Thinkpads Forum

I'm thinking of upgrading my hard drive. I've got a T60 2007-68U; the stock drive is a Hitachi Travelstar 7200rpm 100gb, but beyond that, I don't know the specs. Looking at NewEgg, it seems they now sell SATA drives of different transfer rates, e.g., 1.5gb/s, 3gb/s, etc. What would be compatible with my laptop? I might upgrade to a 500gb drive, since the price difference between those and 160gb or 320gb drives is relatively small. Are there any limitations on my laptop using a drive of that capacity?

I'll also need an enclosure to transfer data from my old drive to the new one. There seems to be a lot of options with enclosures - SATA, SATA II, SATA III - which would work with the stock Hitachi 100gb drive?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

i'm using the hitachi 500gb in my t60p right now. no problems whatsover. i believe it is limited to sata 1 speeds though, 1.5gb/sec, because of the chipset/planar design. the drive is sata 2, but just transfers at sata 1 speed, kinda like when faster ram is downclocked to match the bus speed.

hth.

sarbin wrote:i'm using the hitachi 500gb in my t60p right now. no problems whatsover. i believe it is limited to sata 1 speeds though, 1.5gb/sec, because of the chipset/planar design. the drive is sata 2, but just transfers at sata 1 speed, kinda like when faster ram is downclocked to match the bus speed.

OK, I think I understand.

SATA I = SATA 1 = 1.5gb/s and SATA II = SATA 2 = 3.0gb/s. Correct?

And SATA 2 drives are backward compatible with SATA 1 motherboards. If I got a SATA I/II external enclosure, I'd be able to use either the original Hitachi drive or a new SATA 2 drive with it, correct?

Mhmmmmm.



Interesting fact... the TravelStar's Desktop Equivalent, the DeskStar, was so prone to failure that it was nicknamed the "DeathStar HDD"

serpico wrote:SATA I = SATA 1 = 1.5gb/s and SATA II = SATA 2 = 3.0gb/s. Correct?

And SATA 2 drives are backward compatible with SATA 1 motherboards. If I got a SATA I/II external enclosure, I'd be able to use either the original Hitachi drive or a new SATA 2 drive with it, correct?

correct on speeds and nomenclature.

re: backward compatibility, it seems to be, at least on my tp. can't say with certainty if it applies to all mb/chipset/drive combos.

can't comment on the external enclosure question. no experience with them.

Anniemoose98 wrote:Mhmmmmm.

Interesting fact... the TravelStar's Desktop Equivalent, the DeskStar, was so prone to failure that it was nicknamed the "DeathStar HDD"

thankfully, i've never had a travelstar morph into a deathstar.
i've had dozens of travelstars over the years with no issues, knock on wood.

No platter based drive can hit SATA II speeds. Whether it's SATA I or II probably doesn't matter much. The MomentusXT might be worth a look. It's a 500G drive with a 4GB flash drive, which can speed boot times and application launch times for commonly used apps.

FredGarvin wrote:No platter based drive can hit SATA II speeds. Whether it's SATA I or II probably doesn't matter much. The MomentusXT might be worth a look. It's a 500G drive with a 4GB flash drive, which can speed boot times and application launch times for commonly used apps.

I was under the impression that flash drives have a limited number of reliable read/write cycles, but I assume they have this worked out, especially if they are incorporating flash memory as a 'buffer' on a disk drive.