Thinkpads Forum

I am contemplating replacing the 100 GB hard drive of my current X61s laptop with the Fujitsu MHX2300BT 300GB hard disk drive.

Is there any specific reason that would prevent me to do that? I understand that the MHX2300BT is a 2.5" drive, which should be compatible with the X61s. On the other hand, the drive has 3 platters and may be thicker than allowed.

I would be exceedingly grateful for any advice before I embark in this adventure...

Fujitsu's spec sheet says that the MHX2300BT is 12.5 mm thick. I believe the X60 series can only accomodate the far more common 9.5 mm drives.

Wait for SSD to drop in price

A company in the US just made a ~448GB 2.5" solid state drive. Things will cheapen up soon, and THAT's when I'm going to upgrade.

thank you both. I really need a larger disk - my 100 GB were eaten up in a blink. What would be the largest currently available drive that you would recommend?

thanks
AAG

The Hitachi 7K200; $205 at zipzoomfly.

There are standard-height 250 GB 5400 rpm notebook drives available from multiple manufacturers. Due to aerial density, these can leave many (especially older) 7200 rpm drives behind. If you can sacrifice a little bit of capacity, the 200 GB 7200 rpm Hitachi 7K200 is the fastest drive and the price premium is not that much these days.

If you find yourself running out of capacity, maybe it's worth it to invest in an high-capacity external USB drive? That of course depends if you need all of that data everywhere you go. If you just use it at home, an external is a good, cheap solution.

I agree - I built myself a 500GB External USB/eSATA drive (unfortunately Vista does not support eSATA... stupid vista) using a Nexstar 3 case and a 500GB Seagate SATA2 drive for $145 total.

That's the cheapest option if you need a LOT of space and don't need everything with you ALL THE TIME.

thanks. Just to be sure: is it absolutely certain that the 12.5 mm thickness will not fit into the X61s? Qvir's post left some room for hope...

I have a few 250 gig Western Digital SATA drives if you're interested. They are posted in the market place section.

However, to be honest, I think your best bet is to use an external drive. Those are relatively cheap, easy to use, and you don't have to worry about swapping out drives and such. I would not recommend the smaller, 2.5 inch portable external drives, though, in my experience, they are woefully unreliable. get a standard 3.5 inch external drive. They are bigger in size, and you have to plug them into the wall socket, but they work. They also act as a backup.

the 300 gig drive is definately too big. sorry

very good - thanks.

Now I have a practical question. What is the best/safest way to clone my 100GB drive (Vista Business) and transfer its image onto the 250GB drive? Mind that I have plenty of NAS space available.

I know cloning drives is not recommended, and that I should re-install everything, but i would love to avoid spending the entire weekend re-installing stuff...

No reason not to clone a drive if you are happy with the way the system is operating.

I have done it successfully with Norton Ghost and with Partition magic - but sometimes it does not work. I've never quite figured out why.

Last time I bought a Hitachi laptop drive retail, it came with drive cloning SW as well - but I have not tried it.