Upgrading T400 HDD

[RTAdams89]

I just bought a Western Digital Scorpio Black WD1600BEKT 160GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive. I was planning to use it in the UltraBay as a backup drive, but I'm now considering replacing my T400's Hitachi 5400RPM drive with this one, and using the Hitachi drive for the backups. What sort of performance increase would I see doing that change? What battery life loss should I expect? Anything else to consider?

[RTAdams89]

Just cloned the drive to test the speed myself. When I start Windows from the new drive, I am informed I need to activate Windows (not surprising), but then am immediately taken to a page that ells me my product key is invalid and gives me the options to buy a new key online or contact Lenovo.

This is not the standard "your key is in use" screen with the option to activate by phone. For some reason my key is "invalid" for activation.

After much trial and error, I resolved the problem by doing this:

1) Open Internet Browser

2) Type %windir%\system32 into the browser address bar.

3) Find the file CMD.exe

4) Right-Click on CMD.exe and select Run as Administrator

5) Type: net stop slsvc (it may ask you if you are sure, select yes)

6) Type: cd %windir%\ServiceProfiles\NetworkService\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\SoftwareLicensing

7) Type: rename tokens.dat tokens.bar

Type: cd %windir%\system32

9) Type net start slsvc

10) Type: cscript slmgr.vbs -rilc (It may take a long time for this to complete, please be patient)

11) Reboot Twice

12) You may be required to Re-Activate. Use the Activate by Phone method outlined below

Then I made sure my Internet connection was disabled, so the activation process could not activate online even if it wanted to. I was then given the option to call in to activate, which worked. Hope that helps someone.

Still wondering about performance and battery life?

[RTAdams89]

A few results:

After installing my new drive, I have a few results:

The Windows Experience Score for the HDD went from 5.3 to 5.8. A PCPitstop scan showed an increase in disk transfer rate from 25 MB/s to 54 MB/s.

No way for me to accurately measure battery life, but there has not been a massive decrease by any means.