Thinkpads Forum

I've got an older model x60s (1703 series) running a 7200rpm hard drive and wanted to upgrade to a Hitachi Travelstar 7K320 320GB 2.5" Mobile Hard Drive - 7200, 16MB, SATA-300.

Can it work or are there issues with SATA300? Any experience with added heat, vibration or noise?

Perfect compatibility. No problems of any kind, including the ones you mention

in reading about the 300mps transfer rate in other posts I thought maybe there was a bottleneck in the chip board that would slow the speed down to 150 or less. I guess not problem then, Thanks. I look forward to more speed and all that space. Have had this x60s for almost 3 years now and it has been the best laptop I've had over last 15 years (2 Apples and 2 Toshibas previously).

You shouldn't have any vibration or noise issues with that drive but you will not get sata300 on an x60 or x61. Lenovo has dummied down the hardware.

That being said, that drive should be the fastest (other than ssd) that you can put into your machine.

Get a great price at zipzoomfly dotcom

Install windows 7 for a super speedy experience.

will there be a loss of battery life then? I have the 8 cell and get 5 hours or so. Would hate to see that evaporate?

Also, if I installed windows 7, is it possible to also install thinkpad restore software?

You can put this drive in a x60 without any problems.

Please note that the 300 MB/s are not real transfer speeds of the drive, they stand for the supported interface. No matter what hardware one has, Hitachi 7K320 can reach about 80 MB/s sequential read and 60 MB/s sequential write and has access times of about 15-16 ms (these are not precise numbers but rather to illustrate the transfer range this drive operates).

Marin

syrahnose wrote:will there be a loss of battery life then? I have the 8 cell and get 5 hours or so. Would hate to see that evaporate?

Each newer generation drive from the same manufacturer running at the same rotations per minute is generally more power efficient than the previous generation. When I switched from my 7K100 to my 7K200 not only did I notice increased speed and lower noise, but also a slight benefit to battery life. You should experience the same when upgrading.

syrahnose wrote:Also, if I installed windows 7, is it possible to also install thinkpad restore software?

If you mean the factory restore option available by hitting the ThinkVantage button at startup, then make sure you migrate the hidden factory partition from your old drive to your new drive using software such as Acronis or similar. When given the choice be sure not to select making partition sizes the same proportion as in the previous drive, as you'll end up with too big a hidden partition. Rather choose the same absolute size partition. If you mean ThinkVantage Rescue and Restore this software should install and run on Windows 7, although I don't have experience there.

Hope that helps.

hart22 wrote:Each newer generation drive from the same manufacturer running at the same rotations per minute is generally more power efficient than the previous generation. When I switched from my 7K100 to my 7K200 not only did I notice increased speed and lower noise, but also a slight benefit to battery life. You should experience the same when upgrading.

As far as speed is concerned, I believe things are not always that straightforward, for instance 7K320 has better transfer rates than 7K200, but 7K200 has better access times, which makes a system feel more responsive (AFAIK Seagate 7200.2 has also better access times than 7200.3).

thanks for all this, excellent information from you all. best wishes.

I found it cheaper at newegg than zipzoomfly dotcom, 59 bucks with the rebate of 20. So I'm looking forward to this.

in the end I'd forgotten my current drive was a seagate 100, so I downloaded maxblaster from seagate web site, put new hitachi drive in an external closure and cloned it perfectly first time.

I've had a 7K320 in my X61s for a couple of weeks now, upgraded from the 80GB/5400rpm that came with the system. The improvement in system performance is palpable. Noise from the drive isn't. And as far as I can tell there is no significant increase in temperature. Even the mail-in rebate processing seems to be working as it should because I just got an e-mail to tell me my check is on its way. For $60 it's a no-brainer upgrade.