Thinkpads Forum

here is a quick question, would this harddrive be ok on my t61p,
HITACHI Travelstar 7K200 HTS722020K9SA00 (0A50940) 200GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache Serial ATA150 Notebook Hard Drive - OEM , i found it on newegg.com. any advice is greatly appreciated.

It would not only be 'ok', it would be fantastic .

Wish I could swear to it, but I'm pretty sure this would work just fine for you. I've got a Hitachi Travelstar 100g 7200rpm in my T60.

That would work fine. Given that the BIOS approves which im sure it will...

Bought the same one from New Egg and am enjoying it in my T61p at this very moment. Best laptop drive I've ever had. Probably will get another one for back up purposes eventually.

... am running on it for a couple of weeks now, superb!

yes,you can,if you need

I am running that very drive in my T60p, so I'm sure it'll work in your T61p. Congrats on a nice drive!

A 7200 RPM 16MB Cache Serial must be fast as hell. How much was it?

About $189 for the 200 GB model.

pae77 wrote:About $189 for the 200 GB model.

Now $179 at newegg and $173 at zip-zoom.

Is this the one that has bulk encryption and if you set a HD PW and then disable the PW it wipes out all your data?

thormdac wrote:... am running on it for a couple of weeks now, superb!

Which driver do you use with yours? Also, do you use the encryption?

Does anyone know how the encryption stacks up against Vista Ultimate's BitLocker encryption?

The 7k200 I have which I got from NewEgg does not have on board drive encryption.

Thanks for correcting the price. I was including shipping I paid to Hawaii. You guys on the mainland get free shipping.

pae77 wrote:The 7k200 I have which I got from NewEgg does not have on board drive encryption.

Thanks for correcting the price. I was including shipping I paid to Hawaii. You guys on the mainland get free shipping.

Yeah, but you guys in Hawaii get Hawaii .... trade you any day

Great .... I'm going to order one today .... I don't want or need Bulk Encryption. Thanks

I just the same thing in my T60. Works great.

Got my eyes set on Best Buy's Hitach 200 GB external drive on sale starting Sunday for $119.99 - whatever coupon you might have. From what I heard, the ones with serial number beginning with DTG are 7k200 drives. Swap the drives and you can use the old system drive as external storage.

Will post back how it works.

msb0b wrote:Got my eyes set on Best Buy's Hitach 200 GB external drive on sale starting Sunday for $119.99 - whatever coupon you might have. From what I heard, the ones with serial number beginning with DTG are 7k200 drives. Swap the drives and you can use the old system drive as external storage.

Will post back how it works.

Dude, it's only a 5400 RPM unit and comes with just 1 year warranty .... look both ways before crossing.

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp ... 7112455216

eecon wrote:Dude, it's only a 5400 RPM unit and comes with just 1 year warranty .... look both ways before crossing.

This is Hitachi's take on the situation:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpos ... tcount=162

In summary, Hitachi makes two 200GB external USB drives. One is 7200rpm, one is 5400rpm. Best Buy does not differentiate between them. And the thing is, there are ways to tell from the packaging. If the serial number outside begins with DTG then it is a 7k200. There are many reports verifying this method did work at many Best Buys.

See:
http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/showthread.php?t=10860
http://www.fatwallet.com/t/18/774604/
etc.

Heck, a 200gb 5400rpm for $120 is still a good deal. Newegg wants $150 for equivalent drive.

Personally I don't care if my warranty is voided. I would not send in a hard drive with my personal information on it for replacement.

msb0b wrote:

eecon wrote:

Please report back your findings if you do go for it ..... Thanks

msb0b wrote:I would not send in a hard drive with my personal information on it for replacement.

There are tools to clear the drive, which I think would completely destroy your data, for today's recovery technology. I guess one could worry about the future. (In this case, I don't.)

They write over your data many times to hide the magnetic signal.

Acronis True Image includes such a tool, and there are probably others that are free.

eecon wrote:Please report back your findings if you do go for it ..... Thanks

Just got back from Best Buy. They had 2 drives with DTG serial and 2 with WHG serial. I grabbed a DTG and opened it up... The label on the disk says

HD: 7K200-200
MODEL: HTS722020K9SA00 7200RPM
etc.

Score!

The product label on the blister pack says:

Hitachi
UPC: 8 29686 00100 8
Part Number: H2200U
FRU Number: 0A55552
Serial Number: DTG*****

The FRU number matches what Hitachi support said. I did not make note of the FRU number on the WHG drives.

Good luck to those who are jumping on the deal.

eyestrain wrote:There are tools to clear the drive, which I think would completely destroy your data, for today's recovery technology. I guess one could worry about the future. (In this case, I don't.)

Those tools are great when hard drives still work, but what if the drive has failed and the OS can't detect it? At this time, only a non-programmatic method can erase the disk. I.e. degaussing the disk drive.

Personally I will forgo the warranty and destroy the disk myself. It's not that rare. Even some corporations have established this policy toward information security.

msb0b wrote: The product label on the blister pack says:

Hitachi
UPC: 8 29686 00100 8
Part Number: H2200U
FRU Number: 0A55552
Serial Number: DTG*****

The FRU number matches what Hitachi support said. I did not make note of the FRU number on the WHG drives.

Good luck to those who are jumping on the deal.

Nice .... let us know how the drive works out for you

Mini-poll: Hard drive encryption or Vista Ultimate's BitLocker?

I have to always encrypt certain files per the companies' rules that I work for, which I... umm...don't do? haha...I have yet to lose a laptop, or misplace a hard drive, or PDA, cellphone, etc., or have anything stolen...but you never know...

Is Ultimate's BitLocker safe? As in "does it really work". I have seen, and installed, all the updates for BitLocker over the past year, and it was always to prevent one blue screen or another. Is this thing ready for prime time??? So far, I must admit that I'm glad that I have NOT used BitLocker...I haven't even bothered to get the FDE to work with my (still fairly new) 200GB Hitachi drive. I do get a feeling that it might be safer to do it using its encyption. That's purely a gut feeling. Plus it's not restricted to any OS, and within Vista's OS's, only Ultimate has the BitLocker encryption...

What say you, guys?

I am looking to solve two problems here. First is general backup so the drive should work fine. Second is an emergency backup drive for the road. If I remove the drive will it boot in a T61. I carry a Ghost image so I could restore the OS while out of town. I would have to remove the drive - is this possible in a hotel room? Finally after I do all this can I put it back in the enclosure for future backup?

Crunch wrote:Mini-poll: Hard drive encryption or Vista Ultimate's BitLocker?

Disclaimer: I do not have hands on experience with BitLocker. I only get to use Vista Business on my machines.

I would use the hard drive encryption over BitLocker given these two choices. Being a hardware implementation, it should have less compatibility issues like BSOD. Additionally, I will be able to use tools to recover data should the system become inoperable, if I have the password. From what I know about BitLocker, you are pretty much locked in that environment.

Personally I use TrueCrypt to encrypt my data. I create a container of 700MB (so it can fit on a CD-R), put it on a flash drive and replicate it on my workstations with network or Briefcase/SyncToy. I don't open those containers unless I need to. I get a clear boundary between sensitive and normal documents.

Easy to swap hard drives in a hotel room. Only need a small screwdriver or two. Actually, I did it once in 5 minutes with a Swiss Army knife.

I also use the free open source progam "TrueCrypt" for storing highly sensitive material on my hard drive in an encrypted "volume" or container. Mine is about 4 GB so it can be burned on to a normal DVD. I believe this is about as secure as one can get these days. If you haven't checked out TrueCrypt, you should. It's worth taking the time to understand how it works if you want to keep some folders or files totally separate, encrypted and private. Very highly recommended. Especially the hidden volume within a hidden volume which enables the plausible deniability feature. (With this, even if you are forced to reveal the first level password by a trained security expert, there still can be a second undetectable hidden volume within the first one, which gives you plausible deniability. I.E., you open the outer volume with one password and say "here see this is it." No one can prove there is anything else in there, but you can have an undetectable second, hidden by a different password, encrypted volume within the first one.

The normal hard drive password suffices for me for the rest of my regular stuff to keep the casual prying eyes out of my drive. I know this can be cracked but there isn't much else that is not encrypted by TrueCrypt that I am concerned about.

Some of you probably know already, TrueCrypt version 5 was released on the 5th and includes pre-boot whole disk encryption. This is another option one can go with.

Since it's a new release, I'm going to wait and see if it has any major bugs before deploying it on computers with critical data. I wish I got a spare computer to test it on.

All you really need is a spare drive to test it on