T400 ultrabay hdd. I have 3 hdds I can choose from.

[amy55407]

I just received a refurbished T400 I purchased on ebay. So far I really like it. It's got the high nit screen which is like "night and day" compared to my T60 (the T60 being night). It came with a Samsung 128 gb SSD which with Lenovo stuff and some of my larger application is already about 1/2 full. I was about to pull the SSD and put in a 7200 rpm hdd when I learned I can add a second hard drive in an ultrabay adapter. From what I understand it will be hot swappable with the dvd drive.

I have 3 drives I could use and I'm not sure if one would be preferable over the others in this case. I've got two 320 gb WD Scorpio drives, one blue (5400 rpm) and one black (7200 rpm). I've got the blue in my T60 and it seemed kind of funky until I realized indexing was happening at startup (I think that's what was going on). I also have a 200 gb 7200 rpm Hitachi Travelstar. I'm not really concerned about the size difference between the Hitachi and the WDs. The combination of the SSD and any of these drives should be enough space for now. I'm not too concerned about power consumption. I'm used to my T60's old battery running out in less than an hour and I mostly use it plugged in.

Any recommendations? Thanks.

[ausmike]

Hi Amy..
I would invest in a 2nd hd bay ... and then you do tests yourself.

I would remove SSD at this stage ..... and use the 2nd hard drive bay ( maybe with the 7200rpm drive) and see the speeds etc ,,,,

i/We have always got our 2nd HD adaptors from link above ( on this forum) they all worked nicely and havnt have any problems yet on any of T & W etc series....

Hope this helps
Mike

[amy55407]

Thanks Mike. I looked at the website above but didn't see an ultrabay adapter for the T400, just the caddy.

[ausmike]

Not sure WHICH model you have ......

..... PM sent to user ..

[LegendaryKA8]

You can find the Ultrabay adapters on Feebay, or preferably on the Marketplace forum here. You can find third-party adpaters for about $20, or genuine OEM ones for about $50... I sprung the extra cash for the OEM. To keep the drive as safe as possible I highly recommend getting an extra caddy so the bottom of the drive doesn't sit on the bare metal floorplate of the adapter. As it is I don't feel too safe with carting the Ultrabay HDD outside of the notebook for extended periods of time, but I feel safe enough to set it aside if I have to swap to my optical drive when I'm at a desk.

An Ultrabay drive works just like an external hard drive and is hot swappable, however I usually have to pop the eject lever and push it back in a second time when swapping to my HDD from my optical drive. As I have my HDD in about 90% of the time I don't have much of an issue with doing this. Power consumption is negligible; in fact I think that you'll use less power with a typical SATA HDD than you will with a spinning optical drive.

I'm running a Travelstar 7K500(500GB, 7200RPM; regarded as about the fastest notebook HDD you can get) primary drive in my T400, with a WD Scorpio Blue(640GB, 5400RPM) in the Ultrabay. I have massive storage needs as I hold lots of movies, games, and music as well as backups and archives from previous computers; the T400 is my primary computer. While the slower 640GB HDD is pretty slow, for some reason file transfers seem faster than to my external 320GB, 7200RPM external drive. I get about 25-30MB/sec to the external, and about 60-70MB/sec to the internal. These aren't benchmarks but transferring large amounts of files(10-30GB) at once. YMMV with this, but those are my numbers.

What are you planning on using your second hard drive for? I would personally put your OS and all your applications on the SSD, and use the HDD for storage of documents and media. The 7200RPM HDDs would be faster, but still not as fast as the SSD. My recommendation is to use the 7200RPM, 320GB HDD as greater density and faster rotational speed would make it the fastest drive out of what you have. If you're using it to store documents and possibly movies or music it won't make much of a difference, but transferring files to it from the SSD will be faster.

[Tony Chan]

.. While the slower 640GB HDD is pretty slow, for some reason file transfers seem faster than to my external 320GB, 7200RPM external drive. I get about 25-30MB/sec to the external, and about 60-70MB/sec to the internal. ..

I'm guessing you are using external USB enclourse for external HD, which means the bottleneck is the USB2 that requires constant cpu attention whole time during the file transfer, which slows down the copying process. The ultrabay is really just another ( hot swappable ) "internal" SATA connector that uses motherboard bus i.e. much faster and demands a lot less cpu during the transfer.

[LegendaryKA8]

I'm guessing you are using external USB enclourse for external HD, which means the bottleneck is the USB2 that requires constant cpu attention whole time during the file transfer, which slows down the copying process. The ultrabay is really just another ( hot swappable ) "internal" SATA connector that uses motherboard bus i.e. much faster and demands a lot less cpu during the transfer.

This is very true, and one of the reasons I chose an Ultrabay HDD instead of simply getting another USB 2.0 external. They're just too slow for the large file transfers I do on a regular basis.

[amy55407]

Thanks for all the info. I don't do things like gaming but I often have multiple programs open and in use at once, dreamweaver, photoshop, excel, access, spss, etc. and things often get hung up. I'm picking up an hdd adapter and the little cage the drive sits in on fleabay. I'll just use the drive externally until the parts arrive and then put the Scorpio Black in it.

[carthikv12]

I have a T61p... i'd like to use the ultrabay to connect my 200gb 7200 rpm hitachi travelstar... are the ultrabays compatible with 7200 rpm drives?? IF they are I'd definitely want to get one!

So, where can i get an original part that holds the drive securely even after its removed? I'm sorry but i'm a bit confused about whats being called an adapter and a caddy? are they 2 different parts?? I'd rather save up and get original parts so as to not jeopardize the hard drive... so if you guys could point out where I can buy the ultrabay adapter (and?) caddy I would greatly appreciate it!

Thanks!

[ausmike]

@cart* > the "speed" or RPM of drive dont matter , just about any speed - 4200, 5400 OR 7200rpm will work in ULTRABAY - most important thing is that its a 'normal height' 2.5iche high drive!!!
****
ADAPTOR = for ultrabay ( secondary drive)
CADDY = for main drive bay - normally OS is installed on this drive
*****

NOTE::: The one i got and using = the first item - FRU 26R9246
(this link below also lists items that are 'compatable' but wont necessarly worj in older T60 series machines eg Adaptor III = for the newer t400 series machines..


For all those pple who need ADAPTOR for other SYSTEMS ,,, here it is > you can order it direct from IBM/Lenovo with these numbers:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-68421

Above link also has a link for INSTRUCTIONS of how to remove/install new HD in MAIN DRIVE BAY ,,,,, which might be helpfull for people who have not dont this before ........

its easy AS ABC....

[carthikv12]

Thanks a ton mike... i'm all clear now. will order the adapter and a caddy to secure drive in it better soon...