T60P Harddrive Upgrade

[ennma]

Hi All,
Before you shoot me down, I have searched this forum about hard-drive upgrade for t60,
mainly to find recommendation which drive to choose and how-to;however I have since then hit by new factors to consider:

• 5400 vs 7200 rpm:
  • Current: 7200
    Future : 7200
  Capacity:
  • Current: 100Gb ( can only see 80 Gb )
    Future : >=200Gb
  Technology: (need help)
  Mainly how do I check my t60p can handle SATA3.0
  current drive is hts721010g9sa00 , SATA 1.5
  • SATA 1.5
    SATA 3.0
  Install Strategy:(need help)
  targeting for easy/clean no bloatware on the new drive.
  Windows XP as host
  VMWare for OS X
  • Clean install
    Recovery disk install

I have narrowed down my selection to the following:

• 7k200 SATA 1.5:
  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822145160
  7K320 SATA 3.0:
  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822145228

I hope the community will be willing to help/give suggestions.

Thanks in advance

edit:

jumped the gun with WD Scorpio Black

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136280

just for comparison sake and -$10.00 from Hitachi 7k320
I hope I don't get a lemon.


Ennma

[ajkula66]

Your T60p will accept SATA 3.0 drives, but they will run at 1.5 speeds, due to a chipset limitation.

I'll let someone else answer questions on cloning the hard drive, because that's really not my forte...

[DenTP4rm]

As George said, your T60p will accept SATA 3.0 drives, running however at 1.5 speeds. I'm not sure about the Hitachi drive, but, Seagate 3.0 drives will require you to set a jumper to make it work with a chipset limited to 1.5 capacity.

You should go with a 7200 rpm drive. The difference in power drain between that and a 5400 drive on a T60p is negligible compared to the difference in speed and efficiency.

As far as installation, if you want to do a clean install just use your Recovery CDs. If you don't have them you should be able to generate them from your current system. Here is a guide.

If you want to clone your current setup, the most recommended program I know of and that I personally use is Acronis True Image. There are several threads here that deal with the how-to's of that. Pay careful attention to ones that recommend placing your original drive in a USB enclosure and your new drive in the Thinkpad main drive. You can use a bootable CD created with Acronis TI do do that operation and it works like a charm. See Cloning T60 With Apricorn (Update)

I have a couple of the 200 GB Hitachi drives and can recommend them. I would recommend more though the 320 GB drive as you will almost surely need the room eventually. Hope this helps.
DenTP4rm

[tockki]

I recently bought 2 hard drives 320GB
for the similar amount of money I would get:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822136280

This WD black is a nice drive with 5 year warranty. It is fast read and write and I love it.

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822148336

I also have this drive and it seems a little bit more quiet than the WD black however I think it is just a tad bit slower than the WD black. Personally I recomend the WD black..

(I wouldn't get the Seagate 7200.4 cuz I think there are quality control issues where I had mechanical problems a few days after. Other people have issues with it too...)

[ZaZ]

Seagate 3.0 drives will require you to set a jumper to make it work with a chipset limited to 1.5 capacity.

That has not been true in my case. My Seagate drive required nothing to work. The fastest mechanical drive right now is the Seagate 7200.4, though they're all pretty similar in real world usage. The whole 3.0 vs 1.5 thing doesn't matter much for mechanical drives because no platter drives can go above 1.5 speeds anyway. Only SSDs can do it. I kind of like Seagate drives. Buying one will get you a free download of DiscWizard. It is a limited version of True Image, a very good cloning software.

[ennma]

Hi All,
Thank you for your help, I have had my t60p for ages now, and the Hitachi drive
is pretty impressive IMO since I have left my tp running 2,3 days non-stop at times
albeit doing nothing but downloading.
With your answers I have narrowed down my option to.

7k200 SATA 1.5:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822145160

However upon further inspection of the reviews it seems, I may not be getting ~200 gb
one reviewer even mentions only 127gb was available.

What would you galls/guys recommend I should do to minimize the loss of storage space
from a new drive.

again Thanks in advance.

Ennma

[DenTP4rm]

Ennma, once again, I would recommend the 320 GB drive, whether Hitachi or Seagate, as you never get the advertised storage space for reasons you can research elsewhere.

That has not been true in my case. My Seagate drive required nothing to work.

Fred,
Regarding the need for jumpers on Seagate SATA 300 drives, I'm curious, is that drive in your R60? Assuming it's an SATA 300 compatible drive, it may have come from the factory already jumpered. I've had two so far like that. The jumper would be on the 1 & 2 pins. The Seagate manual for 7200.2 SATA drives states "If the host system does not support SATA 3Gb/s operation, place a jumper on pins 1 and 2 to limit the drive to 1.5Gb/s." There doesn't appear to be similar wording in manuals for the 3 & 4 generations. However there is a page on How To Install and Troubleshoot Serial ATA (SATA) Hard Drives on Seagate's site that states "The jumper block adjacent to the SATA interface connector on SATA 300MB/s drives can be used to force the drive into SATA 150MB/s mode for use with older SATA controllers that only work with SATA 150MB/s drives."

Also, there's a recent thread on the Forum Seagate 500GB ST9500420AS Problem which indicates some users have had problems setting up their Seagate SATA drives until they discovered the need to set the jumper on systems that weren't SATA 300 compatible.

I suspect some drives, maybe earlier ones, shipped from the factory with the jumper installed and possibly later ones did not, causing some of the confusion. In any case, it seems that if one has a Thinkpad with chipset that does not support SATA 300 one will need to set the jumper.
cheers,
DenTP4rm

[ZaZ]

Yes, it is in my R60. It's a 7200.4 drive, but I've had 7200.3 and 7200.2 drives. None of those drives required one to set the jumper as far as I know, but I didn't look real close.

[sktn77a]

7k200 SATA 1.5:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822145160

However upon further inspection of the reviews it seems, I may not be getting ~200 gb
one reviewer even mentions only 127gb was available.

Ennma

Get whichever one is cheaper (3.0GB/s or 1.5GB/s)

The old 134 GB limit on HDDs is long past. You will get the full decimal equivalent of whatever size drive you get (less recovery partition and OS install).

[ZaZ]

If you install service pack two or above, you will see the whole hard drive. You can slipstream it into the install disc to see the whole drive during the setup. If you're using the recovery discs, you should already have it.

[adnangazaly]

Hi, I have T60p, can I upgrade my 100GB 7200 rpm hard drive to SSD.

Appreciate your reply.

Adnan

[lautamas]

Is the T6X series can accept any generic HDD at this moment? Or, do I need any whitelisted BIOS?
In T4X series, the notebook would accept only IBM (in particular) HDD only, it wouldnt take any generic HDD.

[ZaZ]

Hi, I have T60p, can I upgrade my 100GB 7200 rpm hard drive to SSD.

Appreciate your reply.

Adnan

Yes, you can, but note that the SATA controller is 1.5. The best drives like the Intel X25-M or OCZ Vertex won't be able to use their max throughput.

It was only the T43 that limited drive selection. It would except any drive, but some cause the 2010 error when booting. The 2010 error was annoying, but easy to escape out of.

[adnangazaly]

Thank you very much for your reply. If I bought hard drives you mention, is it worth or not for speed.
Thanks again

[wild_bill]

I have used all of the hard drives mentioned in this thread, but I think you guys are missing the quietest and most reliable one at newegg for the T60p in my opinion is this one:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822116160 (5 eggs)

[ennma]

OMG why did you not post earlier, I was looking at that one.
but I already jumped on the WD, I am looking for a quiet drive.
gahh.

[SkiBunny]

It was only the T43 that limited drive selection. It would except any drive, but some cause the 2010 error when booting. The 2010 error was annoying, but easy to escape out of.

More significantly, I think they're also incompatible with the Thinkpad Active Protection System (thus the error).
http://www.pc.ibm.com/europe/think/en/aps.html

[ennma]

Hi again,
Really sorry for this simple question, When I tried creating Rescue Recovery CD per lenovo's instructions

Start->select All Programs->select ThinkVantage->Create Rescue and Recovery Media.

I don't have the last step, ie Create Rescue Recovery Media.

this indicates that i need to install

Rescue and Recovery™ 4.21 for Windows XP (32-bit) and 2000

but after reading the *.txt file I am not certain what this piece of software do.
during/when installed.

1.) does it create a new partition and dumps the RR files in aforementioned partition

2.) a package of tools which does not interact with my hard drive partition when installed

again sorry for the simple question.

ennma

[ennma]

Just a little update, I have done the following.

-received WD Scorpio Black.
-install sp2 slip stream using How to Fresh Install Win XP (Step-by-Step Guide)

observation:

• -pulsating clicking/mechanical noise heard.when not active.
  -system froze 3 times in one week:
  • - had to hard reboot
    - eventvwr shows nothing since harddrive stopped.

Suggestions:

• -are these signs a pretext to a failing harddrive?
  -what can I do to investigate the causes of the system
  froze. since there are no logs in eventvwr.
  -should I rma the WD Black?

Thank you in Advance.

Ennma

[propellen]

I purchased a Hitachi 7k320 some time ago ( http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29 ).

When I installed the disk I experienced several problems:

• - The disk got incredible hot (~47 degrees Celsius) under normal work
  - The overall system performance was poor, compared to the initial Hitachi 5400rpm disk.

The drop in system performance made me return to the initial disk. However, recently I installed it once again,
cloning the initial disk with Acronis. The system performance dropped just as before, but this time I decided to install
PerfectDisk 10 by Raxco to defragment the disk. The increase in performance is significant(!) Just as one would expect when
increasing the rpms from 5400rpm to 7200rpm. I'm really happy with the result.

[wild_bill]

I used to be a big Hitachi drive man, but their newer SATA 7200 drives just get too hot. I just LOVE the Fujitsu 320MB 7200rpm from newegg I installed in in my T60 a year ago - it is cool running and so quiet that I have never even heard it run!

[bcam]

I too need to upgrade the 100GB in my T60p to a 320GB, and I appreciate the various recommendations. HOWEVER, I'm really confused as to the best way to transfer the image, as I already have Acronis TI11 but not an external enclosure.

While many posters seem to be following this route:

...
If you want to clone your current setup, the most recommended program I know of and that I personally use is Acronis True Image. There are several threads here that deal with the how-to's of that. Pay careful attention to ones that recommend placing your original drive in a USB enclosure and your new drive in the Thinkpad main drive. You can use a bootable CD created with Acronis TI do do that operation and it works like a charm. See Cloning T60 With Apricorn (Update)
...
DenTP4rm

the Acronis TI11 user's manual says:
To transfer the system, you must first install the disk in the computer (see details in the
Appendix B. Hard disks and BIOS setup). If your computer doesn’t have a bay for another
hard disk, you can temporarily install it in place of your CD drive or use a USB 2.0 connection
to the external target disk. If that is not possible, you can clone a hard disk by creating a
disk image and restoring it to a new hard disk with larger partitions.

If I already have a full image backed up to an existing external HD, why wouldn't I just follow this latter route (simply restore it to the new HD) without hassling with buying an enclosure??!!

Can someone PLEASE clarify this definitively and advise me?

thanks very much in advance ~

bcam

[ZaZ]

Could buy an external case for your old drive. Make the image and leave it on the old drive. Put the new drive in and using the external drive in the case, True Image case see the drive and use the image on it to restore the drive. Plus now you've got a nice backup device, which one should always have. Good Luck.

[jobbers]

just buy a external SATA enclosure which accepts both normal size drives and also laptop drives

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp ... 8102199901

Then run the "Casper XP" application to copy your drive from "A=internal" to "B=new/enclosure".
Then insert your new drive into your laptop.
The new drive always boots perfectly every time, with no additional prep steps needed.