Thinkpads Forum

Hey guys and gals, what is the best Solid State Hard Drive for X61 ?

1. I have nearly maxed out my 750GB Seagate Hybrid Hard Drive. So I want to increase capacity to at least 2TB (but I would consider up to 5TB).

2. I don't travel much, but on a three hour flight recently, I had to shut down to avoid a forced shut down when the battery was about to run out of charge. Question: Does using a SSD give you effectively more battery time because you are using less battery power with an SSD than which is used to spin a traditional HD?

My X61 is Intel Core2 Duo T8300 @ 2.40GHz, 2.8GB Ram, running Windows 10 Home 1703, 64-bit.

I doubt you'll find a 2GB SSD, even a 2GB HDD is nearly impossible.
On the other hand, 2TB is available nowadays, but at a hefty price.
Samsung 850 (EVO, or rather: Pro) and Crucial MX300 come to mind.
Read up on them on the likes of Anandtech.
No experience with either since I don't need such monsters in a laptop.

2TB and only $89. But will it fit in an X61?

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... gnorebbr=1

Apparently this is NOT a pure SS drive. It is only 8GB SS, the remainder is traditional HD...

So, yes apparently purely Solid State Hard Drives are still quite expensive!

It'll fit.
Just add a piece of 2.5mm carton to stop that drive from 'flapping'.

So, can I then assume that the "normal" HD size for an X61 is 9mm?

Any other Hybrid HD's to consider?

HDD Rubber Rail 7.0mm for 9.5mm Bay for Lenovo Thinkpad T420 04W1640

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-for-IBM-Len ... fresh=true

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Orig-HDD-Ru ... Swl8NVdQc4

Yes this is correct way to do this using 9.5mm to 7mm rubber rails and caddy kit. I have one in my one of thinkpad using 7mm HD.

Do not buy Seagate 2TB rotating HD based on 7mm chassis. Slower than usual even for 1TB per platter design and despite the 128MB buffer. Get Samsung/Seagate 3 platter 2TB 9.5mm HD instead or 2TB SSD but Samsung do have 4TB SSD as well.

HGST/Hitachi do have 5400 rpm 1.5TB based on 3 disk as another option with 32MB buffer.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection.

thinkpadcollection: I did think it was odd that the Firecuda apparently spins at 5400 rpm. Even the 750 GB Seagate Momuentus Hybrid Hard Drives that I currently have spin at 7200 rpm. Quite simply, I have trouble navigating understanding Seagates current website. Do you have a link(s) for:

Samsung/Seagate 3 platter 2TB 9.5mm HD ?

RealBlackStuff wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 23, 2017 3:49 pm

Just add a piece of 2.5mm carton to stop that drive from 'flapping'.

If it's screwed into the caddy, it shouldn't flap at all.

I have the 2TB in my notebook and it works well, though I'm guessing performance will be muted due to the slow rotational speed compared to a SSD.

The caddy is only ca. 7mm high, as would be that drive.
When using standard 9.5mm rubbers you'd need that carton to fill the 2.5mm gap.
With 7-to-9.5mm rubbers you'd be good to go, but those rubbers are expensive and hard to find.

RealBlackStuff wrote: ↑

Sat Jun 24, 2017 5:11 am

When using standard 9.5mm rubbers you'd need that carton to fill the 2.5mm gap.

That doesn't make any sense. If the drive is secured to the caddy with screws, it shouldn't move at all, regardless of whether there's a gap or not.

Try it and see for yourself.
A 7mm drive/caddy in a 9.5mm drivebay has extra space.
Why do you think a number of 7mm drives come with a rectangular space-filler?

E350 wrote: ↑

Fri Jun 23, 2017 9:15 pm

thinkpadcollection: I did think it was odd that the Firecuda apparently spins at 5400 rpm. Even the 750 GB Seagate Momuentus Hybrid Hard Drives that I currently have spin at 7200 rpm. Quite simply, I have trouble navigating understanding Seagates current website. Do you have a link(s) for:

Samsung/Seagate 3 platter 2TB 9.5mm HD ?

One: here's the linky for 9.5mm to 7mm caddy with rubber rails kit.

[/url]http://www.ebay.ca/itm/New-for-Thinkpad ... xykmZTO3X4[/url]

Two: Your question on 3 platter 2TB samsung/seagate is answered:
From ebay buy this:
ST2000LM003, you can tell this is actually samsung designed M9T spinpoint, 9.5mm 3 platters. Originally Samsung's model is HN-M201RAD (ignore anything suffix after / the model) Also you can usually find one in good computer stores as well if they do stock them. This is *not* out of production.
Proof in the puddling:
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/ST2000LM003-P-N- ... SwnHZYWrIy

Do not buy this ST2000LM007! This is a 7mm 2TB Seagate design abomination. Seagate used shingled pattern recording which is destructive write type is what slows this HD down (head recording width is wider than the shingled patterns, had to redo the previous recording during writes. Storagereview website reviewed this and found it is slower than usual and I recently got one as well, expecting Samsung 2TB in the external usb box, instead got this, extracted drive from box and tried it out on some computers. My comment for this is SLOW than what it should be. EVEN that drive had massive buffer size of 128MB.

As usual, excellent write up on shingled magnetic recording by anandtech:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7290/seag ... -recording

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

RealBlackStuff wrote:I doubt you'll find a 2GB SSD, even a 2GB HDD is nearly impossible.
On the other hand, 2TB is available nowadays, but at a hefty price.
Samsung 850 (EVO, or rather: Pro) and Crucial MX300 come to mind.
Read up on them on the likes of Anandtech.
No experience with either since I don't need such monsters in a laptop.

Well, Disk on Modules (which are essentials SSDs) are easy to find at 2gb. Haha. Just get an IDE to SATA adapter.