New T60 help me change out HD

[blynch]

Hi, I'm getting my T60p tuesday, talked to a sales rep a few days ago and he said it wouldn't ship till most likely the 23rd and I look the next day and its shipping and has tracking info --pleasant surprise. Ordered the 1st it shipped the 9th.

Ok let me get to the questions, I bought the thinkpad with the standard HD 5400rpm 40gb, because I have a 7200 60gb that I upgraded to a couple years ago on my old laptop. So I plan on putting this in the thinkpad to tide me over till I can get a 7200 100gb hybrid HD when they become mainstream. Whats the best way to swap HDs? I was thinking it would be easiest to buy a $10 external casing, put the 7200 in that, and use some software (tell me what is a good one to use) to copy the stock HD in the T60. Then swap the HD and use the 40gb for storage in the external.

Does this sound good? Let me know if there is an easier better way to do this, I've never mirrored a HD before, so if you have any tips and what program to use.

Thanks, Brandon

[marlinspike]

Well, is that 60gb you bought an ATA100/ATA-6 or is it a SATA150? It has to be SATA150, otherwise it won't work.

Here's what I did (I did the same thing as you, i.e. got a 5400rpm drive but also ordered from elsewhere a 7200 to swap immediately). I don't like mirroring drives, it just never seems 100% to me, so instead as soon as I got the laptop running I created a set of restore disks, then put in my 7200rpm drive and used the restore disk to make it as if the computer had shipped wit the 7200. I've ordered a ultrabay adapter to take the other drive in and plan on using that for the 5400rpm drive. USB adapters work well too, but word to the wise get one with an external power source.

[blynch]

thanks for the info, I'm pretty sure my old HD is SATA, but how can I check that from windows? Also does anyone know some good software to use for making backup images? After I get it set up I'd like to make full backups now and then to an external.

[marlinspike]

Thinkpads come with the software you need to make your own periodic backups to an external drive. Do you by any chance remember if the HDD you have now connected with pins or if it had slots (by slots I mean one of those old Nintend connectors where its not pins but a board with contacts on it).

[blynch]

I want to say pins, but I it in like 2 years ago so I don't remember entirely, I guess I will figure it out when I pull the HD. I just figured there was an easy way to check from windows without taking out the hd.

[kimx]

Just post the model number of you HDD, you can find it by right clicking on the drive in my computer and chose propertise then hardware.

[burningrave101]

Very likely if you bought the drive for a laptop 2 years ago then it has an ATA/100 interface and will not work in a newer laptop that uses a SATA inferface.

[ronan_zj]

I want to know how much discount I can get if I order from sale representative?

[blynch]

hard drive is listed as HTE726060M9AT00

Just got my T60 today, and I am impressed with the build quality, this being my first thinkpad. One stuck pixel, bright green, really annoying depending on the background color.

I couldn't find the option to make recovery disks in rescue and recover, I have r&r 3, is is still there on this version?

[blynch]

figured out the recover disk thing, burning that now. Another question;I did get anything with the computer about the coupon for vista, and I don't have a vista capable sticker. Whats the deal? How do I make sure I can get the free upgrade to Vista when it is released?

edit: figured out my old hd is ultra ata, not sata, so now I need to decide if I want to tought it out till hybrids come around or upgrade now. Anyone know an approximate date for notebook hybrids?

[marlinspike]

When did you order the laptop?

[blynch]

I ordered the laptop on the 2nd. So it should come with a vista coupon.

Also, I want to restore without installing all the bloatware. Someone said there was a custom restore, but I can't find this option in r&r.

This thing takes a million years to boot, how do I slim down that time?

[marlinspike]

Well, it doesn't come with a coupon, though it should have come with a sticker and then you get the coupon later when Vista is released. I would call your sales rep. I don't know how to make restore disks without installing the bloatware, but IIRC if you do a restore by pressing the blue thinkvantage button right after turning the computer on I believe you can do a custom restore there. I'm not sure if doing that means you will never be able to get the bloatware back, so first I would make a set of full recovery CD's via R&R (I for one like the bloatware that comes on these).

As far as startup time, mine doesn't seem that bad so I don't know, but if you do start, run, type msconfig, hit enter, you can look aorund the services and startup tabs getting rid of things you don't need.

[hoya]

I found the custom option for doing a restore by pressing the thinkvantage button during startup and basically going through the process of doing restoring the factory image. then you get the customize option and you can uncheck lots of apps.

Acronis is great for imaging a drive but you can also 1) create factory cd's, 2) install new hdd - go with Hitachi 7K100, 3) boot from recovery cd which will create a new service partition on the nex hdd, 4) boot from hdd and do custom install which will reinstall windows on that hdd.