Thinkpads Forum

I have a two year old T60 (2007-4EU) and I need to pick up a new harddrive for it. What specs/form factor do I need, and does anyone have any particular model suggestions? Faster and quieter is better.

Thanks

AFAIK you're going to be needing a 2.5" SATA hard drive. Make sure its got a height of 9mm/9.5mm because there are some taller drives and they don't fit in a T60. (Of course I'm assuming all T60 were designed to take the same size of drives). For performance get a 7200rpm drive although platter density can play a role (eg. a bigger capacity slower drive may have better performance compared to a smaller capacity faster drive). Capacity-wise... as big as you can afford

As for brands, apparently the hitachi travelstar/seagate momentus series are popular choices (for speed and quietness, not sure which one is known more? for it, I have a feeling its the seagate though). Although I'd usually go with any one of the big names. Anyway hang around for more opinions/corrections on the subject

Welcome to the forum!

I have a Samsung 320GB 5400RPM drive in my T60. It works great and takes less power than other 320GB drives, giving me a bit better battery life. It's also extremely quiet.

Both Seagate & Western Digital are now shipping 320GB (298GB) 7200RPM 9.5mm drives - Here in the UK they are in very short supply, the first batch's of Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB sold out within 3days!

I think the biggest drives readily available would be the 320gig ones, however Samsung have a 500gig (Spinpoint M6) being released sometime, someplace...

Thanks for the update Blue Thunder - according to Samsung their Spinpoint M6's (500GB (465GB) @ 5400RPM) are currently shipping.

Well seems someone is already using it

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=63402

Running in an X61s and all... i'm jealous

I highly recommend the Hitachi 7k200 series which spin at 7200 rpm. I have three of them (one supplied with my machine by Lenovo and two purchased from newegg.com) and they have all been reliable, fast and very quiet. There have been some really good deals with rebates on them recently.

Thanks for the suggestions guys. Size isn't a huge issue as I keep files on a file server, so i think 200G is going to be way more than I'll ever use.

One other question, what is the difference between 1.5Gb/s and 3.0Gb/s, other than the obvious of course. That is, does it matter which I get?

well basically it doesn't matter for the fact that NO HDD out there can fully use the 1.5Gbps bandwidth (well maybe some 3.5" 10,000 Raptors). The laptop drives max out at about 70MB/s.

The other problem is that i think even the T61 only runs at 1.5Gbps on SATA so 3Gbps ones will be running at 1.5Gbps anyways.

SHoTTa35 wrote:...NO HDD out there can fully use the 1.5Gbps bandwidth...

I agree 100%.

SHoTTa35 wrote:...i think even the T61 only runs at 1.5Gbps on SATA...

I can't find confirmation on Lenovo's site but some vendors like CDW have detailed specs for models they sell. They claim these specs are from Lenovo. According to this information, all 60 series ThinkPads and later have Serial ATA-300. Here is an example (click the arrow next to storage controller). The same spec was listed for my son's R60. But, as I said, I can't find official confirmation.