Thinkpads Forum

I have the 80GB 5400RPM drive in my X60. I want something a good bit bigger and faster. I have never upgraded a HD before and I would like to get some advice on the best drives and values...thanks!

You will need a SATA interface 9.5mm 2.5" hard drive.

Today, 4/16/2007, largest fastest available are as follows:
160GB/5400RPM or 100GB/7200RPM.

Hitachi has announced that it will be releasing the 200GB/7200RPM in the above form factor by June 2007.

ProPedderKustoms wrote:I would like to get some advice on the best drives and values...thanks!

Look for the toshiba sata 7k100 drive, it's excelent.

Here is on sale on newegg

On my T60 i installed a Samsung sata 160gb 5400 rpm
(model hm160ji)... it's very fast... and specially
very quiet... you can't hear it also in reading and writing
operations... I'm very happy... before i used a seagate
100gb 7200rpm... very good product... but too noisy...

I'm a big fan of Hitachi. They make the 100GB/7200RPM TravelStar. You can find it on newegg.

That 200GB 7200RPM drive sounds like the ticket for me...Hopefully it will come out sooner than later

If lack of noise is important, you might consider the Seagate Momentus 5400 (I got the 120 gigabyte version). It's dead quiet, and cheaper than its 7200 RPM competitors.

bought Seagate Momentus SATA 7200rmp
Silent, but vibrates. Went back to using the factory HD (Hitachi, though it is starting to (that or i'm beginning to notice) read-write noises.

I'd suggest sticking with 5400RPM drives. Noises are a annoying, but i find vibrations simply unbearable especially when you use and love the red nipple.

Hitachi 7k100

I replaced the original 80GB drive in my X60 with a 160GB Hitachi 5400rpm drive. The Hitachi is a little bit noisier than the original Toshiba but seems to run faster and cooler. I didn't consider the 7200 rpm drives because they generate more heat and drastically cut down battery life.

Bert09 wrote:7200 rpm drives ... they generate more heat and drastically cut down battery life.

Generally true, but not in the case of these Hitachi Travelstar drives. The power consumption specs are virtually identical for the Hitachi 160GB/5400RPM and the 100GB/7200RPM SATA drives:
http://www.hgst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/te ... NAL_DS.pdf
http://www.hgst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/te ... NAL_DS.pdf

... and, in simple terms, power the same = heat the same.

Further, given the very small percentage of total machine power that the hard drive uses, the up to half watt (approximately) difference between the drives will not account for a perceivable difference in battery life.

What is the difference between SATA ATA PATA? what is my thinkpad compatible with? (t60ws)

puma wrote:What is the difference between SATA ATA PATA? what is my thinkpad compatible with? (t60ws)

http://www.google.com/search?source=ig& ... gle+Search

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=t6 ... tnG=Search

They are just different standards for attaching harddrives. SATA is the latest and most common, and that is what your thinkpad is.

EOMtp wrote:

Bert09 wrote:7200 rpm drives ... they generate more heat and drastically cut down battery life.

Generally true, but not in the case of these Hitachi Travelstar drives. The power consumption specs are virtually identical for the Hitachi 160GB/5400RPM and the 100GB/7200RPM SATA drives:
http://www.hgst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/te ... NAL_DS.pdf
http://www.hgst.com/tech/techlib.nsf/te ... NAL_DS.pdf

... and, in simple terms, power the same = heat the same.

Further, given the very small percentage of total machine power that the hard drive uses, the up to half watt (approximately) difference between the drives will not account for a perceivable difference in battery life.

....and the speed are the same.
I have both. 100GB/7200 can 51MB and 160gb /5400 can 48mb in Sisoft Sandra disk benchmark. Worth the 3mb speed gain 60gb capacity?

You don't care much about read/write speed, it is always slow in a laptopn anyway (because of small size HD) but you will care about access time.

7200 rpm drives are way faster for that. If you're fed up waiting for your laptop HD to find data somewhere on the disk, you should go 7200 rpm.

If you don't care, go 5400rpm, you'll get much higher capacity for the same price.

Silly question...

Between a 160GB 5400rpm and 100GB 7200rpm...which one is better? Is the 7200rpm much faster or the about the same since it has more free space?

and how about energy consumption? will the 5400rpm be much more efficient?

I'm planning to have about 40GB on my hard drive...

Best,
Jack

nowstime wrote:Between a 160GB 5400rpm and 100GB 7200rpm...which one is better? Is the 7200rpm much faster or the about the same since it has more free space?

The speed gain of the 7200rpm will vary between none and noticeable.

nowstime wrote:and how about energy consumption? will the 5400rpm be much more efficient?

Not much. A bit.

nowstime wrote:I'm planning to have about 40GB on my hard drive...

Then why do you need these huge drives? 60GB 7200RPM looks like the sweet spot for you.

Depends on the use you make of your lappy.

Frankly, on a day to day use of office-like apps, I'm not sure a 7200rpm is really faster. At least, if your lappy is not your only computer, just use 5400rpm.

If you don't care about space but care about speed only, get a 7200 rpm.

I never make it a habit of storing files on a laptop. So I'm downgrading sorta. I'm replacing my 100gb 5400rpm with a 60 gb 7200rpm. How do I get that hidden partition on the new drive to make sure that the restore feature work? Do I install vista first then download all software for IBM?

berlin wrote:I'm replacing my 100gb 5400rpm with a 60 gb 7200rpm. How do I get that hidden partition on the new drive to make sure that the restore feature work?

I'm not sure how things work with rescue and recovery...maybe someone else can discuss how to make sure you get the service partition when you move to a new drive. Maybe making a rescue and recovery set of disks and then running that on the new drive will create the appropriate structure?

I used imaging software (Ghost) to clone my drive. I created an image of the original drive on an external harddrive, switched harddrives in the laptop, and then I deployed the original harddrive's image onto the new harddrive. If you take this route, make sure you include the original drive's boot sector information when you create the image.

Bert09 wrote: Further, given the very small percentage of total machine power that the hard drive uses, the up to half watt (approximately) difference between the drives will not account for a perceivable difference in battery life.

Not sure it is true, at least, not in my case.

I have Hitachi 7200 60GB in X60T. Wasn't very happy with vibration/noise and heat. Booted up with Hitachi Feature Tool utility and changed drive parameters to 'acustic management on,' and 'optimize for battery life'. My power consumption went from 11-12W at idle to 8-9W (???). This translated into additional 1 hour or more of battery life (i have 8 cell one). Drive is dead quiet right now.

Interesting enough, there was not much of the performance hit: subjectively, drive is as fast and there is no change in synthetic benchmarks. But this is the subject of another post.

Hope it helps

Where is the Hitachi Feature Tool located? I have a X60T and have noticed some of the same things and am interested in adjusting the settings as well to see what I get out of it.