T42 replacement hard drive suggestions, please?

[PilotDave]

Dear Forum Friends,

I have throughly enjoyed my first ThinkPad, a T42 2378EYU built in Aug of 2004. I would like to do a clean install of the operating system again to freshen its speed and avoid some OS crashes which opens a good opportunity to put in a new HD.

Lenovo.com does not list any available HDs for that machine type. The original HD is a: 09N4278 60GB 7200RPM HDD CTO. From a search for that part number, it looks like a 2.5" ATA drive.

Could you please verify which HD type I need and educate me on the maximum capacity the machine can support and a good vendor for a new HD? Thank you!

I hope to continue enjoying this screen format for a while until I have to change to the new wide format style.

Dave

[GomJabbar]

Any 2.5" PATA drive will work. Don't buy a SATA drive as it will not.

I have used Hitachi, Fujitsu, Samsung, and Western Digital hard drives in my family's T42's. Only the Western Digital had a failure after a bit over a year. The other drives still work. My Hitachi drive is 7,200 rpm and the others 5,400 rpm. Capacities range from 40 GB to 250 GB.

[RealBlackStuff]

The max. size for a 2.5" ATA/PATA/IDE (all the same) drive is 320GB, a Western Digital drive.
Highly recommended and quite popular is the 160GB Samsung HM160HC.
Newegg is a very reliable supplier: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822152110

[lukee]

Samsung HM160HC is pretty fast, cool and quiet but after almost two years of using and 1200 run hours I got two bad sectors, which were reallocated to a spare area - I have to say, that my ThinkPad getting best care and HD APS is always on in my system. Other hand, I've Hitachi Travelstar 7k100 which is slower than HM160HC if comparing transfer speeds but have better access times and this HDD is fully healthy even after 4 years of using. I would consider Hitachi 5k160 if you are OK with 160 GB.

[PilotDave]

Thank you very much, everyone, for the helpful suggestions!

I did purchase a 320 GB Western Digital Scorpio Blue Hard Drive (WD3200BEVE 320GB 5400RPM 2.5" PATA Hard Drive) from NewEgg.com.

I had created the IBM Rescue and Recovery with Rapid Restore CD and the six IBM Product Recovery CDs from my old hard drive using the Access IBM Create Recovery Disks utility. I ran all seven restoration and recovery CDs as prompted with the new HD installed. The R&R program appears to have formatted the new hard drive. Everything seems to have worked perfectly; however, ...

the new HD now boots ONLY to the IBM Rescue and Recovery program and I have found NO way to access Windows XP. Is there some trick to getting the machine to boot properly to the Operating System, please? Yes, I had removed the R&R disk from the CD-ROM.

Thank you!

[Harryc]

Select restore to factory contents from the recovery prompt. You still have not installed the OS.

[Neil]

Boot into rescue and recovery and choose the "restore to factory" option. It will then install XP for you.

EDIT: So Harry was just a little quicker...