X60 HDD Upgrade Questions

[Kamika007z]

Hi all, a client of ours want to upgrade the hard drive to their ThinkPad X60, machine type 1709-47U, bringing me to two questions:

A.) Can you purcahse the drive from elsewhere, or is there specific IBM firmware that needs to be on the HDD for it to fully work properly?

B.) His OS is running perfectly, he just needs more space on the local drive (he has a 30GB drive), so that larger drive would be perfect. Can you just Ghost the image onto the new drive? Or even Acronis it and have it sucessfully working?

Please let me know,

Thank you!

[smvp6459]

A.) Can you purcahse the drive from elsewhere, or is there specific IBM firmware that needs to be on the HDD for it to fully work properly?

You can buy the drive from anyone, as long as it is 2.5" and SATA. I bought a Hitachi Travelstar 7K100 from the cheapest/most reputable place I could find online...no problems at all.

B.) His OS is running perfectly, he just needs more space on the local drive (he has a 30GB drive), so that larger drive would be perfect. Can you just Ghost the image onto the new drive? Or neve Acronis it and have it sucessfully working?

I used the DOS-based version of Ghost and it was fine. Just make sure you create an image with the Drive's boot information or you'll just get a blank screen. I initially tried imaging just the OS partition and couldn't get it to work without creating an image of the entire disk with boot information. After I got the new driving working I hosed R&R partition, but your customer may want to keep that. I figure if I have the original drive and periodic images I don't want to waste a couple of gigs on a redundant partition.

[Kamika007z]

Thank you for the reply.

From the way I understand it. You can restore the R&R partition by updating it to R&R version 3.1.

If you already have 3.1 installed, uninstall it restart, and reinstall it.

Might be worth a try.

Thanks again

[smvp6459]

Thanks for the tip, but I eliminated the partition intentionally. I prefer to have full control over my machine.

[Kamika007z]

Well, CDW, our distributor has the drive on back order. Anyone know if you can use another brand drive or even order it from another online retailer for a good price? They requested it be a 100GB drive though.

Thank you!

[smvp6459]

I picked up my 7K100 here:
http://www.pcnation.com/web/details.asp?item=G68625

But the price to service ratio may be better somewhere else.

If I was buying now, I might pick up one of the new perpendicular drives. I hear you lose a slight amount of performance over the 7200rpm drives but you pick up another 60gb and I thought I read they use less power.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822145113

[Kamika007z]

Does anyone recommend using a 7200rpm Seagate Momentus 100GB HDD?

Thank you

[Kamika007z]

Just letting everyone know that the original Hitachi 7K100 order came through and the old drive was imaged and reinstalled without a hitch.

Thanks all.

[Thinkpad760XD]

Also, be aware that some external HDs are 2.5" SATA models that can be removed and used as a replacement drive.

You might not think it's worth it, but they do sometimes go on sale for less than the bare drives.

[cmarti]

I will upgrade the hardrive of my X60 to 100gb and would like to clone my existing drive, with ata-6 drives I use a usb adapter to connect the new drive with the laptop and acronis but the connector is not the same on the sata drives.

what hardware do one use to clone notebook sata drives?

Thanks.

Carlos..

[smvp6459]

You could clone to a 3rd harddrive...some other HD you have in an external housing.

Original Drive => 3rd Drive
3rd Drive => New Drive

[cmarti]

You could clone to a 3rd harddrive...some other HD you have in an external housing.

Original Drive => 3rd Drive
3rd Drive => New Drive

Let me see if i understand,

I clone the existing drive to the 3rd drive, install the new drive boot form the 3rd drive in a external storage and then run acronis from it and clone to the new drive? That is how?

The only place i got to connect the new drive is the laptop itself no other connector.

[smvp6459]

That's mostly right. You probably won't boot from the 3rd drive to deploy the image to the new drive.

I'm not sure how Acronis works but it might work like this:
1. Install Acronis in Windows XP
2. Create an image of the original drive (put on the 3rd drive)
3. Switch drives
4. Boot from the Acronis CD
5. Put the image of the old drive on the new drive (from the 3rd drive)
6. Reboot.
*Someone who is familiar with Acronis should correct/confirm me here.

I use an old version of Ghost that runs in DOS. My process looked like this:
1. Boot from the Ghost Disk
2. Create an image of the original drive (put on the 3rd drive)
3. Switch drives
4. Boot from the Ghost Disk
5. Put the image of the old drive on the new drive (from the 3rd drive)
6. Reboot.

[cmarti]

smvp6459,

Ok now i understand, i will follow your directions.

Thanks for the help.

Carlos.

[Kamika007z]

Yes, that is how I cloned the HDD.

However, instead of using another drive to store the acronis image on it, I used an external USB HDD.

[andrzej]

For my future migration (drive cloning) to fastest HD
(planed: 2.5'; SATA; more than 100GB; fast RPM, hybrid)
my source HD was:
1. divided by PartitionMagic8 (USB-FDD)
> *Hard Drive - TOSHIBA MK8034GSX**Temperature*32 C
> *IBM_PRELOAD**Drive Letter*C *Usable Hard Disk Capacity*20.09 GB
> *DATA**Drive Letter*D *Usable Hard Disk Capacity*17.58 GB
> *EXTRA**Drive Letter*E *Usable Hard Disk Capacity*19.54 GB
> *FAN**Drive Letter*F *Usable Hard Disk Capacity*12.69 GB

2. with NortonGhost2003 (USB-FDD)
images of both PlainOS & Service partitions were made
plain.GHO & service.GHO are saved on second partition.
FYI new X60s (upd etc: sfw ThP & OS) has 'Used Hard Disk Space 7.5 GB'

3. instalation useful prgs: Office-11 + supplements + latest upg
(after: ERUnt, backups, cleaning, defrag ect C:\ = 10.5 GB)
start NG(USB-FDD) image of above partition was made
(in ~18 min. source.GHO = 5.26 GB)
surce.GHO is saved on second partition source HD

Above can be used for:
+ quick OS partition refreshment
start NG(USB-FDD) use image source.GHO
from second partition

+ also for HD cloning

4. format newHDD - attached with USB-SATA adapter to X60s

5. start from fdd PM8 X60s with newHDD
& create appropriate partitions (NTFS) on newHDD

6. use USB-SATA adapter to copy both.GHO images
from oldHDD to second partition newHDD
(source.GHO & service.GHO)

7. start from fdd NG2003 X60s with newHDD
create both partitions with appropriate GHO images
from second partition newHD

8. defrag newHDD

In my case new X60s (17045UG)
*BIOS**Release Date*07/27/2006*Version*7BET49WW (1.09)
tools as follow
hdw: external USB-FDD; external USB-SATA 2.5" HD Adapter;
sfw: PartitionMagic8; NortonGhost2003 (both on fdd-s);
PerfectDisk7 defrag
BTW still I cannot boot X60s from USB Flash Drive