X61 with a 4TB Seagate Barracuda 15mm (MOD)

[DJKylian]

My loved Thinkpads X61's (I have 5 of them) are getting a massive harddrive update.

For now I run 3 of them with the Seagate Firecude 2Tb drives which runs very smooth.
But for a DJ that uses it to play Karaoke, Videoclips and music the 2Tb drives are filled with to the max with data.
The Thinkpads Core 2 Duo 2Ghz with 4Gb of ram, plays HD quality clips at the VGA output like a charm.
Combined with the Creative Audigy 2ZS PCMCIA card it is a portable DJ tool with good audio quality.

So that's why I decided to test if they support bigger drives.
As the X61 have a drive bay for 9mm drives the options are SSD's which are expensive or modding the thing so it will fit 15mm drives.

The drive I intend to use are the ones out of the Seagate backup plus portable which is a Seagate Barracuda 4Tb.

First I needed to test if the drives where supported.
So I removed the keyboard and palm rest, to give the harddrive some space I also removed the screws that hold the mainboard.

I booted with Windows 7 install to see if it is showing the partitions on the drive and it works.


The next step will be to modify the chassis base by cutting the hard drive bay plastics so the hard drive will fit.

Then I will close it with some more distance and raise the laptop with higher stands.

More pictures to follow.

[RealBlackStuff]

Might it not be easier to get an X61 Ultrabase and an Ultrabay Slim SATA HDD Adapter (40Y8725) for 2.5-inch, 7 or 9.5-millimeter HDD/SSD/SSHD
Add another 2TB in there and you don't need to mess with your 2TB drive, nor modify your X61.

[axur-delmeria]

Good luck with the chassis mod. The base is made from magnesium alloy.

You'll probably need to add some bracing afterward. Also, you'll need some kind of rubber/foam dampers to protect the hard drive from vibration and impacts.

[DJKylian]

Using the docking station will make them less portable so that won't be an option.

For the dampers i can use the rubber dampers out of the backup plus housing.
So that wont be an issue.

[unixed]

Use a SATA extension cable, tuck it into the space where the drive should be. Your 4TB drive is then a "pocketable" -- carry it separately, use it externally.
You can even have several of those drives which you can switch to tailor to your audience or have a backup so that drive failure doesn't stop the party.

[kfzhu1229]

How are you going to overcome the 2TB limit for using Legacy BIOS to boot any OS then?
I don't believe you can make the X61 boot off anything of GPT partition table, so your primary drive must be of MBR format, which means it can use up to 2TB...

[DJKylian]

Use a SATA extension cable, tuck it into the space where the drive should be. Your 4TB drive is then a "pocketable" -- carry it separately, use it externally.
You can even have several of those drives which you can switch to tailor to your audience or have a backup so that drive failure doesn't stop the party.

As a backup it is still tricky as the laptop itself can also get defective.
So thats why I bring a second identical one to swap emediatly.
For example after a beer spill on the laptop.

Also an external drive has more risk of being slamed while on your table. People seem to be more careful around a laptop then around a metal or plastic brick they don't recognize as a harddrive.
And also a external harddrive can easier got stolen instead of a key locked laptop.

Thats the reason why i used internal drives before.

[DJKylian]

How are you going to overcome the 2TB limit for using Legacy BIOS to boot any OS then?
I don't believe you can make the X61 boot off anything of GPT partition table, so your primary drive must be of MBR format, which means it can use up to 2TB...

First creating a 2TB partition (1907,356GB and system partitions) and then install Win 7 32 bits. When it is installed boot the system with a Hiren boot stick and create the 2nd 2TB partition with a partition manager.

[edit]
The Thinkpads are also capable of running 64 bits as well as Windows 10.
[/edit]

[DJKylian]

This weekend the weather was good enough to do the modification as I wanted to do the drilling and cutting outside.

To be sure the X61 base remained strong I decided to go with the suggestion of "Unixed" on the Sata extension cable.
But still modify the body and put the 4TB with it's housing in the part where the battery normally is placed.

Therefor I had to remove a corner part at the drive bay, battery bay and glue the original housing of the hard drive in the battery bay.

The modification pictures:










Edit:
The images doesn't seem to load from google, hopefully the links work.

Edit 2:
Imaged uploaded to different server that seems to work.

[RealBlackStuff]

Google wants you to sign in (or sign up) before you can see those pictures. NO WAY!

[axur-delmeria]

Google wants you to sign in (or sign up) before you can see those pictures. NO WAY!

Open in private / incognito mode.

[DJKylian]

I changed the image location to imgur so they are visible at the forum.

[RealBlackStuff]

Suggestion for next time: use a Dremel with a small diamond wheel to cut out such pieces.

[DJKylian]

I know that it is possible with a dremel but I didn't have one so drilling multiple holes, cutting it out and smoothening the edges with filing, sanding also worked fine.

[unixed]

Well done, that is certainly thinking outside the box.
Something else for you to consider is that the battery also serves as a UPS. Granted you could use a dedicated UPS, but the X61 power lead may also get dislodged.
There is a Kensington lock attachment point on the X61, you can glue a loop on the external drive (there are dedicated attachments/glues used to secure equipment in a computer lab for instance) and secure the external drive to the X61 and retain your battery.

[FryPpy]

How are you going to overcome the 2TB limit for using Legacy BIOS to boot any OS then?

Some notes of my experience with this 15mm drives.

First of this drives in my posession was 2Tb seagate external drive and it have worked very well. After some time i've got 4Tb disk without any enclosure. First attempt i have made is to put it in 12mm ultrabay adaptor (to work with W700, W530)... but 15mm is to tall to fit in 12mm caddy. Next part - is to use it in external usb enclosure. And at this point i have stumbled with 2Tb limit. Any manipulations with 1.9Tb + 1.9Tb partitioning won't work. GPT partitioning can be done, but 32bit OS (especially my beloved XP) will render this drive useless. And afterwards i have find one trick.
USB adaptor in original seagate enclosure have some magic in it. It uses 4kb sectors to address data on wire. It was not needed for 1-2Tb drives. But For 4Tb ones it is cure. Any OS can use these drives (even XP) without any issues. BUT this drive must be tailored to this adapter (enclosure) because old BIOS partition table will denote partition boundaries in terms of 4k sectors. But if drive will be connected to SATA (or other enclosure) it will work in terms of 512b sectors and all partitions will shrink 8 times.

Some more hints.
Maximum capacity for this drives is 5Tb.
All of this drives use SMR technology whish can be very frustruating in terms of writing performance.
Once apon a time i have turned off T410 thinkpad, but this hdd was connected to yellow (allways powered on) USB port... and drive continued to spine its platterns and audible move heads. Before this i belivied that such drives became very slow on random writes to recreate right shingled structure. But in my case it seemd that drive can rewrite data even after it reports to OS that writing is done.

Once apon a time i have started X250 with this huge drive. Of cource without big door. But If you have seen sata cable for x250 - it is very thin an i was afrightened that it can simple melted when i have connected this big disk? but it have worked ok.

And main question to OP. In your X61s this drive is like semi external. May be it is more practical to use normal external USB enclosure and somehow use miniPCIE to USB3 adaptor?

[kfzhu1229]

First of this drives in my posession was 2Tb seagate external drive and it have worked very well. After some time i've got 4Tb disk without any enclosure. First attempt i have made is to put it in 12mm ultrabay adaptor (to work with W700, W530)... but 15mm is to tall to fit in 12mm caddy. Next part - is to use it in external usb enclosure. And at this point i have stumbled with 2Tb limit. Any manipulations with 1.9Tb + 1.9Tb partitioning won't work. GPT partitioning can be done, but 32bit OS (especially my beloved XP) will render this drive useless. And afterwards i have find one trick.
USB adaptor in original seagate enclosure have some magic in it. It uses 4kb sectors to address data on wire. It was not needed for 1-2Tb drives. But For 4Tb ones it is cure. Any OS can use these drives (even XP) without any issues. BUT this drive must be tailored to this adapter (enclosure) because old BIOS partition table will denote partition boundaries in terms of 4k sectors. But if drive will be connected to SATA (or other enclosure) it will work in terms of 512b sectors and all partitions will shrink 8 times.

Yeah I believe the 4TB is the limit for what MBR can address, not just partitions, so no matter what kind of partitions you create you can only use up to 2TB in total.
But if it is not used as a boot drive, then you can use GPT on it and it will work just fine.
If having an external USB enclosure is a bit of a bummer, can you end up fitting more storage using the SDCard and expresscard slots?
I know there are 1TB SDCards on the market right now by Sandisk so maybe you can use one of those
Both of my ThinkPad T530 and Latitude E6430 have 128GB SDCards permanently sitting inside the laptop for secondary storage

[FryPpy]

Yeah I believe the 4TB is the limit for what MBR can address, not just partitions, so no matter what kind of partitions you create you can only use up to 2TB in total.
But if it is not used as a boot drive, then you can use GPT on it and it will work just fine.

Just for clarification.
MBR use 2 numbers - start of partition and size. Both are 32bit integer, and both counts in sectors (normally sector is 512 bytes). So one partition can be up to 2Tb. But when sector size is 4kb (Advanced Format) maximum partition size in MBR is... 16Tb and 32Tb disks can be usable with MBR and old OS. Second thing, many disks use Advanced Format internally, but reports sector size as 512 bytes on wire (sata or usb) for compatibility reasons.

[DJKylian]

Windows 7 with the latest updates is perfecly capable to address 4tb devided in 2 partitions. The only problem is that the partitions cant be made without the use of a external partition manager. So therefor make 1 partition of 2tb with the install and then after it is installed use hiren boot dvd to create the 2nd partition. My 2 X61 machines run fine with more then 40.000 video clips, karaoke clips etc.

[lackl]

My 2 X61 machines run fine with more then 40.000 video clips, karaoke clips etc.

And how does it works with W10? I have run a 4TB SSD for one year without problems, but when I tried to make a clone from the SSD1 (Clonezilla) I got problems.
First: It was not possible to clone the whole 4TB SSD1, only the first partion (2TB) to the SSD2. With HirenBoot and DiskGenui I was able to make a new ext. partition and a log. partition at the 2. partition of the SSD2. But after some days the data of the 2. partition of the SSD2 were disappeared, only the memory was still occupied.
Second: After using Clonezilla the primary partion of the SSD1, Windows found data errors at the disk and made a disk scan. The result was that Windows does not start. Only a new installation of W10 fixed the error.
This probably also happens if the PC should crash and Windows starts his repair tool. So I think, it is not a very stable solution.

[RealBlackStuff]

Methinks the problem is Clonezilla.
Have you tried it with Macrium Reflect?

[lackl]

Yes, I have tried macrium reflect, but it can't make a clone in MBR wit 4TB. At the end of the clone it changed the disk to GPT, like clonezilla. So I make a clone with macrium reflect of the primary partition and then with Hirenboot. And now I have disable the Windows 10 automatic disk repair with: fsutil repair set c: 0. Hopefully this helps.