Swap stock HDD from T400?

I am waiting currently for my T400 to be shipped at my place. But when I ordered my T400, I did not upgrade the stock HDD because I figured it would be cheaper to replace it myself considering how easy it is to swap the hard drive on these new T400's (plus I get to keep the stock HDD and use it as an external harddrive).

Anyways I have couple of questions on how to go about this. Here's my logic.

1) Make recovery discs right when start my laptop.
2) Turn off computer and swap HDD.
3) Turn on laptop and insert recovery disc number 1.

That should create an exact replica to the new HDD. But what happens to extra space on the new HDD (I plan on purchasing 320 gb+ HDD and the stock one has 120 gb HDD)? How can I extend the partitioning? I tried looking for the answer using the search function, but I couldn't find it. Is there an easier, more efficient way to swap the HDD and create an exact replica on the new HDD and utilize all the extra space?

Also, is there a recommended HDD that I should buy since (I think) the stock one has some kind of a shock resistant feature or some extra safety feature?

Does a clean install instead of cloning make that much of a difference if you have at least 4 GB RAM? I don't want to deal with downloading all the drivers and such compatible with Windows 7 on a clean install. I plan on just removing the programs I don't need such as norton and etc.

Thanks for all the help!

 

That method is exactly what you should do. I'm not sure if you need to do so, but if you need to extend the partition, you can simply do so within Windows, actually. Use the Disk Management tools in Windows' Administrative Tools.

No, I would actually suggest buying a hard drive without a shock protection feature, as the Active Protection System that all Thinkpads have consists of an accelerometer and chip on the motherboard that controls the hard drive and tells it when to park. The system is not hard drive dependent. Therefore, if you do end up getting a hard drive with shock protection (which is more expensive anyway), you will need to disable the APS on your Thinkpad, so the two systems don't conflict.

I'm not running on a clean install, and it's fine. Just uninstall the bloatware.

Hope that helped.

 

Cool thanks, repped!

Should I buy a 5400 RPM or 7200 RPM drive? I think a 7200 RPM HDD gets pretty warm and is nosier? Is there a sig. difference between the 5400 and 7200 RPM drives in terms of boot up speed, etc?

 

Also, is their an optimum size for a HDD? Is 500 gb too big and problemsome (consumes too much power maybe)? I am thinking 320 gb is an ideal size?

 

price per gigabyte is something you should consider, actually the 500 gb doesn't need more power than the 320 gig, since the data density on the platter is greater, that means the platter need to spin less to access the same amount of data. But in actuality the power use (well not anything you would notice) is pretty much the same. Right now the 320 gig price per gigabyte is the cheapest, well at least in Australia it is the same. But i think this is true for much North America too.

 

Thank you, glad it helped

Heat-wise, they're pretty much equal, so you shouldn't worry about that. 7200RPM drives as a whole do use more power than 5400RPM drives, but there is overlap between more power-hungry 5400RPM drives and more power-sipping 7200RPM drives. In my experience, I have found 7200RPM drives to be nosier (my Hitachi 7200RPM is louder than my T500's fan, in fact).

Probably the best size for the price is either 320GB or 500GB. Power usage is partially dependent on the number of platters, but I believe most 320GB and 500GB drives are 2-platter drives, so theoretically power usage should be the same.