T60 HDD to SSD: Upgrade ... Help needed

[vansree]

Hi all,

Greetings!

I have 15" Thinkpad T60 with windows Vista business. It has lot of other software like Visual Studio, SQL Server, Office, Project and more.

I am thinking to replace with SSD and RAM. Would like to seek info and help from who already did on T60. Any suggestions ...

Pre-installation
1) Backup and Restore steps
2) Which SSD and RAM to purchase and what capacity?
3) Additional steps to go back to the original HD, in case of failure

Installing and upgrading:
1) About the process of hardware replacing
2) About the process of software migration
3) Optional any other parts or suggestions for replacement
4) Is it possible to have partitions for SSD?

appreciate your help in advance.

Thanks

Sreedhar

[Johan]

Welcome to the forum!

As to SSD's in T60's this subject has been discussed many times on this forum, and I am confident that you will be able to find answer(s) to most of your questions if browsing this forum... use e.g. a search like this one.

With respect to backup and restoring data, many options exist, but my personal preference if Acronis True Image (use their "clone" functionality). Many (if not all?) SSD manufacturers deliver free-of-charge when buying a SSD a similar clone-tool... check manufactures homepage.

I don't understand what you mean by: "I am thinking to replace with SSD and RAM"? SSD is one thing; RAM is another thing, they're unrelated. Your T60 may be able to hold 4 GB RAM (2 x 2 GB), but it can only use approx. 3 GB, so to "max. out" the T60 I'd suggest to get a 1 GB + a 2 GB stick... see the thread T60 upgrade question for more info.

Johan

[vansree]

Thanks Johan for the immediate reply.

The links has lot of information. I may have to spend lots of time as it has more options. On a quick check, all the links are more than 1 year old. I may have to spend time on the forums to find out who has done lately.

I meant Both RAM and SSD. Sorry would have stated as separate.

My battery also died, I may have to search for this one also.

Regards

Sreedhar

[GOT]

I installed an SSD into a T60 about a month ago. If you have some external storage with at least as much free space as the size of your current HDD and your new SSD is at least as large as the old HDD it's easy.
1) Make sure you have a working bootable CD and can access the removable storage using it! (and the bootable CD give access to a cloning tool, if you have a Linux livecd you can use dd from the commandline)
2) Write an image of your current HDD to a file on the external storage
3) Remove old HDD
4) Install the SSD
5) Boot using the CD and write the image from your external storage onto the blank SSD
6) Optionally resize the partitions on the SSD (If you don't do this and the SSD is larger than the old HDD you'll have unallocated space that your unable to use for storage)

Of course if you don't have sufficient external storage or the new SSD is smaller than the HDD it'll be harder to accomplish. It's a good upgrade to do, my machine feels a great deal faster with the SSD and seems to run cooler too.

[RealBlackStuff]

Not a good idea, if you ask me.
HDD and SSD have different alignments.
You should really do a fresh installation from scratch!

Check this: http://lifehacker.com/5837769/make-sure ... erformance

[vansree]

Thanks for all the replies. It sounds more people are still using thinkpad T60. I am not alone. Good news

FYI, I have external dvd drive and the internal CD/dvd and battery died long time back.

Do you mind, sharing the SSD details you bought, please?

The link from the lifehacker... is good one Thanks

Thanks

Sreedhar

[ajkula66]

Do you mind, sharing the SSD details you bought, please?

There are many of us left still running their *60 series ThinkPads, mostly with SSDs...

Key questions here are:

a) How much space do you need?

b) How much are you looking to spend?

[GACrabill]

1) Make sure you have a working bootable CD and can access the removable storage using it! (and the bootable CD give access to a cloning tool, if you have a Linux livecd you can use dd from the commandline)
2) Write an image of your current HDD to a file on the external storage
3) Remove old HDD
4) Install the SSD
5) Boot using the CD and write the image from your external storage onto the blank SSD
6) Optionally resize the partitions on the SSD (If you don't do this and the SSD is larger than the old HDD you'll have unallocated space that your unable to use for storage)

Not a good idea, if you ask me.
HDD and SSD have different alignments.
You should really do a fresh installation from scratch!

Actually, the method mentioned by "GOT" works fine ... but the most important piece of that method is that you must use a backup/restore/cloning product which correctly aligns the image on the SSD during the restore/clone process.

There are a number of older image backup/restore/cloning products which will NOT do this process correctly.

I have used free versions of "Paraqon Backup Recovery 2014 Free" as well as "AOMEI Partition Assistant" to correctly backup/restore HDDs onto SSDs. I then start "AS SSD" just to make sure that the alignment is "OK".

I believe that newer versions of "Macrium Relect Free" also create correctly aligned operating systems when copied/restored/cloned.

If the SSD came with it's own cloning software, then use that method if possible.

[ajkula66]

I don't know. Unless one has expensive/obsolete software that they can't re-install for whatever reason, a clean install is the way to go, at least in my book.

By the time one is done tweaking their clone, they could've - in most cases - had a perfectly functional fresh install.

My $0.02 only...

[mikemex]

I've popped my trusty 1.8" Samsung 64GB SLC with 2.5" adapter into every machine I've owned with zero issues. The only problem I've had is with AHCI support but that was with Windows XP which requiered a floppy drive to load the driver... now that I'm using Windows 7 I just leave it enabled.

It's mostly a matter of backing your data up and doing a fresh install. It just works like any other drive.

[kkk]

You won't save time with system migration. A fresh OS instalation from USB stick on SSD takes about 20-25 min. Then install your software, do some settings if requred, and then optimize the OS for SSD. I use this guide, but mind that its for systems with enought RAM size - I presume that 3GB RAM still won't be enought at some point for you tasks, so you will need page file/more virtual memory and maybe prefetch&superfetch.