ThinkPad T43 2668 C16 recovery disk and some other issues

[DoubleFace]

I got my hands on the ThinkPad and thought I might restore it to original state. I found some disk images on archive.org and I wonder if it's really necessary to use all 7 disks. After all, Windows takes only one, and I'm pretty sure drivers wouldn't take more than one extra CD.

Second thing, is it possible to restore a system partition, so I can get that fancy recovery menu back once I wiped the hard drive?

Third, my DVD drive seems to act strange, whenever I put a disk, it recognizes it as empty CD, the problem persisted even when I wiped the HDD and installed a new system. Does that mean that the device is dead?

Finally, I've been looking for a replacement for a HDD, since HHDScan showed a lot of bad sectors. I've seen people using SSDs and SD cards along with adapter. Which method is the best?

[kfzhu1229]

Third, my DVD drive seems to act strange, whenever I put a disk, it recognizes it as empty CD, the problem persisted even when I wiped the HDD and installed a new system. Does that mean that the device is dead?

Finally, I've been looking for a replacement for a HDD, since HHDScan showed a lot of bad sectors. I've seen people using SSDs and SD cards along with adapter. Which method is the best?

By my experience, those slimmed down (by 2004/2005 standards) DVD drives are far less reliable than my Ultrabay 2000 (Predecessor), Ultrabay Enhanced (thicker versions found in R5x), and Serial Ultrabay Enhanced (successor) DVD combo drives. Some don't read DVDs properly, others' trays randomly pop open.
As for HDDs, if you don't wanna temper with the BIOS, your only options are the Hitachi and Fujisu drives from that time period. Tempering with the BIOS allows any IDE HDDs to be substituted, and you can do SATA mod as well to allow SATA-I compatible drives.

[RealBlackStuff]

Unless you (find someone to) do the SATA-mod, your best IDE-bet really is the Samsung HM160HC hard drive.