IBM A30 - 2652-35U. Has anyone upgraded the hard disk?

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masssheltie · #1 Post by **masssheltie** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 3:26 pm

I have an IBM A30 - 3652.35u laptop. I've owned it since it was new in 2002. The laptop has been hauled to customer sites for most of its life, and even spent the last two years on a 40 foot sailboat. The reliability has been first class.

I'd like to upgrade the primary hard disk from the 30 gig unit to something bigger. I have a feeling that the bios will only deal with a 40 gig drive.

Two questions:

1. Has anyone upgraded one of these laptops to a bigger drive, and had the bios recognize it?

2. If 40 gig is the limit, is there a way to upgrade the bios so that I can add an 80 gig drive?

I hate to dump the laptop as it has been a great machine so far. Plus, I just bought a cd burner and a floppy disk for this unit on Ebay.

Chris

#2 Post by **underclocker** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 3:29 pm

80GB is not an issue. I've installed an 80GB Travelstar in an A30.

Just make sure your BIOS is current.

masssheltie · #3 Post by **masssheltie** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 5:45 pm

One other thing. Are RPMs an issue? The IBM guy stated that if the hard drive wrote faster than the computer could lay down data, you'd get disk data errors. This sounds a bit wrong to my thinking. I'd love to put in a 7200 rpm drive, but would tolerate a 5400. I DON'T want a 4200 dog.

Chris

#4 Post by **underclocker** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 9:26 pm

masssheltie wrote:One other thing. Are RPMs an issue? The IBM guy stated that if the hard drive wrote faster than the computer could lay down data, you'd get disk data errors. This sounds a bit wrong to my thinking. I'd love to put in a 7200 rpm drive, but would tolerate a 5400. I DON'T want a 4200 dog.

That's insane. 7200 will rip and even 5400 is noticeable. However, the 80GB 4200's are even fast due to the increased cache - 8MB vs 2MB in most smaller < 30GB drives.

With any of those upgrades, you can't lose.

Good luck.

masssheltie · #5 Post by **masssheltie** » Thu Dec 21, 2006 6:43 am

Sorry, but I'm coming up with these questions as I'm going through the installation. I ended up buying an 80 gig Hitachi through Best Buy.

Did you have to download any software or drivers off the IBM web site to get the laptop to see the new drive correctly, or did you just stick it in? I found some hard disk drivers on the web site that seemed to be keyed for specific drives.

How did you get the IBM recovery partition onto the new drive? Did you use a CD or two? Where did you find these?

Did you have to download each driver separately for various laptop parts or did you use some single installation utility to cover this? There seems to be special Thinkpad software for some of the keyboard buttons, the power management and the IBM tools.

I appreciate your patience. Documentation online seems to be limited.

Chris

#6 Post by **schen** » Thu Dec 21, 2006 11:52 am

I upgraded my wife's A30 from a 30Gb 4200rpm original HDD to a 60Gb HDD about a year ago with no fuss, no muss.

I put the new (actually the old one out of my T23) disk in a Ultrabay2000 HDD enclosure. I downloaded Acronis from their website. Ran it, followed the prompts, took the cloned drive out of the enclosure and put it in the machine. It ran like a charm.

We've subsequently swapped her machine out to an A31 and I just did a "clean load" (again with my old T23 80Gb/5400rpm) on the HDD. It finished last night, no problems. My understanding is that you can run any PATA drive to well over 100Gb. The rpm isn't really a consideration other than that the fast ones will make you machine run faster.

Oh yeah; then run out and get you one of those inexpensive 2.5" enclosure and put your 30Gb drive in it or if you got an Ultrabay2000 HDD adapter you can use that and have a great backup solution.

masssheltie · #7 Post by **masssheltie** » Thu Dec 21, 2006 1:06 pm

I inserted the new drive into the computer after I updated the BIOS to the latest Rev. The computer sees the drive without a problem (although I haven't tried to install anything to this disk). I'm now trying to find a way to get the rescue partition off of the old disk, and onto the new one. I don't have an ultrabay adapter (so that I can clone the old disk), and I don't want to send IBM $50 to send me a set of disks that should have come with the original unit.

On the neat side, I was able to extract all of the files on the hidden restore partition, and copy them to my server. I am going to try to figure out how that whole hidden partition / restoration software system works. I'm hoping that I might be able to manually run the restoration software and create a valid OS installation on the new drive. I was going to try to Ghost the partition onto the new drive, but Ghost does not understand the 2 gig pen drive that holds the ghosted rescue partition image.

When I figure this stuff out, I'll post it here.

Chris

masssheltie · #8 Post by **masssheltie** » Mon Dec 25, 2006 6:36 pm

Well, we're done - thanks to the person who posted the "connect two drives, and image the old to the new" technique. I ended up using the recommended software package to do the imaging since Ghost refused to see the old disk in the USB packaging.

I would still love to read if there is a technique to manually take the recovery partition, install the files, and create a new MBR for the computer. My A30 has no utility to create a set of install CDs from the recovery partition. I had to image the entire old drive onto the new one, and then had to reinstall XP Pro from the IBM recovery partition.

Thanks again

Chris

IBM A30 - 2652-35U. Has anyone upgraded the hard disk?

IBM A30 - 2652-35U. Has anyone upgraded the hard disk?

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