Current Thoughts on T42 Replacement Hard Drives?

[suzannetf]

I still have my T42 from college. I'm a bit sentimental about it, even moreso now that Lenovo is changing up the new Thinkpads so drastically. I'm getting it working again and was reading up about what to do if I want to upgrade the hard drives. I COMPLETELY forgot about the PATA/IDE thing. I've been reading over a bunch of the old articles. There seem to be a good number of HDD available on eBay nowadays (refurbished, etc.) for reasonable prices. I've also been reading about the whole 1.8" SATA converted to 2.5" PATA. However, pricing the 1.8" SATA + converter vs. the OWC Mercury Legacy Pro (at least in the 128/120 GB range) there doesn't seem to really be that significant a price difference. I saw the original prices those drives were quoted in a release article and they are definitely cheaper now. The 120 is currently $197.99. You think they'll keep coming down in price even though they are specialty? For once I'm a bit glad for Mac. Their dated stuff made it worthwhile for a company to make those drives. Regarding SSD vs. HDD, it's starting to seem a no-brainer for the SSD without even considering performance difference. The SSD price is already <$200 (barely) for 120 GB. As far as I can tell, the 7K100 ranged from 60 GB, 80 GB, and 100 GB. And they're all going to cost from $60 to $100+.

So, what are people getting nowadays when they replace the hard drives on an old T42?

[fishy]

Personally, I just picked up a T42 about a week ago for about $50 and am going with the UltraBay SATA + CF adapter option because 2.5" SSDs are cheaper, more available and:

1. If I need more space I can either buy a SSD or CF card produced new anywhere
2. If I want to reuse the 2.5 SSD out of my thinkpad I can just slap it in another of my laptops (I have a dual-bay G53SW that's eager for such a thing if I ever upgrade)
3. I rarely use an optical drive anyway because I keep my OS installs on a bootable flash drive using YUMI

Just my 2¢

[ajkula66]

WD 320 or 250GB are the most recently produced IDE drives. Everything else is old stock, or used...

You might be able to pick up a NOS Seagate on feebay for $70 or so, these were 80/7200...that would be my pick.

Good luck.

[suzannetf]

Thanks! I also always forget about the optical drive. I'm going to see how long I can keep the current drive going as long as possible and consider those options.

[smashkenazi]

I'm still using a WD320, but intend to change to mSATA with mSATA/PATA converter soon.

[Westin]

One day for laughs I wanted to see the current price of the 320GB PATA drive from WD, for my T41. The online retail stores were out of stock. WD doesn't have a page for laptop PATA drives. It appears the PATA drives are discontinued at WD. I have only seen Transcend's SSD with PATA interface, and they are expensive. When I was searching the web for the 320gb I came across newegg's feedback for the WD3200BEVE, it had/has somebody saying they sent in their laptop PATA drive for warranty service and WD sent them a refurb SATA drive. I wonder if mistake, or really no PATA. Maybe assumed SATA = better, customer = super happy; not considering laptop may not have SATA interface.

Since PATA hdds appear to be discontinued...when my hdd fails I will look to do some hardware hacks.

[systemBuilder]

I tend to buy 160 GB drives on ebay. I look at the labels before bidding, and make sure to get something from 2010 or later. Older drives are far more likely to fail. I believe there is a "Kingspec" PATA drive (128 GB) for some on EBay for $141. That price has been stable since xmas 2012. It is expensive but not horribly expensive for a PATA drive. I love the T42 model and we use them exclusively at our home, as souped-up netbooks. They won't run Windows 8, nor do they have Shader Model 3 for late-model games, but they run any piece of software from 2010 or earlier, just fine.