Upgrade T61p HDD (Total Newbie)

Hi everyone, I'm looking to upgrade my now 2-years-old Thinkpad T61p 6460 A58 running on Vista Ultimate T9300, with a HDD of 160GB 7200rpm, to a Seagate Momentus 2.5 drive 500GB with 7200rpm.

I was going for the 720GB initially but those are out of stock in the UK unfortunately.

Anyway, I have read a few things here and there about the whole migration process and I have the BASIC idea, clone and swap, but some sites does mention a sentence or two about the problem with hidden partitions while cloning.

I was told that I have one when I bought the machine but I never bothered to check if it is there.

At the moment, I have the following partition config:
C: 39.0GB
D: 53.7GB
E: 56.2GB

For the new drive, I would hope to extend the C drive to 100GB at least and divide the rest among the other 2 partitions.

So, my question is, keeping the hidden partition that came with the machine, and the functionality of the Lenovo's ThinkVantage Recovery button(I have two back ups at the moment) Are there any problems with Simply cloning the drive using something like DiscWizard and at the same time stretching each non-hidden partitions to fill the new space?

As I said I'm a newbie at this, so any tutorials or suggestions that may prove useful for me is much appreciated.

Thank you very much.

Ising

 

Anybody out there?

 

That is the basic idea. Sorry' I've never done it (I automatically do a clean install of OS and wipe the other partitions).

 

I use the trial version of Acronis to accomplish this goal. You can make a copy of your present drive with it. As for the recovery partition, I DELETE IT immediately. It's XP and I am running Win7. I have no desire to ever restore XP to my system. The drivers and software are severely out of date in that partition.

 

ITS super easy, i upgrade my T60p few months ago. Download the Acronis sofftware or any cloning software. Miror the image of your old HDD to the new HDD. You will need a Harddrive enclosure, i recommend you buy the ThinkPad Serial ATA Hard Drive Bay Adapter, Here is the link:
Lenovo Support & downloads - ThinkPad Serial ATA Hard Drive Bay Adapter - Overview
i believe the parts number is 40Y8725, type this on ebay you can find some OEM model for about 20 dollars.
After you clone your HDD you just replace your old HDD with the new one.
You can follow the instruction of the video from lenovo website:
Lenovo Service and Support Training

Hope it helps!

 

I will also AVOID the seagate harddrive. IMO, they tend to be noiser than hitachi. I have two seagate 2.5" laptop harddrive and they all make clicking noise.

 

That was not my experience.

 

I bought the Seagate and returned it because it was so noisy. I ended up going with WD. I have the 640 GB 5400 rpm version, and it is quiet without the frequent clicking. I thought the Seagate was defective unitl Newegg sent a replacement that made the same noises.

 

I dont know Zaz....Seagate lost a noise patent fight with the Japanese.

I have a T61p running windows 7. It's fine to delete the partitions. I put several new systems on and never missed the partitions. It's even better not to put them on in the first place.

Renee

 

Thanks For the Reply Renee,

I can't find the hidden partition, how do I delete it?

 

Thanks dude, can you tell me how I can delete that partition?

 

Thanks for replying, is this an ultra bay you are talking about? I haven't considered this option so far because I thought the 15 inch would look even more bulky with the bay and it wouldn't be very portable, as I carry it to College almost everyday, Or am I mistaken here?

 

hmm.. I am getting similar opinions from my colleagues too, are there any other good brands like Hitachi that has 7200 rpm drives I wonder? I only want the 7200 because my current drive has it and I don't want to see things slowing down.

 

I formatted the entire drive combining all of the partitions.

 

Yes you are right about the weight. The ultra bay hard drive adaptor + an extra 2.5" HDD makes the laptop heavier(0.25lbs). But since you need a hard drive enclosure for your new HDD during data transfer from your old HDD, why not buy the ultra bay adaptor and you can use it to hold your old HDD. Just my two cents!

About the hitachi HDD, they do have the 7200RPM 500GB 2.5" HDD that goes into your T61. About the same price as seagate. Again, just my two cents!
Thats 4 cents total for my contribution!

 

You take the DVD-RW drive out, and this adapter (with your hard drive) is designed to go into the empty space where the DVD-RW drive used to be. There is no extra bulk.

 

I only stated my my experience with Seagate drives and I don't know that my opinion is a debatable point. I've had several of them and have not found them to be any noisier than any other drive. The noisiest drive I've come across of late is the WD 640GB 5400RPM. You could even hear it in my R60, which because the drive sits within the frame on the R60, tends to dampen noise.

I also dislike it when people make blanket statements like all X are bad or all Y are good because I think it's generally misinformed.

 

Amazing! Just goes to show how different two peoples experiences can be with the same hardware. Both Seagate and WD in this case. The WD 640 that I have in my T61P is virtually silent, and makes very little noise even when being taxed. To the OP, I hope you have gleaned from all this that your HD choice is basically a crap shoot. Buy what you like, and hope it lives up to YOUR standards. Good night all.