T60P HDD replacement/Thinkvantage recovery

[RyanR]

Hi guys/Gals! New to the forum. I have always LOVED the performance and design of Thinkpad Models. After years of Jealousy, good ole craigslist provided me with a young lady who got a new Laptop for Christmas. She wanted to sell a laptop a family member had passed down to her, enter my new-to-me T60P! For$50 I now have a perfect t60p with newer battery etc. I ordered a Cady off ebay for 6 bucks and put a travelstar 7200rpm in the ultrabay cady from a local PC/Electronics recycler. My question is can I use Acronis to move the complete drive to a new drive in the cady and boot? I repair computers and pos systems for a living but all the research I have done points to not being able to move the hidden thinkvantage recovery to a new drive.

Will making a set of recovery media in R&R allow me to restore the factory image to a larger drive?

Thanks in advance!

I really love this machine! Its portable and really powers through the work I do daily at the office and on the road with regards to repair/restore software and web design. I think it out performs most NEW computers in the 6-800 range. Sure it doesnt have the memory or FSB speed but I believe the design and components were the tip top tier of their time! Aside from being windows XP, and the Heat issue I LOVE IT! My desire to do this upgrade is to dualboot the factory xp system (I used the restore utility and its the best I have every used) and windows 7. Between Adobe CS6 and various other software, a few older games I love to play (the FireGL works fine for this despite reading it would not) The stock 100GB is not enough. I like to keep my drive under 50% full and I am at exactly 52GB full. This is with no projects or files just my system and base programs (1 Game @ 4gb).

Any ideas, advice suggestions or knowledge. I REALLY want to utilize this machine for about 2 years as my work horse/money maker.

[RealBlackStuff]

Welcome to the forum.

Put in 2GB+1GB or 2x2GB RAM (the max any T60 can use is 3GB).
If those R&R discs have not yet been made, then you can still make ONE set only.
If you use Acronis (or Clonezilla) in Clone-Mode, it will copy the complete HD to another HD, and even resize the partition(s) if the recipient HD is larger.
One easy way to do it is using two SATA-USB-adapters attached to a PC that has Acronis (or Clonezilla) installed.
However, it being XP, I wouldn't bother, as XP is no longer supported.
I suggest you get a ~250GB SSD for around $80, such as this new-on-the-market Zotac from Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/ZOTAC-Premium-2-5 ... 016NY7UUO/
Or get an up to 1TB rotating HD for the same price, such as this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822178340
Then do a fresh install with 32-bit W7-Pro/SP1

[RyanR]

Thanks Real,
A couple questions. Making the disks I would use the recovery -predesktop area? No option in R&R in windows that I can see. Also I believe My t60p with t7600 supports 4gb max ram? Can I use the ultrabay cady for the Acronis backup? This WILL include the recovery partition as well? that would be great!

When I start rescue and recovery (4.0) it launches straight into saving an image of my system on local hard drive. I do not wish to allow it to create this!

Thanks

[RealBlackStuff]

Obviously those R&R discs have already been made by a previous owner, so forget about it.
And I repeat: the max any T60 can use is 3GB RAM. This includes ANY T60p.
You'll need to run Acronis/Clonezilla from an external CD-drive or USB-stick, have the original HD in an Ultrabay HD-adapter and the new drive in the original HD-bay.
Read up on the forum for further/other instructions.

[JBUK]

Another approach, which I use, is to take an Acronis image of the recovery partition and keep this in the unlikely event that you ever want to do a factory reinstall. Then clone or reimage your existing HDD onto the new one as RBS suggests but without the recovery partition.
Why, well because I for one would never want to go back to factory setup with all its extra software that I never use when what you really want is to go back to your fully installed and tweaked working setup.
So then eventually take a new image of the completed copied/cloned and tweaked disk and use this if you need to restore back to your original setup.

I use my T61s now when I am on the road and they are more than adequate whatever o/s you want to use. However I have installed the middleton bios and installed an SSD.

[RyanR]

It appears I was looking in the wrong place. I do not have DVDs so I have to wait. Are the two options different? Rescue Media vs recovery disks? I Like to use USB drives. Will making rescue media be the same but on different location like a USB or HDD? Don't be fooled it is XP not 7. I use a custom Theme!

http://i.imgur.com/mPUijcL.jpg

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