T41 & Western Digital 7200rpm HD

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zdriver · #1 Post by **zdriver** » Wed Mar 05, 2008 9:17 pm

I recently purchased my T41 without a hard drive & have temporarily installed a 20gig travelstar and loaded up XP just to test and play with it. The drive I am about to buy is a western digital WD800BB , 80gig 7200rpm, ATA100.
Just interested if there are any issues with WD's in thinkpads or if anyone has used that drive and how it worked out.

I went to newegg looking for a travelstar but there seems to be a drought of 7200rpm eide drives right now, no doubt due to the switch to sata in late model notebooks.

The WD is bargain priced at less than $50 shipped....

FTC · #2 Post by **FTC** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 6:23 am

Hi, the WD800BB is a desktop drive, i.e a 3.5" unit. You need a 2.5" one if you intend to use it inside your thinkpad. travelstar 7200's are highly recommended but a bit more expensive and less capacity available in IDE (paralell ATA) interfaces.

#3 Post by **Johan** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 8:05 am

Welcome to the forum!

If you are on a low budget, and not in an extreme hurry, I suggest you consider putting up a "WTB" (Want To Buy) advertisement on the Marketplace in this forum. Indicate your needs and your price limet - and then lean back and wait for all the unbelievable bargains to flood your mailbox!

If you however want to be a bit more active, and e.g. being active on Newegg is not exactly what you want

then try hang a little around on eBay; a couple of days I saw an original IBM/Hitachi 80GB/7200RPM ATA (HTS728080M9AT00) which went for only $52 incl shipping (!). If I was to get a new HDD, I am not too sure I would want to buy an used one, unless if the seller has guaranteed for its conditon.

If buying new, I am split between Seagate's Momentus 7200.1 and Hitachis 7k100 series; Seagate offer a very fine 5-year warranty, whereas the Hitachi HDD's has a feature ("Advanced Acoustic Management", AAM) which enables you to reduce the acoustic noise a bit - if that is of your interest.

Try use the Search function on this forum if you want to find user opinions about 5400 or 7200 rpm HDD's - or have a e.g. have a look in the thread T42 hard drive PATA or SATA or Confirm info for upgrading hard drive in T42.

Best regards,

Johan

zdriver · #4 Post by **zdriver** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 11:19 am

I must have been tired when I looked at the specs on that drive, it was mislisted as a notebook drive.
I can get a 5400rpm 120gb locally for $78 , but I will keep looking for a deal on a 7200rpm drive for a while.
A few months ago, newegg had lots of 7200rpm travelstar drives but not now.
Thanks for the suggestions, have searched this excellent forum for a while and got great info on a number of thinkpad issues.

aaa · #5 Post by **aaa** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 11:44 am

There's a $75 80gb open box on newegg right now.

#6 Post by **Johan** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 11:50 am

aaa wrote:There's a $75 80gb open box on newegg right now.

If you are refering to these Newegg "Open Box" 7200 rpm 2.5" HDD's they are all listed as SATA - which isn't going to be that fun much in a T41...

- I can only find these

"Open Box" ATA 2.5" drives...

Best regards,

Johan

zdriver · #7 Post by **zdriver** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 9:13 pm

In searching the forums, I found a link to Centrix. They have the 7K60 travelstar drives for $84.50 shipped.
I wanted to spend about $100 on a drive and I guess this is a tradeoff of speed vs capacity. Could get a bigger 5400rpm drive within my budget. I'll sleep on it and make my decision tomorrow.

aaa · #8 Post by **aaa** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 9:30 pm

I'm using the Samsung HM160HC atm. Me and some other dude have found it to appear faster than the old 7200. There's no doubts about it being quieter, that's for sure.

#9 Post by **carbon_unit** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 9:34 pm

The bigger (120gb and up) 5400 drives perform almost as well as the smaller (60 through 100gb) 7200 drives.

zdriver · #10 Post by **zdriver** » Thu Mar 06, 2008 10:24 pm

I agree carbon unit, the 7k60 is a older generation drive, the new gen 5400's are probably more efficient both power and xfer wise.

Thanks for pushing me in that direction.

#11 Post by **Johan** » Fri Mar 07, 2008 3:51 am

aaa wrote:I'm using the Samsung HM160HC atm. Me and some other dude have found it to appear faster than the old 7200. There's no doubts about it being quieter, that's for sure.

This is very interesting information - that newer 5400 rpm drives appear faster (in actual use!) than old 7200 rpm drives - thanks for sharing this! As I am very interested in finding the most quiet laptop drive for my T42p's (without sacrificing speed compared to my 7200 rpm drives), I guess will have to dig down into this issue...

However, there seems to be users who have experienced (annoying) clicking sounds from the Samsung HM160HC drives, and who have also expressed concerns about their expected lifetime owing to too frequent hard parking/unparking - see e.g. the thread T41: Which HDD to buy? .. and Samsung HM160HC issues.

Best regards,

Johan

T41 & Western Digital 7200rpm HD

T41 & Western Digital 7200rpm HD

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