Recommended Hard Drive upgrade for T42 + Flexview question

[cacophony]

Hi,

I've got two questions:

(1)

I'd like to upgrade the hard drive in my T42 and was wondering what people would recommend? It currently has the original 30GB drive (or was it 40GB?).

I'm interested in a larger, newer drive. Faster would be nice too! But I definitely don't want to sacrifice reliability. Does this mean going with an OEM drive? Or are there known and respected non-OEM makes/models? Where should I buy?

(2)

I currently have the 1280x768 14.1" screen. It would be nice to have a better screen as well, and looking at other threads it sounds like I could upgrade to the 14.1" SXGA+ screen from the T43. This would give me a much higher resolution, but it would still be a cheap TN panel correct? Is there a way to upgrade to an IPS flexview, or would that require a 15" case?

Thanks!

[Harryc]

You can't get flexview without a 15" LCD/case. Choose a drive from any listed at the following link;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... %20Digital

[cacophony]

You can't get flexview without a 15" LCD/case. Choose a drive from any listed at the following link;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... %20Digital

Thanks. This one looks promising:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136130

Can somebody point me at upgrade instructions? I created the 7 CD restore disks awhile back... Do I just swap the drives and then use those disks? I assume I don't need to purchase a copy of Windows XP (which was on the original drive)?

[Harryc]

Yes you can use the restore CD set, or you can clone the old to the new drive using a utility like Acronis True Image.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 50223.html
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... 50021.html

[cacophony]

Nice, thanks Harry!

Would both approaches maintain the restore partition?

[Harryc]

Yes, as long as you clone the entire drive that would also clone the recovery partition. The recovery discs create a new one.

[Think43p]

Info regarding HDD replacement options

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=87986

I went ahead with the Samsung. Perfect drive, no issues at all. Affordable

Cheers

[lukee]

I can confirm too, that Samsung HM160HC is fast and quiet HDD.

[GomJabbar]

Samsung 160 GB here too. Had a Western Digital that lasted only a little over a year. Still have my 5 year old Hitachi, 60 GB, 7200 rpm drive, that works (I boot two different hard drives depending on the OS I want to use - one drive in the main slot, and one in the Ultrabay Slim 2nd hard drive adapter).

Just make sure to get a PATA drive. A SATA drive will not work.

[cacophony]

Thanks for all the replies!

If I wanted to go with the clone approach, what would I need hardware wise to copy from one drive to the other? Would I have to hook both drives to a desktop PC?

[Neil]

An external usb drive enclosure would make the job easy. You could, in fact, buy an enclosure with a drive in it, then put the new drive in your Thinkpad, the old one in the enclosure, and clone it.

[cacophony]

An external usb drive enclosure would make the job easy. You could, in fact, buy an enclosure with a drive in it, then put the new drive in your Thinkpad, the old one in the enclosure, and clone it.

Thanks. But wouldn't it make more sense to have the new drive in the usb enclosure, hook it up to the thinkpad and clone old drive to new drive, then swap drives? If I put the new drive in the thinkpad first it won't have an OS, so how would I run the clone program?

[Harryc]

Boot the clone program from a bootable CD. Trust me, you want to put the new drive in the Thinkpad first.

[cacophony]

I was putting this off but then I got infected with some malware and used it as an excuse to do a fresh install on a new drive! Ended up buying 160GB Samsung and built everything up from scratch using the recovery CDs. It's taken a really long time to get everything installed and configured to my liking but now my system is running better than ever. It really feels like a new computer. But so much effort was involved that I've been thinking it would be good to invest the effort in creating a backup image of the entire drive for a simple refresh in the future.

In general I like small/lightweight solutions, so DriveImage XML looks promising. I'm only using 14.5GB of my drive according to Windows but I'm guessing that doesn't include the IBM restore partition?

Assuming I do clone the entire drive somewhere else how can I boot to do a recovery in the future? The DriveImage XML site mentions creating bootable Windows PE or BartPE CDs, but it's not clear whether that would work for non-standard installations such as this. Also to create BartPE it mentions needing the Windows install CDs.

And thinking about this more, maybe I don't even want the IBM restore partition (I do have the restore disks after all). Perhaps if I get rid of the restore partition I could fit my entire drive clone onto a 16GB flash usb drive?

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!