New Hard drive for T400

Hi guys,

I'm planning to replace my current hard drive in my T400 with a new one, and was wondering, are there any specific makes and models of hard drives out there that are especially compatible with the T400 thinkpads? Or can I get pretty much any laptop hard drive to swap in.

Thanks for your help.

 

AFAIK you can get any hard drive provided it is SATA and 2.5 type.

 

Any SATA should do. I might suggest a SSD for the boot drive for performance and picking up the UltraBay for your current drive in place of the optical drive.

 

^ Yeppers. I agree with this!

 

any sata hdd 2.5 inch and 9.5 mm in thickness.

 

You really should get an SSD. Lenovo's anti-shock utility only works with their drives, but others (such as Western Digital) have built-in anti-shock.

 

Lenovo anti shock software works with lot of drives, but not all the drives from the market is capable of flushing the memory before parking the drive. I think the drive's own anti-shock gets disabled when there is the motherboard accelerometer is working (could be wrong on this, have to look into it further).

Nearly all mine Thinkpads use aftermarket hdd, they all work great, and i have a couple of my laptop with the hdd working and all worked to spec.

But SSD is the future.

 

I think that it depends on what the OP's space requirements really are. Choosing a SSD right now is pretty much a speed vs. capacity decision as it goes. Since my Thinkpad is my primary system I have a lot of stuff loaded on it as well as all of my digital media... space is a primary concern. That and the prices of SSDs that suit my storage needs are completely out of reach.

This can be rectified by using a smaller SSD in the primary bay as your OS/application drive, and a larger HDD in your Ultrabay, if you decide to go that route. As I'm a major space hog this really doesn't work for me and I'll be sticking with HDDs for the foreseeable future.

So, figure out what your budget is. If a HDD is what would suit your needs best, I'd highly recommend the 500GB Hitachi 7K500. It's fast for what it is and provides ample space.