Thinkpads Forum

I hear people mentioning that the newer 5400's are as fast as the 7200's.

Does anyone have any recommendations as far as brand, size, and value- cost is always good

These would be for an IDE drive.

For IDE drives, I like the Western Digital Scorpio Blue drives. 320GB, 5400rpm.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136379

Is there ever an issue replacing an old 4200rpm drive with a newer 7200rpm one, in terms of power consumption or heat generated. I've noticed in the Legacy section quite a few people have made this upgrade.

Not really because Thinkpads have decent cooling and are not cramped for space inside, and newer technology drives are quite energy efficient. If we're talking about really old legacy Thinkpads, you need to specify the model because you may run into some partition size constraints, and that question would best be asked in the legacy hardware section of this site.

The key point here is to do some research. What's more important for you; access time, throughput, noise etc.

A great tip is to go for high density platters. A 250GB single-platter/two heads drive is going to beat a 320GB two-platter/four heads drive in virtually every test. Tests have shown that a high density single-platter 5400rpm would beat a lower density dual-platter 7200rpm on several tests except access time.
And with 5400rpm disk reaching 70MiB/s these days, the sound level/speed trade off is not as great as it was earlier.

The Seagate 5400.6 momentus disks are nice. However, they don't come in ATA... So I guess a WD scorpio blue would be something to look for.

If one is content with 160GB, Samsung would be my weapon of choice, since it runs quiet and cool in my experience on several ThinkPads along with one non-ThinkPad.

If you're looking for value a 5400RPM drive is probably the way to go. Since they're not making PATA 7200RPM drives anymore, the remaining ones are expensive per GB. Some newer 5400RPM drives have better throughput than older 7200RPM drives, but they also have slower access times.

For my T30's I've been building out of stripped out parts machines, I've found that the newer Hitachi 5400 rpm drives work fine and are markedly faster than the 4200 rpm drives. Note that IBM used to make their own drives, but sold that business to Hitachi. Origonal T30 IBM drives I have look identical to new Hitachi product. However the newer drives are faster and quieter than those older IBM drives, a origonal/optional 60 Gb 5400 RPM T30 IBM branded drive is noticebly slower than a newer 5400 RPM Hitachi. You stated "cheap", I'm with you! I've had good luck on Ebay, search "hitachi ide 2.5", select "Time:Newly Listed" so you wont have to go thru all those old not a good deal listings, and buy from a reputable seller, some of these guys have large quantities and say their drives are fully tested, formated and warranted. I've probaly bought 6 this way and haven't gotten a bad one yet. They work as well as the 2 new Hitachi's I bought from Newegg for my wifes T30's, at 1/2 the price with careful shopping. Note that the Hitachi's have the date of manufacture printed on them, so if you go used, zoom in on the photo(should state if "stock photo" or "actual item"), try to get one only 1 to 3 years old for best performance. Good luck!