T43p Upgrading 60GB HDD to higher capacity with IBM partitn

[Scanvest]

Hi there,


I am planning to upgrade my Hard Disk from the factory installed 60GB 7200 HDD to one of maximum capacity. Could you help me with the following:
What hard disk type do I need, i.e. SATA, etc?
Is there a HDD maker you would recommend?
I also have an Ultrabay - how do I transfer the IBM secure partition onto the new hard drive? Can I use Acronis or IBM software?
I would like to install Windows 7 on the new drive - Can I do all of this in one go?

I would really appreciate your help with this!


Have a great weekend,


Scanvest

[lukee]

Hi Scanvest:

1. you need an PATA (IDE) HDD
2. you can use any PATA HDD, but non-ThinkPad's part will trigger error 2010 during every boot... Hitachi 7k100 or Fujitsu MHV2120AH are probably fastest and biggest HDD's which are not triggering the error. For 7k100 you need to perform firmware upgrade if it is OEM drive. The upgrade is quiet easy if you go step by step according to instruction. See this article: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Problem_w ... hard_disks
3. yes, you can use Acronis as well as another HDD-cloning software
4. I'm not sure with this...

[Neil]

transfer the IBM secure partition onto the new hard drive

Why would you want to keep the IBM partition if you plan on installing Win 7? The recovery partition would almost certainly install XP. So unless you think you might want to roll back to XP someday, I can't see why you would need the old recovery partition.

If you're thinking about when it comes time to sell the computer, Iwould suggest keeping the old drive with the partition intact, and put that back in when you sell. Just do a clean install of Win7 on your new drive.

[Scanvest]

Hi there,

Thank you very much for your reply. That helped a lot.

I have a couple more questions:
If I want to retain the "IBM functionality", do I not need to keep the IBM partition? Or can I install that from the recovery disks onto the new drive?
Is there any way to allow me to use bigger capacity drives (Bigger than listed in the firmware, i.e. above 100GB) without the boot error occurring every time I start my laptop? Is there a work-around? I have a couple of 1TB external drives but would like to have an Internal HDD in the region of 320GB.

Thank you very much for your help with this, and have a great one,


Scan

[lukee]

Is there any way to allow me to use bigger capacity drives (Bigger than listed in the firmware, i.e. above 100GB) without the boot error occurring every time I start my laptop? Is there a work-around? I have a couple of 1TB external drives but would like to have an Internal HDD in the region of 320GB.

Not in primary bay - sorry You can use an UltraBay Slim HDD Adapter (ATA and also SATA are available) instead of optical drive. HDD in UltraBay not showing the error during boot, but you need to 'sacrifice' place for optical drive. I downgraded my system from Samsung HM160HC 160GB drive to Hitachi 7k100 and I'm happy without the error, two beeps and delay during boot. I just bought Ultrabay SATA HDD Adapter where I have additional storage capacity using Hitachi 7k500 drive, quickly swappable for a DVD-RW drive.

[Neil]

I want to retain the "IBM functionality"

What sort of functionality are you looking to retain?

[Scanvest]

Hi there,

Thank you for your replies, Neil and Lukee. I appreciate that.

I like your solution of using a 100GB main internal disk and then putting the additional capacity into the Ultra Bay.
Without wanting to sound too amateurish, how can I tell if my Ultrabay is ATA or SATA?


By IBM Functionality I mean all features like IBM Access Connections, IBM Active Protection, Software to run Fingerprint Scanner, and everything called up by the "Access IBM" button.
Does that get put onto my new disk installing it with my recovery disks or do I need to clone my "IBM_Service" Drive?
Are you all still using this drive, or is it not strictly necessary?

Have a nice evening,


Tilman

[Neil]

IBM Access Connections, IBM Active Protection, Software to run Fingerprint Scanner

All that can be downloaded from the Lenovo Support website. If you install Win7 that is how you will have to get those features since the is no Win7 Recovery Disks for your machines.

and everything called up by the "Access IBM" button.

For "everything", including the ability to recovery your system to the original factory state you will have to install the recovery partition, but all that will gain is the ability to install XP. If you want a backup system there are third party systems that work as well, if not better, than what the recovery partition offers, IMHO.

[Scanvest]

Hi Neil,


Thank you for the update, that helped a lot. I will either download the requisite programs from Lenovo, or is there any recovery solution that you would recommend? Right now, I only have Acronis (I am always running 2 external hard disks for backups and only keep the programs on my laptop).



Thanks,


Scanvest

[Neil]

Easiest way is to install Lenovo's System Update package, and it's dependencies, then installing all that IBM (Lenovo) software is virtually automatic.

For back-up, and recovery, Acronis is great, that's what I've always used.

[hunterman223]

Just to throw this out there, I bought my thinkpad as a cheap portable solution from ebay, and it came with no hard drive. It works with all the functionality as it did when it was new back in 2003. The only capability it does not have is the IBM Predesktop Area, which is what you use to restore your hard drive to it's from-the-factory state, but either way without the IBM partition you will not have this functionality. I do not miss it, whatever bloatware that came on it I did not have to deal with. If you really want it you could try cloning the hard drive, the worst thing that would happen is that the recovery functionality would not work. Like Neil recommended, just keep the original 60gb drive in case you ever want to sell it, it's a good selling point, even though it is a rarely used feature.

My 2¢ worth...