Another 'Hitachi GST Travelstar 7K200 200gb' thread.

[pvdrewerken]

I did a search in this sub-section before I posted, but could not find an answer pertaining to what I wanted to know...

Basically, I am interested in upgrading my T60 2008-46G

With this Hitachi Drive: 200GB 7K200 @ amazon.co.jp

Here's the problem.

I am in Japan, and I want to know two (or three) things.

1) I've read lots of posts, but I want to be absolutely sure... is the drive shown on Amazon 100% gonna fit into my machine?

2) Is it a retail version, and does it include EZ gig or equivalent, as I don't want to fork out for a USB drive, and I want to keep my disk exactly the same (ie with system restore features available etc)

3) If not, what are the equivalents of EZ gig, as Amazon.co.jp does not seem to stock it

Many, many thanks in advance.


mod edit: shortened long URLs.

[erik]

they don't specify if it's OEM or retail.   either way, it won't include any backup/mirroring software.

the drive will fit your T60 with no problem.   all you need is a small philips screwdriver to install the drive.

i'm not sure what to recommend as an EZ gig equivalent.   i always build from scratch when installing a new drive.

がんばってね！

[pae77]

I used to use EZ gig with my T42p and I really liked the simplicity and reliability of it. At the moment, however, I don't have two matching hard drives for my new T61p, so for the time being I'm using Acronis True Image Home v. 11 to make drive image back ups of the entire C drive (both partitions) to a USB hard drive. Acronis TIH works very well for this. In the past I used it to clone a larger hard drive to a smaller hard drive in the ultra bay (something EZ Gig can't do, (with EZ Gig drives must be the same size or the target must be larger)), and it worked fine so I know it will work for your purposes. The only drawback is it is not quite as simple to configure and run as EZ Gig, but it is not very difficult. So, I would recommend it and you can download a free trial version from Acronis to test it out and see if it meets your needs.

[pvdrewerken]

Thanks for the replies so far.

Like I said, I don't really want to have to fork out money for an external USB drive, when EZGig will do everything I need for cheaper, but I can't get hold of it so I wondered if there were any equivalenets that you knew of.

If I can't find anything, then I guess external USB will have to be the way to go, but then I'll be paying for two drives...

hmmm.

[pae77]

I guess you didn't fully understand my previous post which perhaps was not very clear. Acronis TIH will allow you to clone your hard drive to another laptop hard drive placed in the ultrabay with the ultrabay hard drive adapter. There is no need to use a USB hard drive although they are also supported by Acronis TIH.

[DenTP4rm]

If I can't find anything, then I guess external USB will have to be the way to go, but then I'll be paying for two drives...

pvdrewerken
I don't know if Amazon in Japan handles them but there is an external USB drive enclosure for SATA drives made by Apricorn that works very well. Several who post on here have used it to upgrade as have I. See it at:
http://www.amazon.com/Apricorn-Drive-Up ... 655&sr=8-2

With the rebate it's only U.S. $30. Afterward you can put your old drive in it and use it for backups. I highly recommend them and you don't have to buy it with a drive, at least not here.
good luck,
DenTP4rm

[pae77]

Another option is to just get a "second hard drive adapter" for your Thinkpad. This enables you to install a second laptop hard drive in your machine in the ultrabay and thereby run two hard drives at once. This makes it very easy to back up and clone your current primary hard drive. These adapters are less than $50 from Lenovo. I consider it a pretty essential accessory.

In the event of needing to quickly restore your backup, all you have to do is physically install the back up laptop drive in the primary drive slot in the Thinkpad.

[Brownit]

I've also used the Apricorn backup enclosure, which comes with disk cloning software that works quite well. I upgraded from a 60 to 100 GB drive on a VAIO laptop. Apricorn's cloning software default is to replicate any hidden partitions on your existing drive into a proportional volume on the larger new drive, but the software will easily allow you to set the size of the recovery partition when cloning to prevent unnecessary loss of disk space.

[pvdrewerken]

Would any of these do the trick?

This one

That one

[pae77]

Hi,

Well, I can't read Japanese but the pictures looks more or less right. But you need to make sure to get the hard drive adapter made to fit in the Ultra Bay "Slim" and also be aware that there are two different versions of this adapter that fit into the ultra bay slim. There is a "PATA" (parallel ata) version and a "SATA" (serial ata) version. If you are using "SATA" hard drives, obviously you would need to get the "SATA" version of the adapter.

Before buying from Amazon, you should check out Lenovo. In the US at least, this is a very inexpensive accessory from them.

Anyway, once you have the proper adapter, you just slide out the optical drive in the ultra bay slim and put the hard drive in the adapter and then slide it into the empty ultra bay. Now you have two hard drives in your system with no cables. Very simple and elegant.

[RonS]

The linked Amazon pages are in Japanese which I can't read. Make sure the HD caddy supports SATA, or you won't be able to use your old hard drive in it. The previous generation caddy will fit in the T60 but it only supports ATA, not SATA.

Edit: look like pae77 beat me to it!

[pvdrewerken]

So I just took the plunge and ordered the drive.

Got the drive for £91.26 and the adapter for £26.72. I'm going to use my 'old drive' as a backup I guess.

I'll let you know how it goes when it arrives...

However, before I use it, I want to do a fresh install of XP. Does it matter which dirve I do the fresh reinstall on?

Any recommendations HD cloning software?

[pae77]

Funny, yesterday I just ordered one of those drives myself from Newegg.com for US$179.xx, (plus expensive shipping to Hawaii).

I'm planning on using Acronis True Image Home v. 11 to clone my current hard drive over to the new one. You can download a time limited fully functional free trial version from their website which will take care of your immediate need.

[ducky2802]

Just a thought in case you havent run two identical windows xp with the same serial: most likely you will end up crashing a least 1 of them.

This happened to me many times while I was testing my T60 to run various configurrations...booting off the primary drive when the old drive is installed in the ultrabay, and is an exact mirror of the primary drive caused one of the XPs to fail... especially if I dual booted.

So what I would do is burn everything you need on DVD as a backup, use acronis to ghost your hdd with the other one in the ultrabay, then boot up without the ultrabay hdd. Check all your files/programs to make sure they run properly, then reinsert your secondary drive (its hot swappable), and delete XP off the ultrabay drive.

[pae77]

You should never boot with both drives still installed in the system right after cloning the primary hard drive to a drive located in the ultrabay. Major problems result that have nothing to do with the serial number.

All you need to do to be safe after cloning is to either swap drives or not, but whatever you do, make sure that for the FIRST boot after cloning that only ONE drive is connected to the system. After that first boot, the computer can be booted with both drives in the system without causing problems.

[pvdrewerken]

Thanks for the heads-up on that one.

What I'd planned to do (seeming as though I have no USB HDD or DVD writer) was to

1) drag my data on to the new drive
2) Reinstall XP on the old drive
3) move the data back onto the old drive
4) Clone the old drive to the new

I'm assuming this'd work fine?

I'm hoping for the stuff to arrive by the end of the week...

[pae77]

That sounds like a viable plan.

I received my 200GB 7k200 from Newegg today (very fast order delivery) and it was a fairly simple matter to clone the original 100GB drive over to the new drive in the Serial Ultrabay HDD adapter using Acronis TIH and then install the new drive into the primary drive slot. I like the way they have changed the drive mounting hardware from the T4x series. It seems easier than it used to be, not that it was ever very hard. Never had so much free space before.

[treydur]

Last nite I cloned my 100GB 7K200 to a 200GB 7K200 using Acronis True Image v 11 on Vista Ultimate T61p

I actually did it through usb and encountered no difficulties. The only sligh annoyance is when you go from 100 to 200 the EISA partition goes from 6.x GB partition to an exact double. I am pretty sure that partition did not need to be 13GB, but I guess that is how Acronis does the math. I also have Acronis Disk Director Suit and Partition Magic and have considered 'shrinking' the partition or possible with Vista's own tools. Anyone tried this and have any comment ?

Other than that, once again Acronis proves itself to be hands down, the best utility for this type of thing I have ever seen.

That sounds like a viable plan.

I received my 200GB 7k200 from Newegg today (very fast order delivery) and it was a fairly simple matter to clone the original 100GB drive over to the new drive in the Serial Ultrabay HDD adapter using Acronis TIH and then install the new drive into the primary drive slot. I like the way they have changed the drive mounting hardware from the T4x series. It seems easier than it used to be, not that it was ever very hard. Never had so much free space before.

[pae77]

I avoided that increase in the service partition size by using the "manual" clone operation instead of "automatic." There is a selection box for that in one of the first windows in cloning setup process. The automatic method just grows all the partitions proportionally when cloning to a larger disk. The manual method allows you to resize both partitions. I just kept playing with it until I got the service partition down to approximately the same size as it originally was on the 100 GB disk and then increased the size of the SW-preload partition until it used up all the remaining unallocated space which was approximately 179 GB.

So I would recommend doing the operation again using the manual method, or you probably could use the disk director suite to resize the partitions after the fact.

[pvdrewerken]

So it's all arrived. I put the drive in the bay etc, and it Windows made the sound that it makes if you plug in a USB device; "New device found and ready to use." It didn't appear in My Computer.

So I restarted and pressed F6 to add a drive, but didn't have the drivers, and it took me to the BIOS. In here, I changed the Drive from ACHP(?) mode to Compatible mode (for SATA drives) but still Windows isn't picking it up. The BIOS recognises it as a200gb Hitachi HDD but nothing appeared in XP. So I went to Disk Management in Adminsitrative Tools and found out that I had to enable as a primary partition in there. I then formatted it from My Computer.

I'll let you know when the migration is complete!