Successful T60 hard drive upgrade
Posted: Wed Mar 12, 2008 11:48 am
For those who may be intimidated by the prospect of upgrading your T60 hard drive, take it from someone who did it: it's well worth the effort. IMHO, it's better to have the recovery discs on hand to do a fresh install of the operating system (if they didn't come with your machine, there is a utility to create them in the Thinkvantage Solutions area).
I was able to win an Ebay auction for a 200gb 7200 RPM drive with an IBM P/N # of 41N5738 at a decent price ($128.00) to replace the original 120gb 5400 RPM drive in my T60.
After backing up all my important data to an external drive, I began the process of replacing the drive.
One screw on the bottom holds the hard drive cover. After removing the screw, the hard drive cover door slips out. Then, the hard drive itself is extracted by tugging on the plastic pull-out tabbed glued to the drive. The new replacement drive has the same "rubber rails" as the original drive already installed on it right out of the box so it truly needs nothing. Slide the drive into the bay, making sure the correct side is up and the connectors make contact. Replace the hard drive cover and re-install the screw.
Using the Recovery startup disc in the CD/DVD bay, turn on the machine and let the Rescue & Recovery discs do their thing.
After successfully installing the operating system, the machine will look and run just as it did "out of the box". Then, update Windows, update the IBM software, install your programs and restore your previously installed data. That's it!
I now have a machine that runs much faster than before and has more space. (I'm not sure that all of the improvement is due strictly to the faster drive; the new install of Windows XP Pro had a lot to do with it as well.)
This is what the machine should have been in the first place!
Mike Paz
I was able to win an Ebay auction for a 200gb 7200 RPM drive with an IBM P/N # of 41N5738 at a decent price ($128.00) to replace the original 120gb 5400 RPM drive in my T60.
After backing up all my important data to an external drive, I began the process of replacing the drive.
One screw on the bottom holds the hard drive cover. After removing the screw, the hard drive cover door slips out. Then, the hard drive itself is extracted by tugging on the plastic pull-out tabbed glued to the drive. The new replacement drive has the same "rubber rails" as the original drive already installed on it right out of the box so it truly needs nothing. Slide the drive into the bay, making sure the correct side is up and the connectors make contact. Replace the hard drive cover and re-install the screw.
Using the Recovery startup disc in the CD/DVD bay, turn on the machine and let the Rescue & Recovery discs do their thing.
After successfully installing the operating system, the machine will look and run just as it did "out of the box". Then, update Windows, update the IBM software, install your programs and restore your previously installed data. That's it!
I now have a machine that runs much faster than before and has more space. (I'm not sure that all of the improvement is due strictly to the faster drive; the new install of Windows XP Pro had a lot to do with it as well.)
This is what the machine should have been in the first place!
Mike Paz