Thinkpads Forum

I did some searching around and was amazed that I couldn't find this info. Perhaps my searching ability needs work...??

Anyways, I'm going to be reinstalling my Thinkpad soon so I figure it's a good time to put a whopping big HDD in it! Yeeha!

All I know is that it needs to be SATA 2.5" - here are my questions:

- Is there an upper capacity limit that the T60 will take? I'd like one of those 250gig beauties.

- The drive in there never makes a sound. Are there brands that are loud that I should avoid?

- I think the T60 has some kind of 'drop-detect' technology. Is that something I need to look out for in HDD choice?

- What are good quality HDD brands?

- Any other advice?

Thanks!

1. To my knowledge, there is no set max capacity... I think it might need to be a certain height though. Some 2.5" drive's are thicker than others. Someone else may know the specifics better than I.
2. I can't comment on this really except that I know my Fujitsu drive is pretty loud.
3. The "Drop detect" is done via an accelerometer mounted on the mainboard. It should work with any drive in both the main hdd bay and the ultrabay.
4. To my knowledge, Hitachi has always been one of the better manufacturers. They make the 7200 travelstar drives, which are regarded as being the fastest notebook drives out there. Others on this forum may have more insight on other good brands

Only other advice I'd give is to not break or lose the caddy for the 2.5" drive. Others have had issues of losing the caddy and not being able to install the drive easily. Replacements should be relatively cheap, but aren't too easy to get ahold of without ordering online.

Keep away from Samsung, Toshiba and Fujitsu hard disk.
I don't know about Western Digital.
Only Hitachi and Seagate offer good ones.

Two best drives are Seagate Momentus 7200.2 160 Go and Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 200 Go.

While I can't speak to the quality of Western Digital's notebook hard drives, I have 2 WDs that I use as external drives and haven't had any problems. Good performance, low heat/noise levels. I would be surprised if their notebook HDs weren't of similarly high quality.

Why keep away from Samsung drives? I've had a Samsung 60GB notebook drive for over 3 years now, it hasn't failed me once. The last Hitachi 20GB notebook drive I had died on me after only 1 year.

furrycute wrote:Why keep away from Samsung drives? I've had a Samsung 60GB notebook drive for over 3 years now, it hasn't failed me once. The last Hitachi 20GB notebook drive I had died on me after only 1 year.

Because they have poor performances : low data transfer rate, long access time and short warranty. Seagate offer 5 years warranty, so they will never do so with weak drives !

http://www.seagate.com/docs/pdf/marketi ... 7200_2.pdf

Pascal_TTH wrote:Keep away from Samsung, Toshiba and Fujitsu hard disk.
I don't know about Western Digital.
Only Hitachi and Seagate offer good ones.

I don't agree with that statement. Fujitsu makes some of the quietest drives out there and I can attest that Toshiba drives are fine as well. not everyone is looking for a 7200rpm spindle speed.

the only time I started hearing about WD drives being substandard was when I was researching getting one of their 160GB externals sold at Costco and swapping it with the 80GB in my TP. Apparently it wasn't recommended because lots of people were having problems with the WD drive crashing.

To be fair, IBM/Hitachi has had its own share of problems, including recalls on desktop and notebook drives which I've had to take part in in the past, and a constant fast-paced ticking that's plagued my current drive since the day I got it (IBM support screamed to send it back, but the new one they sent for my other TP does it too, and they've both been operating under heavy use for 3 years with no problem).

I don't think you can categorically write off a single manufacturer as having universally crappy drives. That said, I would go with whatever everyone else is using, and if that's what the notebook manufacturer suggests, all the better. So for my next upgrade, it'll most likely be a 7K200 .

hoya wrote:

Pascal_TTH wrote:Keep away from Samsung, Toshiba and Fujitsu hard disk.
I don't know about Western Digital.
Only Hitachi and Seagate offer good ones.

I don't agree with that statement. Fujitsu makes some of the quietest drives out there and I can attest that Toshiba drives are fine as well. not everyone is looking for a 7200rpm spindle speed.

The hard drive is the slowest part in a laptop. So, why not take advantage of 7200 rpm drive ?
7200 rpm drives means :
- Faster boot
- Shorter time to load application
- Better searching time
- Fast wake up from suspend to disk
- Nearly no impact on battery life
- No more noise (7200.2 is lower then 30 dBA even when seaking)

But :
- Price is a little higher
- Max size is only 200 Go with 7K200 (but only vs 250 Go)


To answer T7TrainingSystems, shock detection system is on the main bord so you can go with any SATA drive. There are no size limit.

Pascal_TTH wrote: - Max size is only 200 Go with 7K200 (but only vs 250 Go)

what is "Go"?? do you mean to say GB or Gigabyte?

Go is french for GB

Thanks for the awesome advice all.

An issue that hasn't been bought up here that a friend of mine mentioned, is HDD cache and "seek times".

How important are they? How do they affect the cake mix?

The seek times do not vary all that much with today's hard disks; throughout has much more significant differences.

And even a 16 MB buffer is minuscule next to the caching that Windows is able to do with the main memory.

Typical access time are :
14 to 15 ms for 7200 rpm
17 to 18 ms for 5400 rpm
20 to 24 ms for 4200 rpm

Average data transfert rate are :
7200 rpm
52 MB/s for Hitachi 7K200
48 MB/s for Momentus 7200.2 160 GB
38 to 40 MB/s for Hitachi 7K100 et Seagate 7200. 100 GB
30 MB/s for old 7K60

5400 rpm
27 to 34 MB/s

4200 rpm
Don't care about

See also : http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage25 ... &chart=140