Upgrading x100e 5400 rpm hard drive to 7200 rpm hard drive

[Mike Bailey]

Two months ago I bought an x100e, with four gigabytes of memory, and the AMD L625 dual processor. I installed Windows XP Professional to dual boot with Windows 7 and removed most of the 'custom' software. With screen brightness turned down just a bit, I was getting about six hours of time on one charge doing basic word processing and some web browsing and email. The keyboard has been superlative, as many people say.

I was comfortable enough with the performance, but over a period of two months found that the delays at times in opening applications, in saving files, and so forth to be disappointing. Others who had the x100e proclaimed the wonders of the SSD drive, but the prices for SSD drives are astronomical. Eventually I settled on the same brand Western Digital hard drive, the WD3200BEKT 320gb 7200 rpm drive, SATA 3.0Gb/s to replace the original WD250 BEVT 5400 rpm drive. Research online provided bits and pieces about compatiblity, power usage and heat, but nothing definitive, so it was a risk. At only $55 for the drive, it was worth a try.

I posted the hard drive upgrade, step by step, with comments and photographs to my Facebook page, and to my blog on my web site. Hopefully this might be of use to someone else who wants to tweak the performance of their x100e while on a tight budget - the most bang for the buck.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/note.php?create ... 0527420759

Blog: http://bluerockphotography.com/blog/brpblog.php#

Added note if there is a problem accessing the Facebook page or my blog. I tested the links myself from several different machines and browsers and they worked for me, but that doesn't help someone who is not having success doing so. Below are a few time differences, such as boot time, but the main thing is that this is the drive that really should have been in the x100e in the first place.

The upgrade worked and improved the snapiness of the x100e laptop so there is no longer a noticeable delay in saving or opening files. It's the drive that should have been there in the first place. There is no additional heat, so the laptop just feels warm on the underside, same as before. Battery life with word processing actually increased from about 6 hours to about 6 1/2 hours, pretty remarkable considering the boost in performance. Boot times for Windows 7 went from 29 seconds to 20 seconds, and for Windows XP from 35 seconds to 27 seconds. The times are measured from when I hit enter at the boot up screen to select the operating system to when the desktop appears and you can start working, though either version of Windows still has some software to load. This time is without any anti virus or firewall software loaded, which adds time depending on the company being used. Shutdown stayed at four to five seconds for either operating system.


Mike Bailey

[howto]

somehow your blog is not working...
or the links...

Another suggestion on how to speed things up: use eboostr
it creates a RAMDisk where Data is stored and it is faster than a HDD of course.
Programs are opening faster with that program.
4 GB Ram is more than enough for this.

[underclocker]

Quite a nice result! Please post the details of your specific battery, part numbers and original Wh capacity.

[emtee3511]

Are you Blue Rock Photography? The photo and essay 'Voiceless' is very touching... I loved it --

Doesn't sound as if it was written by a geek -- but I know you are a geek because of the excellent X100 post
Thanks for all the info -- going to take a look at my X100 right now...

[The Solutor]

A momentus XT could be a better choice for the users that doesn't want to afford the price of an SSD or that needs a boost in performance w/o loosing much space

[steveg47]

Sorry to be blunt but I find it really, Really, REALLY! hard to believe those battery times you posted. And those bootup times also look very unrealistic.

[Colonel O'Neill]

I have the single-core MV40 X100e with a six-cell and get 5.5 hours on average with note taking.

I second getting eBoostr. You can get an SD card (which unfortunately would have to stick out of the reader on the X100e) to use as a DIY hybrid drive (the 320GB Scorpio Black platter drive is a fair bit faster than whatever platter drive the XT uses).

My T400 runs eBoostr + 500GB Scorpio Black + 4GB SD card cache + 1.5GB RAM cache and is very snappy.

@Mike Bailey
Which defragger have you been using to maintain your drive?

[Mike Bailey]

Quite a nice result! Please post the details of your specific battery, part numbers and original Wh capacity.

The battery is 5.2Ah 57wh FRU P/N 42T4787


Mike

[Mike Bailey]

Are you Blue Rock Photography? The photo and essay 'Voiceless' is very touching... I loved it --

Doesn't sound as if it was written by a geek -- but I know you are a geek because of the excellent X100 post
Thanks for all the info -- going to take a look at my X100 right now...

Thank you! Yes, I'm Blue Rock Photography, my main business, though I was a software programmer for 15 years in a former life, actually in the last few years an employee of IBM, via Lotus.

Mike

[Mike Bailey]

Sorry to be blunt but I find it really, Really, REALLY! hard to believe those battery times you posted. And those bootup times also look very unrealistic.

Steve,

Not making anything up here. I timed the boot up as described, from when my dual boot screen (boot manager) appears and I select the operating system to boot. I stop the stopwatch when the desktop appears and the icons are drawn, though it takes longer for everything to finish loading. However, once the desktop is up, it's possible to bring up a word processor and start working.

As I mentioned, I got rid of all the ThinkVantage software, including the power manager, and just use what comes with the operating systems. Once the boot up is done and all the miscellaneous delayed boot stuff is loaded, the estimates given by the default battery software seem to be accurate. I let the battery run down to the warning level a couple of times to verify this was true. So, when I boot up, let things settle down, start doing something basic like editing a document, then check the estimated time remaining, I typically get over six hours. An hour later, with continuous editing, doing little else for instance, the estimate will be one hour less, five hours, etc. So it seems reasonably accurate to me. However, if I use software that's more CPU intensive, like Photoshop 7 (and that's not really bad, compared to later Photoshop versions), the battery life drastically descreases.

I have disabled all services that are non-essential, so that under XP I have something like 22 services running. Under Windows 7 I have 32 services running. One thing I've noticed that makes a huge difference on runtime on the battery is screen brightness. Coming from a photography background, I can not stand a screen that's bright, as it usually is inaccurate, so perhaps I tolerate a slightly dimmer screen than others might?

Mike

Afterthought: since it's on by default, I didn't mention I have prefetch enabled on both Windows 7 and Windows XP, but superfetch off on Windows 7.

[Mike Bailey]

Which defragger have you been using to maintain your drive?

I use the operating system defragger, both the one under Windows 7 and the one under XP Pro, though of course the one under Windows 7 has more options. Both seem adequate. As a side note, I make sure to keep the registry optimized, too.

Mike

[Colonel O'Neill]

O.o

Did you keep the Active Protection System, Hotkey Integration, PM driver, and UltraNav driver?

[Mike Bailey]

Did you keep the Active Protection System, Hotkey Integration, PM driver, and UltraNav driver?

Heretical, isn't it? I only use the UltraNav driver. All else seemed like overhead that didn't offer me anything for my purposes as I'm somewhat of the minimalist school when it comes to what's good in a computer.

Mike