Replacing 5200 RPM HD with 7200

Can anyone think of a reason why I cannot replace the existing 5200 RPM drive in my T400 with something around the same size running at 7200?

I'll use Casper to clone the existing drive onto the new one, using the Ultrabay carrier for the destination drive. I'll then use the cloned drive for my new hard drive and the 5200 drive for doing back-ups. Does the computer or OS care how fast the drive is spinning? I'm thinking it would be no more difficult to do than if I were putting in an SSD (wish I could afford it), but I could easily be missing something here. Can anyone think of any possible problem?

 

No, as long as its a SATA drive

 

SSDs and HDDs are treated in nearly the same way by the OS, and they are easily interchangeable. So no, you shouldn't have any issues with installing a faster 7200RPM drive to replace your current 5400RPM drive.

There are only a few things you need to be aware of when buying a compatible drive:
A) Interface: the vast majority of drives are SATA, and this is what you need
B) 2.5" or 3.5": the former is for notebooks, the latter is for desktops
C) Drive Height: most 2.5" drives are 9.5mm, and this is what will fit in most laptops. Some high-capacity drives are 12.5mm, and this will not fit in a T400.
D) Shock Protection: if a drive has a built-in sensor that will park the HDD when it detects a fall, you should disable the Thinkpad Active Protection System (APS), which does the same thing.

Other than that, the rest of the variables are performance-related.

 

As the others said, it'll work fine. I upgraded my T400 from a 250 GB 5400 rpm drive to a 500 GB 7200 rpm drive with no trouble. I cloned my old drive onto the new one, swapped them, and everything just worked.

 

Thanks everyone, especially MidnightSun for the tips on height and shock protection. I can imagine the height limitation is easily overlooked when buying a new 2.5" drive.

 

What's more noisy?

 

What? I replaced when my then E6410 from a 5400rpm HDD to a Seagate MomentusXT 7200 rpm notebook drive, I didn't notice an increase in noise.

One thing to consider when reinstalling the OS is the SATA mode, ATA/IDE mode vs AHCI. If you are installing Vista/7 AHCI is preferred, XP ATA/IDE mode is easier to deal with.

 

Having a 7200 RPM hard drive makes me wish for a 5400 RPM hard drive instead. There is are differences in noise and power consumption. Of course the noise isn't bothersome, but the idea of a quieter laptop is cool. But whereas 5400 RPM hard drives inside the casing of a notebook sound almost noiseless, you always hear the whoosh of a 7200 RPM hard drive. Seagate momentus 7200.3 btw.

 

I would not waste your money on a 7200, louder and not much faster.

There are some outstanding deals on SSD if you don't need to large.

$124 for 128GB Buy.com - Kingston 128GB SSDNow V Series SATA II 2.5" Solid State Drive
$99 for 64GB Micro Center - Micro Center 64GB SATA II 3.0Gb/s 2.5" G2 Series Solid State Drive (SSD) With SandForce 1222 Controller 122663

There was a Mushkin 256GB for $200 shipped a day or two ago - keep your eyes peeled. Nothing is like having an SSD.

 

It has been shown that 7200 rpm vs 5400 rpm hardly has an effect on battery life. Noise is something else but it is subjective. I am not really bothered by it, but I can barely hear a difference between my Scorpio Blue 640 GB and my MomentusXT 7200 rpm HDD.

Not everyone needs an SSD, and there are downfalls of SSDs as well.

 

I replaced 5400 RPM drive 8 mb cache Sata 150 with Seagate Momentus 7200.4 16mb cache Sata 300, my battery life went up,,,the noise level was almost the same ,very low, the performance increase was quite noticeable, 25% increase in performance, loading,startup, shut down ect. Momentus is very fast drive for notebooks, Scorpio Black is fast as well.
Cheers
3Fees

 

> Not everyone needs an SSD, and there are downfalls of SSDs as well.

Other than price, what drawbacks are there?

Although they are dropping in price very rapidly, even with the deals noted earlier they are still about five times more expensive than a conventional (new) HD for the same capacity. I've been thinking they are perfect for the application however - didn't know of any drawbacks.

 

if the SSD fails, it is almost impossible to recover the data. While, the platter hdd may allow data to be recovered in some circumstances. SSD is also not suitable for servers, where read and write cycles are high, which may lead to premature failure of SSD.

 

Thanks for pointing these things out.