Thinkpads Forum

Bear with me please, I'm no expert.

I'm looking to use this drive in my T61p Ultrabay adapter for now, and eventually replace the 160GB Travelstar currently installed.

Specs on the new drive here: http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib. ... 320_DS.pdf

The currently installed drive has a 1.5 GB/s interface.

The intended new drive is a SATA 3GB/s. I'm "pretty" sure the SATA Interface on my T61p handles this, but how do determine that for sure ? I don't see anything in System Information that tells me.

Viz

I have a Z61p which is from a hardware standpoint identical with a T60p and I´m running a Seagate Momentus 7200.3 (knock on wood) as my primary drive. It has Sata 3Gb/s-Interface like the 7K200. Since your T61p is the very next generation ThinkPad, I´m pretty sure it would flawlessly handle the 7K320. Besides, there are quite a lot of forum members here with T61p successfully running 7K320

Cheers

Marin

Thanks. I was thinking it would handle it ok, but not sure if it (T61p) would actually transfer at 3gbs or 1.5.

Vuz

That won´t happen in any case , these 3 Gb/s are just the supported interface bandwidth, not the actual transfer rates of the HD. AFAIK, the 3 Gb/s limit cannot be broken even by SSD drives for now (excluding some very exotic ones which are actually pci-e). What you need are just some benchmarks on the 7K320. You can google or even better search the forum. There were some nice threads around comparing the performance of 7200 rpm 320 GB notebook HDs.

Intel X25-M reads 220 MB/s within my desktop and poorly reach 110 MB/s with my T61p. So if I had to spend about 600$ for a fast SSD and have to use it so slow...

Then you will have to buy a newer laptop with 3 Gb/s interface... I can imagine how you feel, I actually wanted to buy one of those Intel SSDs, abut after reading about these fairly unexpected limitations in T60(p) and even T61(p), I don´t want to anymore....

Marin85 wrote:....... Since your T61p is the very next generation ThinkPad, I´m pretty sure it would flawlessly handle the 7K320. Besides, there are quite a lot of forum members here with T61p successfully running 7K320

Cheers

Marin

My new 7K320 was installed in the Ultrabay adapter. When I hot swap the LED on the Ultrabay lights up, I hear a Windows audible sound, but the drive isn't showing up (say, as a D: drive). When I remove the device by first using the Ultrabay tab, Windows knows the device by name ("Hitachi HTS..... can safely be removed....").

OK, what did I do wrong, or, fail to do ?

Viz

Silly question, but did you format the drive?

Go to Computer Management under administrative tools, and check to see if there are any partitions that have been created. If not create them, then they should show up.

deforest wrote:Silly question, but did you format the drive?

Go to Computer Management under administrative tools, and check to see if there are any partitions that have been created. If not create them, then they should show up.

Not a silly question at all. Nope, I missed that step entirely (first time I've ever added a hard drive to a system).

Thanks, that worked perfectly. Appreciate it !!

Viz

Marin85 wrote:Then you will have to buy a newer laptop with 3 Gb/s interface... I can imagine how you feel, I actually wanted to buy one of those Intel SSDs, abut after reading about these fairly unexpected limitations in T60(p) and even T61(p), I don´t want to anymore....

but INTEL 965 chipset support SATA300, I called intel and got confirmed on this part, maybe Thinkpad Disable the SATA300 on the mobo, and my intel 80G SSD also got 130MB/s on my X61t.