Thinkpads Forum

Anyone have any idea how to go about swapping hard drives between an x-series and a t-series laptop, so that I can be small and light one day, and mobile workstation the next.

As a graphic designer, I usually work on a high powered, big-screen laptop. I'm about to upgrade to a 15.4" T61 from my trusty T42. But I also travel and would love to be able to use a little x-series as my road-machine. The catch is how to keep my files and settings sync'd from one machine to the next... reliably.

I'm thinking the best way to do this is to set up the hard drive to be interchangable between the x-series and the t-series. That would presumably require a dual boot, on two partitions with dual installations of all my copy-protected software. This sounds like a pain.

Anyone have any better ideas for how to do this?

Cheers

Jaymz

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T42 15" Flexview / X30, T23

Rsync is a great tool for this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rsync

I use a tool called Super Flexible File Synchronizer http://www.superflexible.com/ to do this. I use it to synchronize all of my document files, unprotected music, and my outlook database between a T42 I use every day and an X61s that I use on the road. I plan to move to a T61p for the everyday machine soon.

This is enough to make me feel like my entire working environment moves. The downside is that I had to install applications on both machines. Some (like Acrobat professional) allow installation on 2 machines. For others (like Office 2003) I had to buy 2 licenses.

I've been doing this for about 3 months with great success. I synchronize about 20K files (around 28GB) but because the tool is smart, it usually only takes about a minute for the changed files plus about 4-5 minutes for the outlook files to copy (about 2.5GB). It also gives me an extra backup that is immediately "on-line" if I have a problem.

I'm in an airport lounge now with my X61s.

Thanks for the feedback. I've been somewhat skeptical of file-sync software since my ill-fated attempts to get windows briefcase to work many moons ago. But, superflexible looks like it has come a long way since then, so I'm going to try and test it out this weekend. - Thanks.

Another idea I had this week was to store personal settings and files on a 16GB CF card in the PC slot. That would then be easy to swap between machines, and you'd always be working on the current file.

I'll test out some of these options, and post back.

I've been thinking about that as well. The past 2 days I've been working on a project on both my T42 and on a Dell Inspiron 9300. The documents are all on a 16GB USB drive. It seems to work fine. 32GB USB drives are out now. Could be a good solution.

I use Unison http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~bcpierce/unison/ to synchronize files. It is free, multiplatform, and very stable. It uses the rsync algorithm to update files since the last time it was run, and is generally fast.

Rather than dealing with a syncing program, why not use an Ultrabay hard drive adapter? I alternately work with my T60 and R52. Since I keep all of my important data on the second hard drive, its just as simple as pulling out the DVD drive for a given machine, and replacing it with the adapter.

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... JW4XW.html

Because an X61 does not have an ultrabay. You would need to always use the dock. That kind of defeats the purpose of having an X61.

This is a timely topic. Some on this forum seem to have many Thinkpads, and I've been wondering how they manage to have the right files on the right machine at the right time.

awolfe63 wrote:Because an X61 does not have an ultrabay. You would need to always use the dock. That kind of defeats the purpose of having an X61.

My mistake. I'm not very familiar with the X-series. Personally, though, I'd still rather tote a dock rather than using a sync program.

The problem here would be how do you connect the two laptops together and make it as seamlessly as possible.
If you have to turn on your laptops both together to make the communication wirelessly, it will take some time to set up the ad hoc mode.
If you connect via cable, which cable will surface?

I just plug both into a $25 switch on the network at my office. You could do this anywhere with a residential gateway or with a wireless access point. Almost any office has one and most people have them at home or even in dorms. Only seems like a problem in a hotel room - bu I would never have both machines on the road.