upgrading my thinkpad t61?

I want to upgrade some stuff in my thinkpad, but have a few questions

1. i dont have a dvd burner in my thinkpads optical drive. how much would a replacement drive cost? and where would i get that from?

2. RAM- i have 2 gigs right now. 4 gigs would be overkill, so i was thinking 3. Does anyone know what brand/type a thinkpad t61s ram is so i can just get the same 2 gig stick?

3. pci- i have a pci card slot or w/e on the side of my laptop. is there any peripherals i can get that use that? its just takin up space so i figure hey, why not make use of it.

4. harddrive- right now i have a 100 gig hdd. not a lot of space left on it. i want to get a new harddrive, but have questions about that too.

1. i have a partition on this harddrive for the oem or whatever. does anyone know how i can burn the oem to a bunch of data cds so i can just replace the harddrives thta way?

2. ive seen a seagate 250 gb 5400 rpm harddrive for 130 bucks. its more friendly to my wallet, so im considering buying it. the only problem is, i do a lot of video editing, which includes capturing raw avi footage or capturing with huffyuv codec. anyways, i read on this site that a 5400 rpm hdd is faster than a 100 gig 7200 hdd because of higher date density. is this true?

sorry for all the questions. im just tryin to get the research down before i frankenstein this baby up.

 

1) You are going to have to order this part through IBM/Lenovo, cause of the ultrabay adaptor.
2) The T61 uses PC5300 667Mhz DDR2 sodimm memory.
3) You can use the turbo memory module, which is useless, or a bluetooth card.
4) Any SATA 2.5" mobile harddrive will fit except for the Hitachi 5k500 series.
I recommend the Samsung or WD 320gb 5400rpm drive, or the Hitachi 200Gb 7200rpm drive. All three drives mentioned are identical in speed.

1a) You are going to need something like Norton Ghost or Acronis data imaging.
This way you can backup all of the install files on a separate computer, or dvd's for operating system reinstall.
2a) Yes, a 250gb 5400rpm drive is slightly faster than a 100gb 7200rpm drive.
I recommend getting a 320gb drive, so you get maximum performance for video editing.

I hope this helps,

K-TRON

 

For brand of RAM CPU-Z or SiSoft might be able to tell you what brand of RAM you have. But I would recommend getting a screw driver and do a physical inspection. I would not pay much more for the same brand. I would go buy price you can get good RAM at a good price. Identical sticks is overrated and with a 1GB and 2GB you want be matching anyway. I favor 320GB HDD more space same speed.