Thinkpads Forum

Pretty happy with my refurb X61T now that the 30% IRQ interrupts problem has been fixed by installing an older video driver...It looks like it will be suitable replacement for my aging X31 that's getting beat and that can't really keep up with the latest FireFox versions and has a hard time with videos.

Anyway, my refurb X61T came with a 120Gb 5400rpm hard drive and I'm wondering if it needs to be updated. Anyone been down that path before? We all know there is no such thing as too much space but now with the cloud and media servers it might not make that much sense to have large files all over the place...could use the cash to get the smaller battery maybe...

I've spotted a cheap 500Gb 5400rpm drive on Amazon : "Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500 GB Bulk/OEM Hard Drive 2.5 Inch, 8 MB Cache"...

I find the 500GB Seagate, Hitachi, and WD drives are all about the same. I installed a a Hitachi in my X200 with no issues.

What is nice is the price...you should be able to find one at Newegg, Amazon, or Frys. They periodically put them on sale including rebates, free shipping and a good warranty. Once installed you will be quite pleased...go for it.

You didnt define what "good" meant.

Good battery life? Get a power-conscious 'green' 5400 rpm drive. Good performance? Get a highly rated 7200rpm or SSD. Or lots of storage?

Also I dont think laptops typically have special HD requirements, so a good 2.5" HD in general should also be good for your flavor of thinkpad.

If you can afford it, an SSD is one of the best improvements that you can make to the X61T. It will make a quite noticeable difference in subjective speed and responsiveness.

What do you consider important - price, battery life, silence, reliability, speed? I am pretty sure the one you'd prefer would be different, depending on which of these are most important to you.

All good points, actually my current setup may be pretty good with the 120GB 5400rpm Hitachi stock drive and eBoostr with an 8Gb class 6 SD card in the SD port. The HD is certainly much quieter than the 7200rpm drive in my X31, not sure whether it's because it's more recent or because the X61T has a better chassis but it's quite noticeable and pleasant. Makes up for having to run the fan at a low speed at all times on the X61T to keep it cool.

I got an external WD USB drive (WD Elements 1TB) for the GB hungry media files.

I went with an Intel G3 300GB SSD. Expensive, but it was worth it for me. I do software development using virtual machines and database, so the speed is definitely noticeable.

I've been wanting Intel SSD since the G2, but they were too small. G3 300GB was just enough.