Hitachi 7K200 - WOW! - Clone Procedure in T61

[rlchapin]

I just dropped one of these in my T61. WOW! It is fast and scary quiet. You can't hear anything with this drive. I am really impressed.

I cloned it using Apricorn EZ-UPGRADE kit which uses their EZ Gig II software. I got it from Amazon for $45, and there is currently a $15 rebate on it if you buy from Amazon.

I got the drive from CDW, it was $109 for the 100GB model.

My machine is XP SP2. I don't think Apricorn works with Vista yet.

Upgrade steps:
1: Backup of data on old drive.
2: Disable Security Chip in BIOS.
3: Per Apricorn web site I installed the new drive in the T61, and installed the old drive in the device that Apricorn provides with the kit. I used both the USB cables, the second provides additional power to the device. Not sure if it was neccessary, but figured it wasnt going to hurt the process.
4: Booted PC with the CD provided by Apricorn. It boots to their simple menu asking if you want to create an image, restore and image, or clone an image.
5: I selected clone an image, it immediately gave an error that said I only had one drive and cloning requires two. I switched the drives, put the old back in the PC and new in the Apricorn device. Same result.
6: Called Apricorn they emailed me a new version of the software (6.2.2). I had 6.1.9. They also sent me a new CD key. I loaded that on a different PC and it asked if I wanted to create a boot disk, which I answered yes.
7: I took the new boot disk to my T61 and switched the drives back. (old in device and new inside T61). Booted up and the software came up, and this time it recognized both drives. So if you are using this software with the Hitachi 7K200, make sure you have Apricorn EZ Gig II version 6.2.2.
8: I used the expert partition creation, so that i could keep the size of the service partition the same as the previous drive. I was going from an 80GB drive to 100GB drive. The default is to proportionally assign the partitions. This would have created about 1.3 GB's of wasted space in the service partition. The one odd thing I did see was that my old drive had 472.5 KB's of unallocated space at the end of the drive. Not sure why this was. Anybody have any ideas on why Lenovo would leave a little space at end of drive unallocated?
9: Once I had the partitions setup I continued. The whole clone process took about 20 minutes. It gives an on screen display of progress.
10: When it was done I enable the security chip and booted the machine.
11: Everything appears to work fine. The Thinkvantage button works from within XP and works on startup.

This drive is amazing. It is so quiet it truly is scary. I can't hear anything. My previous Seagate drive was constantly parking the heads with a "clonk" noise. It drove me crazy.

I would recommend the Apricorn kit with XP and definitely (so far) recommend the Hitachi 7K200 - 100GB.

-Bob

[deeastman]

Hitachi 7K200 - 100GB.
-Bob

Bob, the Hitachi 7K200 is a 200GB Drive. All of your references to this drive and the Title of this thread are incorrect if you indeed purchased and installed the Hitachi 100GB drive.

Oops! I wasn't aware that the 7K200 was a family with siblings. Thanks Erik for pointing that out.

[erik]

Bob, the Hitachi 7K200 is a 200GB Drive. All of your references to this drive and the Title of this thread are incorrect if you indeed purchased and installed the Hitachi 100GB drive.

actually, the 7K200 comes in 80, 100, 120, 160, and 200GB flavors.

[Tony Chan]

I've also purchased the 100Gb version of 7K200, mainly because this model is the biggest 1 platter version ( ** slightly ** more energy efficient ), with ( **ever so slightly** ) better performance comparing the 120/160 Gb version.

And yes, the drive is indeed fast and quiet. I've see noticable performance improvement, comparing with the original 60Gb 7k100 drive that I've swapped out.

[bradhs]

I'm going from a Momentus 7200.1 100GB to the Hitachi 7K200 200GB drive and tried exactly what you did but had the security chip enabled and the new drive connected via USB. It didnt work.. It kind of worked, but when it booted it came up with unable to load a bunch of different stuff.

So, I'm in the process of swapping the drives so that the new drive is in the laptop and the old drive is connected via USB. Also, I've disabled the Security Chip.

Also, if using BitLocker, you must unencrypt the drive as EZ-GIG II doesnt recognize the partition and you cant resize it.