T43p HDD upgrade

[lukee]

I have two disks now available for my T43p - Toshiba 80GB/5400rpm, Fujitsu 80GB/5400 rpm.
Toshiba died recently during operation, starting to produce terrible sounds. I have swapped this Toshiba for another Fujitsu drive. This one works fine but when looking to HDTune, it is reporting some SMART errors, reallocation event count specifically. So I think the drive is at the end of life as well. What drive to use for upgrade? I do not want to go with the SATA-modding thus I am looking for some powerful ATA drive. As I had T43p already few years ago, I know that Samsung HM160HC is one of the fastest 2.5" ATA drives ever, thanks to 1 platter & high data density. When I am looking to feeBay, HM160HC is pretty expensive nowadays. I would bet on Seagate Momentus 7200.1 (model ST910021A) as this one costs currently around $40. What do you think? Another option is also Hitachi 7K100 which slightly beats 7200.1 in performance, but my wife has 7K100 SATA version in her Dell Inspiron and this drive is very, very noisy, especially during heads operation. I would not go with ATA SSD as it will not be a efficient operation - Marvell SATA bridge does not support TRIM command translation and I would be limited with ~80MB/s transfer rates because of ATA interface. I am fine with 80-100GB capacity. Thanks for help.

[Hans Gruber]

I have the Seagate 7200 80gb or 100gb drive. Did they ever fix the firmware problem with the T43p? I could never get the Seagate drive to work. Had a Toshiba before that came with my T43p.

[lukee]

There is unofficial modded BIOS which removes 2010 error - it can be flashed to T43/R52/X41. I do not use it, as my current Fujitsu and previous Toshiba HDDs are genuine IBM FRU parts. ST910021A should work with T43 without modding the BIOS because IBM/Lenovo provides firmware update (fwhd56.iso) for this specific HDD model. I also know that there is some workaround for Travelstar disks which are non-IBM FRU parts to flash them with IBM firmware (official HDD FW utility does not allow to update specific models if those are not IBM FRUs). Summary - we do not need to worry about T43p vs. HDD compatibility nowadays. Is your Seagate 7200 reproducing reasonable sound during operation? Thanks.

[Hans Gruber]

It's the Seagate ST980825A. An 80gb 7200RPM drive. It was approved, had the drivers but the T43p never worked. I need the bios mod.

[lukee]

Download specific ISO for your system here:
http://thinkwiki.de/2010_Error_umgehen#Downloads

Burn the ISO onto a CD/DVD, reboot with F12 to show up the boot list, select to boot from CD/DVD and follow the instruction on the screen. Once completed, you will be asked by the program to reboot.

Important is to have fully charged battery and ThinkPad plugged in the AC adapter before doing this.

[ajkula66]

As I had T43p already few years ago, I know that Samsung HM160HC is one of the fastest 2.5" ATA drives ever, thanks to 1 platter & high data density. When I am looking to feeBay, HM160HC is pretty expensive nowadays.

Maybe, but it's worth every penny in my opinion.

I would bet on Seagate Momentus 7200.1 (model ST910021A) as this one costs currently around $40. What do you think? Another option is also Hitachi 7K100 which slightly beats 7200.1 in performance, but my wife has 7K100 SATA version in her Dell Inspiron and this drive is very, very noisy, especially during heads operation. I would not go with ATA SSD as it will not be a efficient operation - Marvell SATA bridge does not support TRIM command translation and I would be limited with ~80MB/s transfer rates because of ATA interface. I am fine with 80-100GB capacity. Thanks for help.

I've got that Seagate in my A31p and absolutely love it BUT it's not a quiet drive. It is audible in a different way from a Hitachi 7K100 that's in my T42p.

Personally, I'd go with HM160HC - and if you can't see yourself stretching that far financially - for the Seagate one.

My $0.02 only...

Happy upgrading.

[lukee]

I will probably go with the Seagate. Looking at the reviews of Travelstar 7K100 vs. Momentus 7200.1, Hitachi beats Seagate in performance and power consumption slightly, but Seagate beats Hitachi in a bit lower noise (noise is my preference). There are new, sealed Momentus 7200.1 units from 2008/2009 on feeBay for about $40.