Thinkpads Forum

Just a few weeks further in exploring the wonders of a 600E I found out that my HD is partitioned in two (2,5 and 3,5G).
That's hard to usewith XP installed.
So I would like to install a 5400rpm HD. Here's the question:

Is the Travelstar a PATA / SATA / EIDE or IDE 2,5 inch HD? There are several 2,5 inch HD's but which one will be compatible? My local supplier doesn't know what I'm talking about, hope someone here does. I think a 20 or 40G will do the job.

Greetings,

Sibrand.

You have a standard 2.5 inch x 9.5mm PATA IDE hard drive. A 600 should accept any capacity you want to install.

carbon_unit wrote:You have a standard 2.5 inch x 9.5mm PATA IDE hard drive

I would bet he has a 2.5 inch x 12mm since his drive is so old [later: carbon_unit, I lose this bet - he has a 9.5mm], but either way carbon_unit's advice still holds. A 600E can take either a 9.5mm or a 12mm high drive. Notebook drives are almost all a standard 2.5 inches wide.

Phil.

That is a quick response! OK I have a PATA drive. Is it possible to install a SATA? I don't know really the difference (serial / parallel) and that's it. The most HD I see on the internet are SATA and therefore the most cheapest solution.
And yes, the drive is OLD. Very old but still running and a little small. It is a 2,5 inch 9mm though.

This is what I'm thinking about:
Seagate Momentus 7200.2 80GB 7200rpm 8MB SATA150 € 82,00

No, you cannot run a SATA drive. They have completely different connectors and require a different interface on the motherboard.

I see ..... , little disappointed but it's not the end of the world, is it?
So now I'm up for a new struglle, to be continued ...

Sibrand.

As others noted, you need a standard PATA drive, also called ATA, IDE or EIDE. 2.5 inches and up to 12mm thick. Any RPM speed will work.

Any capacity up to 128GB will work natively. Larger sizes may or may not work depending on your OS, but I would make sure any partition you boot from is under that 128GB limit.

All your answers are stuffed in one solution. To be continued.

For a week I will be silent, I am on holidays in France. After that the transition will be published!

Through this forum a HD has reached my 600E and is functioning without any problems at all. In The Netherlands it is very hard to get a HD that fits an IBM machine. SATA can be ordered, PATA is extremely hard to find.
I also bought a 120G at a computermarket when I passed. I couldn't hold the feeling of missing it.

"parallel" ata (PATA) is a rather new term. thier used to be only two styles of drives, scuzzi, and ide, scuzzi needed a special controler card, but were the fastest, though very expensive. ide drives became faster and faster, making them as fast as scuzzi drives, and costing much less. when the new serial ata (SATA) drives came out, they started to call the good old fashoned ide drives "parallel"
meaning that two drives could be hooked up "parallel" to each other on the same ribbon cable (IDE channel) the new "serial" (sata) drives each have thier own cable and channel that serves them. parallel
ata or IDE drives are VERY common, and you should have no problem finding one. ALL laptops untill about 1 year ago still used them. e-bay is a excelent place to buy them. they are very smal,
and can be shipped in a paded envolope. adrian

Although pronounced scuzzi, it's spelled SCSI. The PATA drives are parallel because they have a wide data bus and SATA are high-speed serial and have a one bit data bus, greatly reducing the wire count of the cable. Kind of like the transition of printers from parallel to USB, another high speed serial bus. (And FireWire is yet another.)

FYI, there were even a few ThinkPads that had SCSI hard drives... up to 1.2GB!