T42 And Large Capacity Disk Drives

[Strong Eagle]

I've read about 20 threads regarding disk drives. Seems a lot of them are about T43's and I'd like confirmation of the following.

a) I can put a large capacity disk drive into my T42 - from 160gig on up to about 320 gig, correct?

b) My BIOS is 3.23 dated 18 June 2007. SMBIOS is 2.33. What would I have to do to add the larger drive?

c) I am currently running an 80 gig Hitachi Travelstar 5K160. This is not a factory original as it crashed.

d) I'd like more disk speed as opposed to capacity increase, although both would be nice. Does a 7200 RPM drive produce significant improvements in the data transfer rate, latency, or seek times?

e) Recommended brands to get both a speed and capacity increase?

Many thanks.

[ajkula66]

T42 doesn't have any restrictions when it comes to hard drive size, anything will work as long as it's 2.5" PATA/IDE laptop drive.

No BIOS updates are required.

7200rpm PATA drives have been discontinued, everything is 5400rpm now. My personal preference these days is Samsung 160GB, unless you need more space.

[jamnkats]

I am, as I type, upgrading the T42's in my sigline (my son's T42s) with 160GB drives. So far, using Partition Manager 10, I've been able to copy their old 40GB drives to the new 160GB drive, replace the 40GB and it boots perfectly with the 160GB. My problem now, is trying to figure out how to organize the partitions so that they see ONE disk and not the C (partition) drive which is the size of the old 40GB drive and a D drive without removing the system (R&R) partition.

Ok, I figured it out - in Partition Manager, select the option that adjusts the partition size proportionally to the new drive.