Received a free T42p & wish to upgrade

[breukelen]

I picked up a gently used T42p from my workplace just last week. The previous individual used this PC from home use only and never did anything more than email on it and some occasional surfing -- and never traveled with it. I plan to use this computer for light office applications, to store music and photos, surf the web, and to do some small-time digital photo editing using a lighter Photoshop alternative. My question to you is -- is it worth it for me to spend the money to upgrade this computer? It's several years old but looks and behaves like new.

If I do upgrade, it will be limited to just the 50GB internal HDD and 516MB RAM. While the computer isn't ideal for multimedia, being as old as it is, it comes at a convenient time since my Toshiba M45-S331 crapped out on me a few weeks ago. The M45 was also becoming pretty slow for me, but reasonably acceptable.

In any case, are the following good choices? Also, I'll be attempting for the first time a clone of the existing hard drive on my Toshiba and plan to use Acronis... what else should I know? Is there a really simple step-by-step somewhere that you can point me to? I used the search function and got overwhelmed.

Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD3200BEVE 320GB 5400 RPM 2.5" ATA-6 Internal Notebook Hard Drive - OEM

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136345

Crucial 1GB 200-Pin DDR SO-DIMM DDR 333 (PC 2700) Laptop Memory Model CT12864X335 - Retail

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820145068

The WD drive looks overkill as far as size but seems to be a good value for the money. Is there a 7200 drive that is still in production that you can recommend or is the performance not noticeable?

Thanks for your help!

[sjthinkpader]

Welcome to the forum.

Both are good choices.

Side benefit of a large HDD is that they are very fast, even faster than small 7200rpm drives. A 320GB drive move data 4x faster under the head than 80GB drive at the same rotational speed. 7200rpm drive only move data 1/3 faster than 5400rpm drive.

Personally, even with a large drive in the PC, I would still store photo, music in a NAS.

[sktn77a]

Yes, they are good choices. $80.00 for 2Gb is a little steep - if you are patient, you can get memory on the marketplace here for 1/2 that. What CPU does it have? If it's an early T42p with a 1.7, you could also upgrade to a 2.0 or a 2.1 but the biggest bang for the buck will be the hard drive and memory.

But I don't think cloning an OS drive from a Toshiba computer and trying to use it on an IBM is a good idea

[breukelen]

Yes, they are good choices. $80.00 for 2Gb is a little steep - if you are patient, you can get memory on the marketplace here for 1/2 that. What CPU does it have? If it's an early T42p with a 1.7, you could also upgrade to a 2.0 or a 2.1 but the biggest bang for the buck will be the hard drive and memory.

But I don't think cloning an OS drive from a Toshiba computer and trying to use it on an IBM is a good idea

Thanks for the welcome!

I have only about 80-100GB of both music and photos, so I'm assuming on a 320GB internal drive it won't be too slow, will it? I also have an external drive at present and plan to use that as back-up...

I'll probably just upgrade to 1GB instead of 2 due to the cost. I'll have to recheck but I'm almost certain it's the slower 1.7, and I doubt I'll want to spend more to upgrade the processor. And you're right - not a good idea to clone the Toshiba drive.... I don't what I was thinking!

Aside from that, I will need an external enclosure for the WD drive, correct? Is there any I should look for (ie. one that is specifically for the 320GB WD drive)?

[sktn77a]

You should put the new drive in the HDD bay and do a clean install of the OS. Do you have recovery CDs?

[breukelen]

You should put the new drive in the HDD bay and do a clean install of the OS. Do you have recovery CDs?

Unfortunately, all the laptop came with was the AC cord and nothing else. Therefore I was planning to clone the original set-up since the T42p is pretty clean right now.

Or...

I managed to find recovery CDs but for the Thinkpad X31 -- is this compatible? If so, I can use this... or can I make recovery disks using software already on the PC (or better yet put the recovery disk material on an my existing external drive) to do a clean install?

This might save a bit of money and hassle by not having to get cloning software and a HDD enclosure.

[Neil]

can I make recovery disks using software already on the PC (or better yet put the recovery disk material on an my existing external drive) to do a clean install?

Yes, it's very likely that the recovery partition is still on the old hard drive. If it is, you should be able to make recovery CDs that you can use to set up the new drive. That would probably be the best route to take.

[sktn77a]

Yes, the X31 and T4x are image compatible so these recovery CDs will work. You may need to download a different wireless card driver for the T42 but that should be about it. I don't think you will be able to transfer the recovery partition to your new drive and I don't recall if you can creat recovery CDs in Thinkvantage on the T42 (?)

[Mike Blake]

I don't think you will be able to transfer the recovery
partition to your new drive and I don't recall if you can
create recovery CDs in Thinkvantage on the T42 (?)

On the T42 in my sig, Create Recovery Media is indeed an application contained in the Thinkvantage program group.

So perhaps for this T42p being discussed, it will be there as well.

[sjthinkpader]

On any Thinkpad OS image, you can only made the full set of Recovery disks once. After that, it will only make the boot disk for you.

[breukelen]

Thanks to the two posters above for the info on recovery disks. I definitely plan to make a set. As an update to this thread, I decided to purchase the WD 320GB drive from Newegg and will report back if and when the install goes according to plan, as I know some people have expressed interest via PM.

Again, thanks to everybody who responded to my original post. This is a great forum with very helpful members.

[breukelen]

Installed the 320GB WD drive a couple days ago and all is running well. HDD is very smooth and quiet... more quiet than the OEM drive. Since the existing drive was clean, I ended up cloning it using Acronis True Image and it only took about an hour or less to do the complete transition (25GB of disk) to the WD drive. First time doing this - can't believe it was so easy Thanks for all the help everyone.