Thinkpads Forum

What's the fastest HD that is T60 compatible? I'm thinking about finally going back to XP, but I want to do it on a fresh HD.

The fastest mechanical drive is the Seagate 7200.4. The fastest drives are SSDs, but keep in mind the T60 limits throughput on the SATA controller to 150mbps. The fastest drives like the Intel X25-m are much faster than 150mbps.

Is there anywhere where I can even buy a 250gb 7200.4?

You could get the 500GB when they first came out from NewEgg, but they're hard to find now.

FredGarvin wrote:You could get the 500GB when they first came out from NewEgg, but they're hard to find now.

BestBuy has WD Black 320gb 7200rpm's for 130 bucks.

Is the 320gb faster than the 160gb?

marlinspike wrote:Is the 320gb faster than the 160gb?

no, just bigger.

marlinspike wrote:Is the 320gb faster than the 160gb?

Typically single platter drives like the 160gb offer better performance, but you probably wouldn't notice it.

Yeah I have no need for anything bigger than 160gb, so I was only going to consider the 320gb if it were faster.

marlinspike wrote:Yeah I have no need for anything bigger than 160gb, so I was only going to consider the 320gb if it were faster.

I remember when I got my first Mac. It must have been about 20 years ago. It had a 20MB hard drive, which was unusual at the time. The OS still loaded on discs. I was thinking to myself, "what the heck am I going to do with 20MB? I'll never use that much space". Just recently I sold my 100GB external cause it wasn't big enough. How times change.

FredGarvin wrote:I remember when I got my first Mac. It must have been about 20 years ago. It had a 20MB hard drive, which was unusual at the time.

The IBM XT came out in 1983 and sported a 10MB HD. That was twice as big as most external HDs sold at the time. I still have my XT and fire it up occasionally. Even with DOS 3, Lotus 1-2-3, MS Word and a few utilities the drive is only half full and still error-free.

Them's were the days...

P.S. The XT system unit alone sold for $7,500 up here. You also needed to buy a video card and monitor (at least $1,000 more) in order to have a usable PC.

FredGarvin wrote:The fastest mechanical drive is the Seagate 7200.4. The fastest drives are SSDs, but keep in mind the T60 limits throughput on the SATA controller to 150mbps. The fastest drives like the Intel X25-m are much faster than 150mbps.

Use of the "mbps" unit can be misleading here as a small letter "b" is normally used to describe bits. For bytes, a large "B" is used instead. Additionally, "M" should be used in place of "m" because we're referring to Mega-, not mili- (like in mm - milimeters). So, what you meant is "MBps", expressed more commonly in "MB/s" form as opposite to "Mbps" (bits) to further emphasize the difference between them.

Just to avoid confusion

I have a 320gb 7200.4, and let me tell you, there is a night and day difference between it and the stock drive. It gets a 5.9 HDD score in W7, and I bought it off the net for quite a bit less that the earlier poster said it could be had for from best buy.

i have a 500GB seagate 7200.4 that was purchased from tigerdirect.com. it is fast and helps with my boot up time.

Well getting the 160gb scorpio black was a mistake - thing makes as much noise as the fan on low when it's not being accessed.

Exchange it.

FredGarvin wrote:Exchange it.

Would involve mailing it back to Newegg. Doesn't seem worth the hassle, I'll just live with the noise.

I'm curious as to why you didn't go with a SSD drive?

Daniel wrote:I'm curious as to why you didn't go with a SSD drive?

Do you have money out the wazoo? Because I don't.

jjesusfreak01 wrote:I have a 320gb 7200.4, and let me tell you, there is a night and day difference between it and the stock drive. It gets a 5.9 HDD score in W7, and I bought it off the net for quite a bit less that the earlier poster said it could be had for from best buy.

The Hitachi 5K500 actually scores 5.7 (with Vista, but the numbers are supposed to be consistent) -- with its super-high data density, even 5400 rpm provides very good performance. And it's vewwy, vewwy quiet!

You asked for the fastest drive and went on to show dissatisfaction for the noise level of your new drive. It would seem a SSD would be an ideal fit for your situation.

tomh009 wrote:The Hitachi 5K500 actually scores 5.7 (with Vista

Weird, because my 7K320 also scores 5.7 with Vista

The key is the data rate -- which is combination of the rotational speed and the aerial data density.

5K500.B is rated at 875 Mb/s:
http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib. ... _final.pdf

7K320 is rated at 1136 Mb/s:
http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib. ... 320_DS.pdf

My suspicion is that Vista/Windows 7 is doing something giving full points for the data rate for anything over 800 Mb/s. And the seek times are identical for the two drives, so likely one needs a fast SSD to get to that magical 6.0 rating.

I have a Seagate 250GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache Hard Drive.

Under Windows 7 Build 7100 it scores a 5.9, is nice and quiet and isn't all too hot either. It runs just a tad warmer than my old 5400RPM 160GB WD HD.

I bought it from Mwave on sale for $79.99 + $5 pickup fee just after Christmas this year.

If only Lenovo hadn't limited the SATA interface, then I could run at the full speed of the drive. I'm sure it would increase the WEI score at least 1 point.

FredGarvin wrote:
I remember when I got my first Mac. It must have been about 20 years ago. It had a 20MB hard drive, which was unusual at the time. The OS still loaded on discs. I was thinking to myself, "what the heck am I going to do with 20MB? I'll never use that much space". Just recently I sold my 100GB external cause it wasn't big enough. How times change.

LOL. My first laptop back in 2001, a top of the line Compaq Presario XL1800, came with a 6GB HD and cost $2000, and I immediately paid like $300 to get a 20GB 4200RPM HD and I thought that thing would've carried me into the year 2050 without filling up.

Last night on my T60 I just upgraded my 100GB 7200RPM Hitachi Travelstar for it's 320GB 7200RPM version for about $60 because my 100GB drive after a year of use was filled and had only MegaBytes of space left.

the times..

jjesusfreak01 wrote:I have a 320gb 7200.4, and let me tell you, there is a night and day difference between it and the stock drive. It gets a 5.9 HDD score in W7, and I bought it off the net for quite a bit less that the earlier poster said it could be had for from best buy.

I have the same HDD in my machine and it's really responsive. I would highly recommend it. Even with the acoustic management set to maximum performance and noise it's near-silent. Previously there was a 7200.2 160GB HDD in here and I was amazed at how much difference there is in speed with the newer model.