Confirm info for upgrading hard drive in T42

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srd05c · #1 Post by **srd05c** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 4:39 pm

I have a Thinkpad T42 (2378) and want to upgrade my hard drive. I have spent some time reading through previous posts on this forum, but I want to make sure I have all the facts correct.

I've read in this forum that the drive must be a P-ATA drive. Is this correct?

Also if so, these are the hard drives I am looking at:

HITACHI Travelstar 5K120 100GB 5400 RPM

or if Samsung is comparable to Hitachi, I would go for more space...

SAMSUNG Spinpoint M Series HM120JC 120GB 5400 RPM

or if 7200 RPM is worth the extra money and sacrificing space compared to the samsung

HITACHI Travelstar 7K100 100GB 7200 rpm

Now after I have the hard drive picked out, I need to understand how I am going to restore the new hard drive. Two ways I read are using a ghost utility, and the other is using the recovery disks. I'd rather start from scratch, so the recovery disks is probably the best choice. I have not created the recovery disks yet. Do I just need to run the Create Recovery Disks utility to make these disks and I am good to go?

My last question is about the hidden partition on the current hard drive. Will the recovery disks create this partition on the new hard drive? If not, is that going to be a problem?

Thanks!
Steve

#2 Post by **Johan** » Sat Jun 30, 2007 5:39 pm

Steve:

1) It is correct that T42's will work with an ATA (= PATA) drive. You may see this link for a comparison of a few new 160 GB 5400 rpm. vs. 7200 rpm notebook drives. Also, check the Silent PC Review site for reviews of e.g. laptop drives, with special emphasis on noise performance.

Generelly, 7200 rpm HDD's will make your ThinkPad appear faster (compared to a 5400 rpm drive), however at the expense of a slight increase in both noise level (slight, if at all noticable!) and power consumption. There are a LOT of treads here discussing performance of 5400 rpm drives vs. 7200 drives... search and ye shall find! Note that the Seagate "Momentus" drives comes with a 5-year warranty.

2) For making the new drive, you may either clone your source drive onto your new drive, there are also many, many threads discussing this; see e.g. the Hard Drive Cloning HOW TO FAQ or see this; my post of Jun 12 and the link it points at. As mentioned, I have used Acronis True Image Home, and recommend that - especially if you just nedd to clone a single drive, as you may in this case simply use the free trial version! Acronis True Image will make a complete image of your source HDD - incl. the hidden "Access IBM" partition. Just sit back and relax...!

If you wish to start completely from scratch, yes, you will need the IBM Rescue and Recovery Media, which I would strongly advice you to create immediately (it will require in total 7 CD-ROM's). Using these CD-ROM's, and a fresh formatted new, completely empty HDD, you may install everything to the same state the ThinkPad had upon its shipment from the factory. During this installation process, the hidden partition is also created.

Good luck - surely you can do it!

Regards,

Johan

srd05c · #3 Post by **srd05c** » Tue Jul 03, 2007 11:59 am

Great, thanks for the information. I will be creating the recovery disks and going that route for the new hard drive.

I noticed that some people have referred to a Seagate 7200 RPM 160GB hard drive.

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... agate+7200

but I have been unable to find this anywhere for sale. Even newegg doesnt have it! Where can I buy one of these?

srd05c · #4 Post by **srd05c** » Tue Jul 03, 2007 2:43 pm

I did find one listing of this hard drive, but it was SATA. I'm guessing it doesnt come as PATA?

#5 Post by **Johan** » Tue Jul 03, 2007 4:20 pm

The 2.5” Seagate 7200 rpm 160GB HDD you have seen mentioned is SATA – and hence not useful as an internal drive in a T42. If you want a fast 7200 rpm drive internal (ATA-) in your T42, and you require the maximum capacity (being 100 GB, at this time, as far as I know), I don’t think you have other choices than these two:

a) Seagate has the Momentus 7200.1 series and,

b) Hitachi has the 7K100/Travelstar E7K100 series

I have a Seagate 7200.1 ATA drive in my T42p (100 GB) and I would absolutely recommend it; almost inaudible, fast, not particularly hot (runs at around 36 C, idle, for a 20 C ambient), no vibrations and comes with a 5 year warranty.

Go get yourself a 7200 rpm drive; I am certain that it will make your T42 feel faster than with 5400 rpm drive! Beware of the slightly power consumption... maybe of importance if your main objective is longest possible battery time.

Update: Check this page for a quick overview of misc. 2.5" HDD's.

srd05c · #6 Post by **srd05c** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 11:38 am

Thanks, I will definitely go for a 100gb 7200rpm drive. Now I just need to decide whether to go with hitachi or seagate. From the specs, they both seem to be almost exact, besides seagates 5 year warranty. But hitachi seems to be referenced more around here... man this is going to be tough!!

#7 Post by **Johan** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 12:16 pm

Steve:

What might (or might not?) help in this situation is to check users feedback. I often do this when in doubt. For the two drives in question, take a look at e.g. Newegg or Amazon or other large retail-shops where people provide feedback. These places, there are many, many comments to benefit from - e.g. these: The Seagate drive: ST910021A and the Hitachi drive: HTS721010G9AT00.

Hitachi drives has a feature called AAM (Automatic Acoustic Management), which can be configured via the Hitachi Feature Tool. I have read reviews, however, which claim that enabling AAM does not provide any particular advantage over no AAM (in terms of lower noise) - check for yourself here.

You have to make a decision! And the longer you wait, the less joy from you new, fast HDD you're gonna get!

Good luck...!

Best regards,

Johan

steveg47 · #8 Post by **steveg47** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 1:28 pm

Both are excellent drives. Be aware that the Seagate gives you a 5 year warrantee and will cross ship if you need to return a faulty drive. With Hitachi you could wait up to 3 weeks for a replacement as I don't believe they will cross ship.

srd05c · #9 Post by **srd05c** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 3:50 pm

Any Hitachi hard drive lovers want to put your two cents in before i go for the seagate?

Temetka · #10 Post by **Temetka** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 4:07 pm

Fuel for the fire:

I am running a 120GB T5400RPM Drive from Toshiba in my T41P. It is fast, large and easy on the battery. I paid $119 for it from Fry's Electronics about 5 months ago or so. It's been a good drive for me.

That being said, I would go for the Seagate drive. They make excellent parts and a 5 year warranty can help ease the mind.

srd05c · #11 Post by **srd05c** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 9:55 pm

Johan wrote:Steve:

What might (or might not?) help in this situation is to check users feedback. I often do this when in doubt. For the two drives in question, take a look at e.g. Newegg or Amazon or other large retail-shops where people provide feedback. These places, there are many, many comments to benefit from - e.g. these: The Seagate drive: ST910021A and the Hitachi drive: HTS721010G9AT00.

Hitachi drives has a feature called AAM (Automatic Acoustic Management), which can be configured via the Hitachi Feature Tool. I have read reviews, however, which claim that enabling AAM does not provide any particular advantage over no AAM (in terms of lower noise) - check for yourself here.

You have to make a decision! And the longer you wait, the less joy from you new, fast HDD you're gonna get!

Good luck...!

Best regards,

Johan

Thanks for the input Johan. That's actually something that I have been considering as a factor. Newegg has a lot more reviews for the hitachi over seagate, which is kind of why I have stalled this decision. Normally the 5 year warranty would talk me into getting the drive, but if there are more reviews for hitachi, then maybe more people prefer that over seagate.

I'll re-read through those reviews and see if they sway my mind one way or the other. As of right now I am planning on getting the Seagate. I'll let you all know what I end up getting.

And for a future note, I will be planning on dual booting the machine with some distro of linux, so I will end up posting that experience as well.

#12 Post by **richk** » Thu Jul 05, 2007 11:33 pm

The only reason I prefer Hitachi is that I think the best diagnostic software is the IBM/Hitachi Drive Fitness Test, and it works better on Hitachi drives.

#13 Post by **Johan** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 2:50 pm

... not to make you even more confused about what to choose, yet a small update: I just stumbled across a couple of old comparative tests of the 2.5” 7200 rpm HDD’s discussed above; see: 2.5-Inch Hard Disk Drives with 7,200rpm Speed: Five Models Tested and 2.5-inch Hard Drive Roundup in the latter where it is said: ”Hitachi with AAM enabled still is not as quiet as Seagate”...”

In a Danish test on 2.5” HDD’s (in “PC World Danmark”, April 2006, pp. 12-18 ) it was mentioned that the Seagate Momentus 7200.1 was somewhat quieter than the Hitachi 7K100 (both drives 100 GB, ATA).

In a test of the Hitachi TravelStar E7K100 7.2k-rpm notebook drive here (the E7K100 drive being a cousin of the 7K100, and the E7K100 drive being “designed for demanding applications requiring extended power-on usage"), the E7K100 is being reported as quite quiet – maybe there is a difference in terms of noise between the 7K100 and the E7K100, or maybe it is simply owing to a difference between drives of the same type – caused by the manufacturer using e.g. motors from different vendors for the same product? Such very different noise performance of the same drive has been reported widely for e.g. Seagate Momentus 7200.10 3.5” desktop drives – see here – note the “Silent” and the “Not-silent” motor; absolutely big difference (I bought one such disk, last year, and was unlucky to receive a noisy one... but fortunately managed to get a no-noise replacement!).

Keep us posted, Steve!

Best regards,

Johan

srd05c · #14 Post by **srd05c** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 7:54 am

Thank you everybody for your help. I finally decided on a hard drive, and it is the...... drum roll......

Seagate Momentus 7200.1 100GB 7200 RPM ATA-6

I ordered it last friday, and should have it today! I'll let you all know how the upgrade goes.

Has anyone ever had any issues with trying to create the recovery disks? such as the recovery disk utility rejecting your cd's?

#15 Post by **Johan** » Tue Jul 10, 2007 2:34 pm

srd05c wrote:Thank you everybody for your help. I finally decided on a hard drive, and it is the...... drum roll......

Seagate Momentus 7200.1 100GB 7200 RPM ATA-6

I ordered it last friday, and should have it today! I'll let you all know how the upgrade goes.

Has anyone ever had any issues with trying to create the recovery disks? such as the recovery disk utility rejecting your cd's?

Wow, Steve - you did it!!

With respect to experiencing write- or verify-error during the creation of the IBM ThinkVantage Rescue and Recovery Media, I once had one of the CD's being rejected while being written. I just inserted a new one, and TV R&R continued, making a new, OK one. Beware that you only have one try for making the TV R&R media; if you loose your set, you are not able to make a new set, unless after first using the "Access IBM" hidden partition to completely restore your HDD to its factory state. If you loose your TV R&R media, and do not any longer have the Access IBM partition, then you will have to buy a set of TV R&R (at eBay they go for about USD 25). Alternatively, you can order a set from IBM/Lenovo - but that's going to cost you about USD 45,- If you have done all you should, and yet are unable to create your own Recovery Media Set, you might try call IBM/Lenovo support and get a free set... but many people here at the forum have reported trying this; some with success but more without...

It may perhaps depend of who you speak to, how poor and sad and sorry you seem, and how kind and polite you speak - what do I know? It almost always pays off to be a gentleman, I think!

Be sure to use high-quality CD-ROM's for your TV R&R media... such as e.g. Verbatim or similar.

srd05c · #16 Post by **srd05c** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 7:29 am

So I don't know why, but I was unable to burn the Rescue and Recovery disks with the internal cd-rw drive, it kept on rejecting my CD's. Luckily I have an external cd and dvd-rw drive, which worked great (and much faster!) It took no time to create the rescue disks.

I may create a backup of these disks just in case something happens to them. I'd rather not have to spend $45 to get a new set.

As for installing the hard drive, I would have to say it was one of the easiest upgrades I have ever done, ever! I have build computers for about 10 years and this upgrade maybe took 2 minutes, no joke. 1 screw to slide the drive out of the thinkpad, and 2 screws to remove the cover plate from the hard drive. Then all I had to do was screw the cover plate on the new hard drive, slide it in and secure it with that last screw and I was done! Much quicker than any upgrade to a desktop computer.

I then proceeded to run the Rescue and Recovery disks. This took quite some time. I went through all of the disks, and then went to bed. I let it run overnight and when I woke up all I had to do is configure the windows installation, and that was it.

The drive formatted to be about 88 GB after installation of windows and IBM's hidden partition (81 GB left if I remember correctly).

I haven't had time to see any performance gains from this hard drive (boot time, app speed, battery life, noise, etc). But when I do, I'll be sure to post that experience.

Thanks everyone for your help

house kitten · #17 Post by **house kitten** » Wed Jul 11, 2007 5:09 pm

Jonah, I may be ready. Seems buy.com is the cheapest place to get the seagate drive.

#18 Post by **Johan** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 12:45 am

house kitten wrote:Johan, I may be ready. Seems buy.com is the cheapest place to get the Seagate drive.

Well, if you are on a really tight budget, you need not necessarily buy the largest, and hence the most expensive 7200 rpm drive (sized 100 GB, and primarily the one discussed above), you could limit yourself to a 60 GB model, e.g. the Seagate Momentus 7200.1 ST96023A. If you upgrade your HDD, and want to make an exact copy of your present HDD to a new (this is called to "clone" or making "an image"), I suggest to use Acronis True Image - very simple to use, and free for 15 days, check this first or this second or this third thread (in the latter, note "Manual mode"!). There are tons and tons of other "how-to-clone-your-HDD" threads here - search and ye shall find!

Make sure - before you start cloning or imaging - to have your set of ThinkVantage Rescue & Recovery Media... just in case something goes wrong.

Good luck with your soon-to-be-blazing-fast T42!

Best regards,

Johan

house kitten · #19 Post by **house kitten** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 5:29 am

I already own both Acronis programs. WIll think about doing upgrades. If you know of other things to try to increase the speed please let me know.

#20 Post by **Johan** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 1:36 pm

house kitten wrote: If you know of other things to try to increase the speed please let me know.

How to get a faster T42? This depends of what you mean by faster; faster harddisk or faster program execution? In the former case get a 7200 rpm harddisk or consider replacing your mechanical (slow, noisy, power-consuming!) harddisk with a solid state disk (SSD), although these are beyond reach for most people (owing to their high cost).

If you want a cooler laptop, which runs longer on the battery, and has lower fan noise, then remeber to enable SpeedStep and consider reducing the CPU voltage and/or the GPU clock – check this thread: Managing Pentium-M Speed/Voltage with software and/or read about Notebook Hardware Control, ver. 2.

If you really want speed, then I guess you will have to consider replacing your current CPU (in your T42 being a Dothan M either model 725/1.6 GHz, or 735/1.7 GHz or 745/1.8 GHz) with one of the fastest Dothan CPU’s, suitable for your mainboard, being either a 755/2 GHz or a 765/2.1 GHz. Check List of Intel Pentium M microprocessors for type numbers. I don’t know what socket is in your T42 (478 or 479?), so I certainly recommend that you study this issue more in depth before purchasing a faster CPU! A 2.1 GHz Dothan 765 right now cost about $ 240 at eBay.

These are your best options – but none are cheap, I’m afraid. Could be interesting to hear if you follow any of these suggestions – and what your real-life experience in this case is! If mainly e.g. browsing or writing, I doubt that there will be much benefit from the SDD or a faster CPU… but search the forum and see what folks report about a “slow” CPU compared to one being 10 % faster. Doesn’t seem to mean a big deal in actual use.

Best regards,

Johan

Confirm info for upgrading hard drive in T42

Confirm info for upgrading hard drive in T42

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