how to upgrade x40 hard drive?

[supernova87a]

Hi all,

I have an x40 that I probably should have bought with a large hard drive to begin with. But as it is, I'm stuck with 40gb right now. I'd like to upgrade the drive maybe 80gb so I can have another partition for linux (work stuff).

But I have never really taken the time to understand how the emergency restore partition, etc, works and how to reinstall if something bad were to happen. And there were no windows cds included with the laptop.

Is there an easy way to "mirror" my current hard disk onto a new one, and then just pop it in? I know how to install a new hard drive with a clean copy of windows, etc, but if possible I'd like to keep my existing environment without too much hassle.

from what I can find online, this seems to be a weak point in the thinkpad information (and laptops in general). thanks for your tips.

[seneca]

well, you can burn rescue cds from the rescue and recovery software in windows (not sure if it work in the predesktop area). And then, when you have installed your new harddrive, you can restore the harddrive to a factory default, using the cds, the recovery partition restores with it.

[Grey Area]

By the way, there is no drive larger than 60Gb for the X4*.

[seneca]

grey area: I think there is a 80gb version about to be released, perpendicular recording has made that possible.

[Grey Area]

That would be great - do you have any details? I remember a rumour in 2005 that an 80Gb-drive was supposed to be released January 2006, but obviously this did not turn out to be true. Maybe this time?

Björn

[seneca]

Well, according to this press release, it's already on the market...

http://66.249.93.104/search?q=cache:zo0 ... =clnk&cd=1

And on toshibas website, it's listed as a released product:

http://sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Path=8 ... 9c00002b41

[Grey Area]

I see. The problem is, those Toshiba-drives won't fit in an X40/41, as the connectors don't match. So far only Hitachi has made drives compatible to the X40/41.

Björn

[seneca]

Oh, I see, my bad...

But still...The technology is there, shouldn't be long until Hitachi releases something too....

[supernova87a]

thanks for the replies --

can you clarify, are you saying that the normal laptop hard drives (such as I've bought in the past for a T40, HP omnibook, and X30) will not fit in the X40?

[seneca]

No, probably not. The harddrive sizes in "ordinary" laptops, like the T40 or similar, use 2.5" harddrives. And the X40/X41 on the other hand, uses 1.8" harddrives (with a special connector even).

[Gee]

It is not a special connector. It is the same connector found on the 2.5" drives. The only difference is, the mounting is on the side.

[Grey Area]

It is not a special connector. It is the same connector found on the 2.5" drives. The only difference is, the mounting is on the side.

Well, yes and no. It is special in that all the other 1.8"-drives on the market use a different connector. Only IBM seems to have gone with the same connector as found on 2.5"-drives. This may have been well intended, but it is of little help now that the originally non-standard connector of other 1.8"-inch drives has become the de facto standard for drives of this size.

This means that the drives in the X40/41 are more or less exclusive to this machine type. The market for a possible larger capacity drive is therefore rather small, giving little incentive to the manufacturers to develop an upgrade like that.