A21P Hard Drive Upgrade

Message

taichi · #1 Post by **taichi** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:28 am

I entertained the notion that I could install a 7200 RPM drive in my A21P, but a tech at IBM said the motherboard will only recognize a 5400 drive of 40 or 48 GB. This is puzzling given the number of sites advertising 7200 RPM drives of larger sizes for the A21P.

Anybody have any success installing these drives on this machine?

Thanks,

Taichi

ajkula66 · #2 Post by **ajkula66** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 1:38 am

welcome to the forum, first of all!

A21p had a 5400rpm drive to begin with, usually 32Gb. And don't worry about a thing, it will recognize a 7200rpm drive.

taichi · #3 Post by **taichi** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:05 am

What's odd is that the tech at IBM was ADAMANT that the machine was capped at 5400 RPM 40 GB. And she was insulted by my scepticism and request to speak with a higher level tech. She kept reading the limitations from some spec sheet.

Strange.

What make would be best? Hitachi or Seagate or Fujitsu?

Also I'm bewildered by ATA versus Parallel. Do you have any exact model numbers for 60 or 80 or 100 GB 7200s?

Thanks

sjthinkpader · #4 Post by **sjthinkpader** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 2:32 am

Fujitsu is the most reliable, then followed by Hitachi, then Toshiba. No experience with Seagate.

fasterbybike · #5 Post by **fasterbybike** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 8:05 am

I've had good luck with Hitachi Travelstars.
Their 7k100 series are quiet and run fairly cool.
7200rpm is also nice and fast

ajkula66 · #6 Post by **ajkula66** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 10:25 am

If you're going to keep the machine, get a Seagate drive. Little more money, but 5-year warranty that is hard to beat. They are in all of my "for keeps" ThinkPads apart from 701C...

Just my $0.02...

taichi · #7 Post by **taichi** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:54 pm

Could anyone give a specific model number for a 7200 RPM Hitachi or a Seagate that will work with the A21P? Either a 60, 80, or a 100 GB drive.

Also, do they come ready to slip into the Thinkpad, or do they need to be installed into a device or carrier (caddy?) first. The simpler the better.

Odd about the insistence of the IBM tech, don't you think?

Thanks!
Taichi
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ajkula66 · #8 Post by **ajkula66** » Wed Feb 13, 2008 12:59 pm

Instead of throwing models around: ANY non-SATA HDD will work. Period. So you're looking for PATA or IDE HDDs.

You will need to install it in the caddy that you have the old HDD in.

taichi · #9 Post by **taichi** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 4:40 am

[quote="ajkula66"]Instead of throwing models around: ANY non-SATA HDD will work. Period. So you're looking for PATA or IDE HDDs.

You will need to install it in the caddy that you have the old HDD in.[/quote]

So there is no limitation on the size of the drive? IBM said 40-48 GB is the max the A21P can handle.
Taichi

fasterbybike · #10 Post by **fasterbybike** » Thu Feb 14, 2008 5:07 am

My A21P is quite happy with an 80GB.

JesseKnows · #11 Post by **JesseKnows** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 9:00 am

taichi wrote:So there is no limitation on the size of the drive? IBM said 40-48 GB is the max the A21P can handle.

You probably can't go above 137GB because of no 48-bit LBA support. Other than that, no limit.

On a slight tangent, I found that to ghost a drive to use in TP (seen it with 42, 30 and A21) I need to have the target drive in the TP and copy from the old drive using USB. Ghosting in a different computer produced a non-booting HDD. Most likely something with the geometry isn't quite compatible, at least with my desktop.

sjthinkpader · #12 Post by **sjthinkpader** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 1:05 pm

Apricorn EZGIG II doesn't have this limitation. You can place the source in the HDD slot, drive tray, USB or their PCMCIA cable. It places a small pre-boot file on the source drive that will disappear once the source drive will be booted again.

Brad · #13 Post by **Brad** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 2:30 pm

I am happy to say there is no limitation of hard drive size that I have come across. I have used a 160gb drive with no complaints.

So any PATA or IDE (non-SATA) will work in your A21p. I have several A2x series ThinkPads running several sizes and brands and all have had no trouble whatsoever dispite the misinformation the IBM tech told you.

Brad

BillG · #14 Post by **BillG** » Sat Mar 01, 2008 6:39 pm

Install an Hitachi TravelStar 7K100 drive. It's presently the fastest laptop drive you can buy, and because Windows is so disk intensive it's the next best thing to getting a faster processor.

As I recall, the 7K100 is about 3x faster than the drive your ThinkPad came with and you'll see the increase immediately. I've got one in my 850MHz 600X and it performs like demon.

You'll think you've got a new machine. The model number for a 100G drive is HTS721010G9AT00.

Also, see this thread:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 581#305581