Thinkpads Forum

The 200 GB hard drive that came with my T61p is full. I need a bigger one (but equally, or more, silent and reliable). Full Disk Encryption would also be a plus.

I was thinking of buying one of, at least, 500 GB and 7200 rpm. Is there such a thing? What is the best (or, at least, the brand used in OEM Thinkpads)? Are there even bigger drives?

Supposedly, Western Digitals score the best in the benches, though to me it's usually hard to tell in real world usage. The Hitachi 5k500 is reportedly very quite and low power.

arlab wrote:I was thinking of buying one of, at least, 500 GB and 7200 rpm. Is there such a thing?

Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9500420AS
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822148374

Harryc wrote: Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9500420AS
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822148374

Seagate was the one I saw.
They also have a version with Full Disk Encryption:
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/produc ... s_7200_fde

Is Seagate good? Being 7200rpm is visibly much better than 5400rpm?

arlab wrote:Being 7200rpm is visibly much better than 5400rpm?

Visibly better? It depends on your eyesight! I went from a 7200 rpm 200GB drive to a 5400 rpm 500GB drive. The throughput is slightly slower, but not slow enough for me to really be able to tell under normal use, without a stopwatch. And the 500GB drive is big enough that I'm not running into fragmentation issues yet.

On the upside, the 5400 rpm drive (Hitachi 5K500.B) is quieter and super low power (1.7W seek, 1.4W read/write) which adds to my battery life. So I'm personally happy with the compromise, even though my last three drives were all 7200 rpm.

tomh009 wrote:It depends on your eyesight!

I'll probably go with the Seagate. Not perfect, but not bad either.

Here are some benchmark results:

http://www.barefeats.com/note05.html
http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=1550&pageID=6762

Just wondering, to replace my old drive with the Seagate with Full Disk Encryption, do I have to change any settings in the BIOS, or something?

I went with a Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500 GB 5400 rpms. It's been good so far. I don't know about benchmarking differences. In use however, the performance seems up to par with the Hitachi 72K stock drive and this includes playing games.

tomh009 wrote: Visibly better? It depends on your eyesight! I went from a 7200 rpm 200GB drive to a 5400 rpm 500GB drive. The throughput is slightly slower, but not slow enough for me to really be able to tell under normal use, without a stopwatch. And the 500GB drive is big enough that I'm not running into fragmentation issues yet.

On the upside, the 5400 rpm drive (Hitachi 5K500.B) is quieter and super low power (1.7W seek, 1.4W read/write) which adds to my battery life. So I'm personally happy with the compromise, even though my last three drives were all 7200 rpm.

Really? I went from a Hitachi DeathStar 200GB 7200 RPM hard drive to a 320GB WD 5400 RPM and the WD loads the OS faster, and is noticeably faster. I am about to see what happens when I plug in a 500gb 7200 RPM hard drive though

tylerwylie wrote:I am about to see what happens when I plug in a 500gb 7200 RPM hard drive though

Be sure to report the results.

tylerwylie wrote: Really? I went from a Hitachi DeathStar 200GB 7200 RPM hard drive to a 320GB WD 5400 RPM and the WD loads the OS faster, and is noticeably faster.

How is it noticeably faster?

ninjaronin18 wrote:
How is it noticeably faster?

What I noticed? Operating system load time was cut by about 4 seconds. This was using Fedora 10. Application load times were not noticeably faster, but seemed snappier. I use preload though, so during light usage that daemon loads commonly used apps libraries into memory to facilitate fast load times. Also, using VMWare, the bog down that came from using multiple OS' was less prevalent. Less power usage as well by about 1W(Using powertop). Newer technology and denser platters are awesome