2 Hard Drives and 40 ThinkPads

[ThinkPad560X]

Well I got all my ThinkPads on its brand new book shelf along with real books too. Anyway All my ThinkPads work and at the point to get or replace old HDDs for them. I'd prefer to just get 2 Hard drives instead of 40 maybe 35 since some do have drives that are above 100GB. 1 SSD IDE and 1 SSD SATA around 160GB or 200GB range. It will cost alot to get a HDD around 20GB and up for all my ThinkPads. Now heres the question I want to hot swap them into any ThinkPad, Probably will be running XP Pro since I know all will run XP from early 90s to 2005. Will they just plug in and play and of course they will install the system drivers for that system or will errors come up during boot. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesnt, I did this with my 560X since it didnt have a CD Drive. I can probably X out the 560X since it will be a pain to remove the palmrest to remove the HDD. So just easy access HDD ThinkPads then like the Ultrbay. But really I want to make a Mobile Windows that can plug into any PC and run it. Or I guess I could narrow it down more and just get small drives for ThinkPads older then 600X since All ThinkPads above 600X support UltraBay.

[jronald]

I have found many 20 gig game console HDDs for less than $10.00 shipped. Got one for $2.50 shipped!
Anyway, they work fine in the laptops. I have a few older machines that I set up the OS, update it and then store the machine.

Im thinking with the varied menagerie you have the HAL is going to sneak up on you and BSOD multiple machines.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/IDE-2-5-20GB-Hi ... 4d278a0f7b

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Lot-of-10-Dell- ... 5d5022b4a7

Here are a couple of suggestions
Ron

[BillMorrow]

if it were me, i would gather up HDD's for EACH thinkpad model and install the original OS along with those apps that shipped with that particular thinkpad model and OS..

for instance, with the 701C there was OS/2 and win 3.11 in a dual boot with some primitive (for this 21st century) full motion graphics made to show off the MWave chip.. which had a nice song and dance routine when first booting up the 701C..

and the T60 UXGA with the movie player app that could "snip" scenes from the DVD movie being played..

and of course there was/is the transnote with the full lotus suite..

so these machines could be very useful as well as being a display of what "once was" under the IBM logo..

just a thought..

[Khipata]

I intend to do exactly what Bill suggested, actually started already gathering original software