T60P HARD DRIVE REPLACEMENT

[mleclere]

I HAVE A T-60 P THAT I AM HAVING PROBLEMS WITH IN TERMS OF SPEED AND PERFORMANCE. I AM A BIG OUTLOOK USER AND GET HUNDREDS OF EMAILS PER DAY THAT I GET FROM A VPN CONNECTION AND USUALLY HAVE ABOUT 2,500 EMAILS AT ANY ONE TIME PRIOR TO CREATING PST'S.

I AM GOING TO CHANGE THE ORIGINAL HARD DRIVE FROM A HTS721010G9SA00, A 100 GB 7200 RPM HITACHI, TO A HITACHI 7K-320. MY QUESTION IS THAT THIS DRIVE HAS A 3GB/SEC TRANSFER RATE AS OPPOSED TO THE 100 GB ORIGINAL DRIVE WITH A 1.5 GB/SEC RATE.

WILL THIS WORK OK, AND IS IT DIFFICULT TO INSTALL?

THANKS,

[RealBlackStuff]

You'd have no problems with that.
See this thread: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=69004

It would be nice if next time you post, you would not use all CAPITALS.
This is called SHOUTING and is not very good netiquette!

[mleclere]

Many thanks for the link.

[BuzzBuzzard]

Others may have other prefered ways of making the switch from one drive to another, but here's how I have done it several times with complete success: Create an image back up of the C: partition of the original drive. Save it to an external drive. Install the new drive and run factory restore on the new drive, which will create the recovery partition on the new drive at the same time that it partitons and formats it properly. Use something like Partition Magic on the newly "restored" hard drive and create a partition to move your image backup to that you made of the original C: partition into and use it to restore your new C: parition so you can resume use of the laptop right where you left off. If you just want a clean install of to the factory configuartion and start fresh, then just do that, instead.

Peraonally, I like to use a large second partition for data storage. Keep an image backup there at all times and all documents , as well as the Outlook PST file, your favorites and anything you don't want to include in an image backup of the C: drive, as it is a waste of time and if you have a crash between backups, you've lost new data. Drives are cheap now. I bought a 250GB Travelstar for under $60.

[yak]

1.5Gb/s, 3.0Gb/s, doesn't matter. No standard notebook hard-drive (non SSD) gets over the 1.5Gb/s limit.

Besides, the SATA controller in T60 does not support 3.0Gb/s transfer rates.

[stephenaron]

I use the 320gb Hard Drive you are looking at, and it works great.

[Johan]

There is an on-going discussion about this issue in the thread WD Scorpio 5400RPM vs 7200RPM 320GB drive comparison? where you will find valuable information. If replying to that thread, please keep the comments within the relevant thread... for the benefit of users who may later search the archives here for answers.

As to how to swap the drives (swap out the old and replace by the new), I would strongly recommend using Acornis True Image - super easy to use, cheap, fast! Search this forum for more information, if necessary. If you go with a Seagate HDD, then you have the option of getting Seagate's free version of Acronis True Image (which will however only work with Seagate drives): the program DiscWizard. Google it yourself for more information; a download link is --> here.

Johan