Is my Travelstar HDD getting old? Should I replace it?

[zodiac]

Hey everybody,

lately I am getting the impression that the IC25N (precisely, its an IC25N030ATCS04-0 with 4200 rpm and 30 gigs) in my X22 is getting a tad old and noisy - with 25k power on hours and a load cycle count past the million.

So I ran HDTune and benchmarked it. These are the results:

1) Avg. transfer rate: 15,2 MB/sec, 1,2 MB/sec min, 19,9 MB/sec max.
2) Access time: 18,7 ms

Is this out of spec? Could I exspect a much better performance if I replaced it with a newer, albeit still 4200 drive?

Cheers,
Martin

[RealBlackStuff]

Any PATA 2.5" laptop drive, 5400rpm or 7200rpm, up to 320GB, will be a tremendous improvement.

[bill bolton]

is getting a tad old and noisy

Do a backup RIGHT NOW, and replace the drive (or the system) ASAP

Cheers,

Bill B.

[zodiac]

OK. THANK YOU!

Just is another 4200rpm drive going to be any faster? I had a look around and it seems thats the only new thing you get for IDE on ebay etc. these days...

[robert213]

OK. THANK YOU!

Is another 4200rpm drive going to be any faster?

Huh? Do not buy another 4200 rpm HDD.

You want to purchase PATA/IDE Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 (7200 rpms) or 5K100 (5400 rpms) -- largest available is 100GB.

You want to purchase PATA/IDE Western Digital Scorpio Black (7200 rpms) or Blue (5400 rpms) -- largest available is 320GB.

----------------------
You want to install Windows XP Pro from official IBM/Lenovo Recovery CD(s). You can create them from the service partition on your original factory HD (Press F11). You can purchase them directly from Lenovo for approximately $ 45 USD.

You want to purchase USB to PATA/IDE adapter, such as Apricorn's Drivewire. Connect your old HDD to this adapter.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6812161002

[ajkula66]

There are no 7200rpm WD PATA laptop drives, 5400rpm only.

My favourite one - out of the newer drives - is Samsung 160GB/5400 which can still be found new/sealed.

[zodiac]

Thanks for the advice, but these drives are way too expensive for the purpose. The X22 is merely my emergency laptop.

So I am looking for a replacement drive < 30$.

Hence my question again: Is another 4200rpm drive going to be any faster then the performance posted in my initial post?

Cheers,
Martin

[robert213]

So I am looking for a replacement drive < 30$.

I have purchased USED Hitachi Travelstar 5K100 and 7K100 HDD(s) from eBay (and my local computer recycler) without issues.

I would purchase a USED 5400/7200rpm HDD before I would purchase a NEW 4200rpm.

Also, I would purchase 100GB or larger and
Use partition management software to allocate 55GB for C: partition (assuming that you place temporary work-in-progress data in "My Desktop" and "My Documents" and allocate the rest for E: partition for finalized data that you would like to keep.

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But again, if you were satisfied with your Windows XP start-up time and internet file download speeds, I am not going to persuade you to purchase a faster HDD.
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7K100 Spec sheet
http://www.hitachigst.com/tech/techlib. ... _sp1.3.pdf

4.2 Data Sheet
Data transfer (buffer to/from media) (Mbps): 267-629
ULTRA DMA 100 (Mbyte/sec): 100
Disk-buffer data transfer (Mb/s): 267-629
Buffer host data transfer (MB/s): 100
Average random seek time - read (ms): 10
Average random seek time - write (ms): 11

[zodiac]

Thanks very much for the advice. I will try to hunt down a faster drive then.

[wackyD]

Thanks very much for the advice. I will try to hunt down a faster drive then.

Take a look in the For sale section: http://www.thinkpads.com/forum/viewtopi ... 11&t=97374

http://www.thinkpads.com/forum/viewtopi ... hilit=pata
http://www.thinkpads.com/forum/viewtopi ... hilit=pata