop-in replacement for a conventional HDD.

Derek

sarbin wrote:i've got one of these in my a31p: http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDe ... ode=100809 and it's holding up quite nicely. i'm thinking about picking up 1 or 2 more just to have in reserve. $56 is pretty nice. not sure what the wd 250gb drives are costing these days.

Sarbin (and Harry): I'm glad to know that the 160GB Hitchi is holding up. My only reason for choosing 80GB drives was the impression - gained from the Newegg ratings (admittedly not very reliable) and discussion over on the Thinkpad listserv - that reliability gets lower as the gigs get higher. Not very scientific, I must admit .

Derek

rkawakami wrote:Scan eBay and get lucky . I've found good deals (40GB 5400 Seagate drives that were brand new for $20) and I've also gotten shafted (dead drives that the seller never accepted back).

I have used Hitachi/IBM, Fujitsu, Seagate and Toshiba. From memory, I think the only drives which have failed have been Toshiba and Hitachi.

Yes, this is a very good time for picking up smaller HDDS really cheaply - and that is often all one needs in older Thinkpads (the 770 models, for example). As for Hitachi, like Ashleys I've always had good experiences with them, but that may be just good luck.

Derek