X60s--Can I Increase Size of Hard Drive?

[Ahmed Ismail]

I have an X60s with the original 100gb drive.

I have looked on line on various hard drive suppliers' sites and they state that this is the largest drive you can put in this computer.

Is this true? Is there any kind of workaround that would allow me to install a new and larger hard drive?

[dejx]

You just simple install 2.5" sata disk, and that's it, there's no size limit

[ThinkRob]

I have an X60s with the original 100gb drive.

I have looked on line on various hard drive suppliers' sites and they state that this is the largest drive you can put in this computer.

They're wrong.

Pretty much any 2.5" SATA drive will work.

[fasteez]

+1


posted from my 160GB equipped x60s.

[marYn]

+1

You can install whatever you want. I had 500GB Seagate, now 320GB WD and plan to "downgrade" to 120GB Intel SSD

[schmaud]

you can use any 9,5 mm thick 2.5 inch sata drive. the thicker 12 mm drivess will not fit.

easiest approach is:
-by the sata disk of your choice & an external housing (usb) for 2.5 inch sata
- use a soft as acronistrue image to clone you system drive on the new drive in the external housing
- swop the hardrives ( you can use the old drive in the external housing as external drive).

[Ahmed Ismail]

Thanks for all of the great info on upgrading my hard drive. I am using Windows XP Pro SP3.

I see that a number of the hard drive vendors sell an "upgrade" kit so that you don't need to buy Acronis and a separate enclosure.

http://www.bixnet.com/pocusbenkitf.html

Do you think this is the better way to go or should I make the investment in Acronis True Image?

Which hard drive upgrade would you recommend? I'd like to end up with at least 320gb. I have 4gb of memory if that matters.

Thanks in advance!

[rkawakami]

The installed memory size does not really enter into the hard disk equation. My philosophy concerning how big a hard drive to use is this: go with a drive that you can afford two of. If you wish to maintain a backup of your system, then you'll need one which is at least as big as the one in your X60s. Unless you figure that you'll ignore Parkinson's Law: "Data expands to fill the space available for storage".

[schmaud]

If you just want to clone the harddisk you can use the trial version from acronis or some of the free tools.
At least the last time i did this there was a free version for private use.

I think the only parameter you have to decide when using the soft is wether you want to increase the hidden partition proportional to the disc size, or wether you want to keep it the same...

cheers

ralf

[Ahmed Ismail]

Thanks for all your guidance!

I picked up a 500gb Seagate Momentus drive and the Apricorn SATA Wire Notebook Upgrade Kit today for $95 total. The drive is 7200RPM with 16mb cache. Now, the test will be how long it will take to transfer everything over to the new hard drive.

If this works out, I may take on the task of replacing the palm rest! I wouldn't have even thought about doing this without your guidance!

Thanks again!

[Ahmed Ismail]

Well, didn't work out well. I guess I wasn't put on this earth to be a computer tech.

I ended up cloning the 100gb drive to the new 500gb drive with the Asonics EZ Gig III cloning software with SATA cable. It looked like the transfer went through OK, so I installed the 500gb drive in my laptop. It started up OK and ran for a while. Then I tried to open Adobe Acrobat 7.0 to create a PDF. I got an activation notice and it said I had to re-register my product. I loaded all of my Adobe software ove rfive years ago, and don't have the CDs etc. I called Adobe Tech Support and they can't find my serial numbers as being registered! The same was true with every Adobe products I opened. All of the Microsoft programs worked fine--at least for a few hours.

Then, the fatal blue screen, with a message something about "IRQ".

After trying to restart it in safe mode, I started getting an error message about system32/command or something to that effect.

The bottom line? I ended up taking it into the local computer store. If nothing else, I am hoping they can get my Adobe products and the old 100gb drive working again and I'll just have to live with the 10gb drive.

I am bummed!!

[rkawakami]

Adobe seems to be one of the companies that aggressively tries to keep track of potential licensing issues. My daughter has the same problem with Adobe Creative Suite when recovering from a backup (clone). The program will recognize when it's running on a different hard drive (from the one when it was first installed) and ask to be activated again. If Adobe thinks that you have too many active installations of the program, it won't allow you to run the program and you have to contact them. My understanding is that one can first de-activate the program on the original HD and that will allow re-activation on the "new" drive without having to call them. However, if you can't boot or run the program from the bad drive, there's no way you can de-activate it in the first place.

As far as the blue-screen / IRQ error, that could be a number of things (bad memory, bad disk sector(s), bad copy).

ref: http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/100/1008779.html

[pkiff]

I picked up a 500gb Seagate Momentus drive [....] Then, the fatal blue screen, with a message something about "IRQ".

There have been other reports of issues related specifically to some Seagate 500GB Momentus drives where some users have experienced blue screens. I'm running a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 (ST9500325AS) 500GB drive in my X60T, and I had problems with it initially. To resolve my problems, I changed the SATA setting to compatibility mode in BIOS, and I also disabled the ThinkVantage active protection. Probably only one of those things was necessary, but I just didn't want to risk fiddling after I got it resolved. I've not recently checked for a firmware upgrade for my hard drive, but that sometimes can resolve such issues. More info available here:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 60#p573360
and
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=75400
and
Active Protection causes computer to lock up (Lenovo Forums)

I would guess that the problems with activation of Adobe or Microsoft products just happens to be coincidental, but are unrelated to the blue screen issues.

And I think that this problem with some Seagate Momentus 500GB drives is specific to that exact drive: generally, as others have said, you should be able to install ANY (SATA) drive in your X60/X61/S/T machine without worrying about compatibility. If I'm right, you just happened to select the one specific drive that has produced problems in some cases.

Phil.