On reviving an old Lenovo 3000 series laptop...

Hi! I plan to give one of my old (around 3+ yrs) laptop to my nephew. But before I do so, I plan to upgrade the 160gb HDD to a 500gb one.

Now I am faced with 2 problems:

1. Will the laptop recognize 500gb?

2. Hidden partition and bios loop.
I've done some preliminary searches and came across 2 links that "discourage" the basic upgrade approach.

hxxp://www.fixya.com/support/t672975-hard_drive_upgrade_process_lenovo_3000

hxxp://forums.lenovo.com/t5/Lenovo-3000-and-Value-line/How-to-Upgrade-Hard-Disk-on-Lenovo-3000V100-Copying-the-IBM/td-p/26874

Basically, they say that the hidden (recovery) partition must be carried over as well and replicated to the letter to avoid a bios loop or boot failure. One thing I've noticed, though, is that these users tried to copy their previous C:\ drive.

Will it be a different scenario if I start out fresh or do a fresh format? Or is that recovery partition really mandatory?

Thanks!

 

Yes it should use any 9.5mm 2.5" SATA drive.

I prefer the recovery partition. It reinstalls all original content and activates Windows, albeit a bit slower.

 

Can I do without it, though? Meaning to say, can Windows (and the system in general) do fine without it?

 

1- get a copy of Windows. If the COA in your laptop is for Vista than get a Vista CD. If the COA is for XP than get and XP CD.

2- Download the drivers from lenovo website and copy them on a USB stick or burn them into a CD.

3- Install the 500GB harddrive.

4- Install windows.

5- Install the drivers.

I personally like to have several partitions in my harddrive, so I can keep windows and my documents in two different partition. Like that if I have to re-install windows I know that my files won't be deleted.

What model do you have? the c200 maybe? if so the laptop CPU can be easily upgraded to one of the following CPUs: T2300, T2400, T2500, T2600, T5200, T5500, T5600, T7200, T7400, T7600 plus a few pentium dual core such as the T2050 and T2060. If you could you should try the T7200. The best place to grab one is ebay.

Edit:
Installing windows from a CD or DVD is better because non of the bloatware is installed.

 

Yes you can do without your recovery partition. Make sure your COA is INTACT before you do anything like formatting your drive and back up your data. No sense is wiping out anything if you can't activate Windows.

Honestly Lenovo doesn't have a significant amount of bloatware, but I have never owned their consumer models (3000, IdeaPad, Edge, etc). My Z61t's had no recovery partition when I bought them and had a generic Windows installed. I ordered the discs from IBM and reimaged them and it went from 33 running processes to 51. Even with a T7200 + 2 GB RAM it was actually fine. After fine tuning the stock image I got it down to 41, and honestly I couldn't tell the difference from the clean install to my stripped down factory image WHILE still keeping Lenovo's own ThinkVantage software running. Just another perspective.

 

Ah. In my case, however, the laptop came with no OS when purchased... so there's no certificate of authenticity, per se. Had to use my old XP Pro to install (genuine Windows software, of course). I should be ok then?

 

There should be a sticker on the bottom with a COA, that came with the machine unless it was ripped off or rubbed off. If your case then just reinstall XP with an OEM disc.

 

yes there should be a sticker. On the C200 and N200 its on the bottom right side of the laptop's base.

 

I have a t7200 that I could sell for cheap...