X31 (2672) Drive upgrade - limitations, techniques?

[elray]

Thinking that I'll want to upgrade the 4200/40g drive to something much larger, i.e. 160G or 250G (WD Scorpio).

Has anyone here been so bold, or are there known drive-size limits?

Can I do this with just a USB clamshell, but no X3 slice or XP distribution?

(Do I sound dangerous yet?)

[slagmi]

I presently have an X31 with a 120Gb drive installed successfully. I'm not sure if drives larger than 137Gb detect or not. Please post if you try!

[bobbarker]

I just did an upgrade from the stock 40GB to an 80GB WD Scorpio, not huge, but using a USB caddy should work flawlessly with linux and the dd command. Just use a standard 2.5" hard disk that is IDE (not SATA).

edit:
If you're going to end up using Windows XP, take a look at "DriveImage XML." (http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm) It's a free harddisk imaging program. I've used that to upgrade disks in XP before.

[elray]

Apparently several other users have had success with 160G drives:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... ight=160gb
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... ight=160gb
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... ight=160gb

So I think I'll be buying the WD 160GB at Best Buy "on sale through 2/23" at $75+tax:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp ... 8286608739

[mpcook]

I used an Acorn enclosure which came with software and worked very well. If you want the restore partition to be as original, you have to take extra steps. If you search my posts on this board, you will find a step by step procedure that worked for me. This was a couple years ago.

Mike

[elray]

So I think I'll be buying the WD 160GB at Best Buy "on sale through 2/23" at $75+tax:

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp ... 8286608739

I ended up buying a Seagate 160G which is on "clearance". As they say, "YMMV". I paid $52.99. Others have reported $27.99. Other stores out of stock here were $42.99.

SKU # 8004465.

[solitude]

There is no limit, any 137GB limit will be due to LBA48 not being enabled in windows.

Any 2.5" IDE (PATA) drive will work.