it's upgrade time

[charlienyc]

hi. i've been watching the prices on 15" T60p machines and figured it's going to be at least another few months before they come down or my disposable income goes up enough. so as Yoda might say, "upgrade, i will."

first i'm taking out the got-what-i-paid-for 512MB RAM chip (bad RAM) and replacing with a new Crucial chip. say aloud with me now: i will never again buy used RAM. (feel free to leave off "again" if you haven't yet made that mistake.) i suppose this isn't technically an upgrade, but using a system that never -or at least rarely- crashes will be a big upgrade from the user's standpoint

second i've purchased a new (something else on the won't-buy-used list) Toshiba 120GB 5400 RPM hard drive. i'm counting on all the posts i've seen here that going up from 4200 RPM will be a nice speed boost. i also got a little spooked out from the 7200 RPM drives, seeing people experience fast battery drain and heat along with slightly faster speed.

third i found a 2nd Ultrabay HD adapter cheap on eBay. i'd like to use the stock 40GB in my dock as a backup drive after the HD upgrade.

fourth i got some Artic Silver. if it does anything to improve the performance or life of the machine, that $6 will be justified.

there is a question here, back on #2. i've read & printed the hard drive cloning FAQ and searched posts for potential problems with the upgrade. still i want to be ready for anything. is there any additional advice not already covered? any tips, tricks, pitfalls or caveats?

OH one more question: what can i do with the bad RAM chip?

[Jathm]

For the ram i would hunt down the manufacturer and see if they will replace it. Most chips carry a lifetime warranty so thats an option to explore and then ebay the replacement or enjoy a gig of ram.

As for drive cloning let me know how that goes and maybe someone else on the forum can chip in on that subject.

-Jathm

[schen]

OH one more question: what can i do with the bad RAM chip?

How exactly is it bad? What does it make the system do or not do that's different than when you swap it out?

[rkawakami]

i've read & printed the hard drive cloning FAQ and searched posts for potential problems with the upgrade. still i want to be ready for anything. is there any additional advice not already covered? any tips, tricks, pitfalls or caveats?

My technique goes against what most people seem to be using here (Acronis). I use a boot floppy of Norton Ghost to backup or clone my systems. As you have an A31 and you say you have lots of Ultrabay devices, then this should work for you:

- Get a copy of Norton Ghost 2003. Can usually be had from eBay for under $20. Some recent sales have been as low as $7 (CD only; no documentation).
- Install the program and create a Ghost boot floppy. I believe that you can specify the "-ib" switch option ("image boot") so that when the autoexec.bat file starts the ghost.exe program, this option is automatically selected. Don't bother with the Windows version after that (I never use it).
- Install a floppy drive in one Ultrabay, with the Ghost boot disk and load your backup drive in a hard drive adapter in the other Ultrabay.
- Boot the system, hit the F12 key and select the floppy as the boot device.
- Ghost will ask if it should "mark" the drive(s) as usable by the program. I always say "yes".
- Perform a disk to disk copy. The drive installed in your hard drive bay is disk #1. The drive in the Ultrabay is disk #2. So the operation is copy from source disk #1 to destination disk #2.
- When done, selct the "Continue" option and NOT the "Reset Computer". The reason is that you do not want to have both disk drives installed in the system when you boot (re-boot).
- Quit the program to return to a good 'ole DOS prompt. Turn off the system and swap the hard drives.
- On the first boot of the "new" drive, Windows will report that it sees new hardware and then request a re-boot.

OH one more question: what can i do with the bad RAM chip?

If you are absolutely sure that the module is defective (by running memtest86+ or PC Doctor on it), then try as schen suggests; track down the maker and see if some sort of guarantee is in effect.

[Xavier]

I would just add a little something to the ghost method. I, too, am used to using a Ghost boot disk to clone my hard drives.
However, I've had several huge problems: I have different Ghost disk, with different versions of Ghost. And one of them contains a really disturbing bug: the terms "source drive" and "destination drive" are swapped. Then, you can end up erasing the drive you originally wanted to clone.

What I do to avoid this: I first copy my source drive as a Ghost image on my destination drive. Then I reboot into Windows, check the ghost image file (the size usually gives a good hint of what disk is inside it). Then, I move this image on my source drive, reboot with the Ghost boot disk, and deploy the image file to the destination drive.

[charlienyc]

thanks all for your advice!

first on the RAM, i have had a large number of unexplainable BSODs over the years. they come on in spurts, and often i'll have more than 10 in a week. i did some troubleshooting recently. i removed the 512 chip, leaving the original 256 in place. it ran slower than death (well, close) but for 2-3 weeks it never crashed. now i have just the 512 in and it has crashed a few times. i got the 512 chip on ebay, making me that much more suspicious. i might just contact Kingston, 'cause if i have the new 512 chip and a replacement, i'll be doing well on memory. now if i could just upgrade MY internal memory

on the HD, how much "more better" is Ghost than Acronis? i like the fact that i can use an eval. copy of Acronis free, then purchase it down the road. i just got the HD adapter today and want to get the drive upgrade started soon. will it be worth it in time and aggravation to buy Ghost and wait a few more days?

i want to copy the contents of the smaller drive onto the larger one and use that as my system drive. then i'll take the smaller one and use it for backups. i won't need any specific software for the latter, right?

[rkawakami]

now i have just the 512 in and it has crashed a few times.

If you can run memtest86+ or PC Doctor on the 512MB module, then that may shed some light on the possibility that it's defective.

on the HD, how much "more better" is Ghost than Acronis?

I don't think either one is "better" than the other. Yes, you can get an evaluation (free) copy of Acronis. Yes, Ghost will cost a few dollars and may take several days to find (cheaply). Both will perform the operation you wish to do. Once you transfer the current contents of your "smaller" drive onto the "larger" one, then as long as the data can fit, you can still backup your system onto the smaller drive. The data can be compressed (generally called an "image") when writing to the backup. Ghost can do this and I believe that Acronis has the same capability.

[charlienyc]

If you can run memtest86+ or PC Doctor on the 512MB module, then that may shed some light on the possibility that it's defective.

i ran the memtest86 for one cycle and i've run PC Doctor on the machine before, and the RAM passed both. i'm skeptical about it still, especially after seeing the advice of proaudioguy at this thread: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?p=280969

tests are cool and all, but the real world test is the only one i truly believe. we'll see how it goes with the new 512 chip.

I don't think either one is "better" than the other. Yes, you can get an evaluation (free) copy of Acronis.

evidently i'm far too impatient to wait for Ghost. i did check the Symantec website and they too have a trial version. however, the last few times i've used machines with Norton anything, it drove me nuts with all of the automatic stuff. i think the internet security software was the biggest annoyance, but it's enough to put me off of their products slightly. your mileage may vary.

stepping down from the soapbox , i did go ahead with Acronis and it worked quite well. the only problem i experienced was a little OE (operator error), as i replaced the 40GB with the new drive and didn't set the machine all the way into the dock! i didn't panic when my usb mouse didn't come up and figured it out without further issue. duh.

summary: it worked great, and now i've got a faster drive, bigger drive with which to play. i also have a fast backup drive. do i need to remove the service partition from the 2nd drive now? according to the HD upgrade FAQ it'll cause problems if i boot up with both drives installed. that's quite a likely scenario, as i'll use it in the dock.

next up: Artic Silver

[charlienyc]

do i need to remove the service partition from the 2nd drive now? according to the HD upgrade FAQ it'll cause problems if i boot up with both drives installed.

anyone