Upgrading T500 320gb 5400rpm to 320gb 7200rpm. Any difference?

I'm expecting my T500 in a couple of days. It comes with a 320gb 5400rpm.

Should I upgrade to 320gb 7200rpm? Will it make a difference?

 

Indeed it will. Programs will load faster, files will load faster and save faster, your computer will boot faster... most often, the hard drive is the bottleneck of a computer's performance, especially with laptops. People up and up the CPU speeds thinking it will make the computer faster... but it's the hard drive they should be upgrading.

 

huge difference, hdd performance is decided by spindle speed, 7200 is 1/3 of increase from 5400. also 7200 hd is 16mb cache compared to 8 mb cache of 5400.

 

Thanks for the reply. Which model and brand should I buy?

 

hitachi or seagate, hard drives is like generic drugs, you cant go wrong with either brand, hitachi is my favorite.

 

If you want to use your old drive in the Ultrabay buying the Lenovo 320 GB 7200 rpm drive gets you an extra caddy so you can use the new drive directly without unscrewing and using the caddy from the old drive.

If you intend to use the old drive in a USB enclosure you can buy any brand and just transfer the caddy from the old drive.

ps You CAN use the old drive without caddy in the Ultrabay adapter but it's a loose fit and not a good solution if you intend to put the adapter in your case and carry it around with you.

pps You can buy an extra caddy here.

 

My favorite is WD Scoprio Black 320gb, it´s one of the fastest NB HDD´s. Hitachi drives ale louder.
my original 160gb 7200rpm hitachi drive in T500 is the noisiest part of my laptop.

 

What's the difference b/w WD Scoprio Black 320gb with freefall sensor and the one without?

 

Free-fall sensor - As an added layer of protection, if the drive (or the system it's in) is dropped while in use, WD's free-fall sensor detects that the drive is falling and, in less than 200 milliseconds, parks the head to help prevent damage and data loss.

it protects your hard drive if your laptop fall to the ground.

 

How do I achieve this? This is my first Lenovo Laptop, so I don't have much experience with this

Thanks for all your help!!

 

It depends what country you are in. in US this is the drive.

 

I'm planning to buy the WD Scorpion Black 320gb 7200rpm. Will I be able to do the same.

I live in UK

 

Free fall drives are unnecessary on ThinkPads. The Active Protection System (APS) takes care of this for you and you don't need the redundancy.


One other option. If you don't require 640GB of space, I would suggest a hybrid solution. Buy a small (<=64GB) SSD of good quality for your OS and use the 320GB 5400RPM drive for data storage. An SSD will be an order of magnitude faster than a 7200RPM drive in terms of latency (the only real difference between a 5400RPM drive). Most 5400 RPM drives are 15-18ms, most 7200RPM drives are 11-14ms, and most good SSDs are <0.5ms.


I would suggest getting any Samsung SSD, the Intel x-25m, or the OCZ vertex. All of these are superb options and will far outperform any HDD as an OS drive. This $133 drive from Geeks.com is the 64GB 2.5" version of the same SSD that Lenovo sells, and is a solid (and affordable) option.

 

Thanks for this advice. I'll like to go for an SSD.

Where will I put the SSD? Is it in the Ultrabay or swap the 320gb 5400?

Will the 320gb 5400 be part of my internal drive on the laptop?

 

You would swap what you have now with the SSD, and take the drive you have now and put it in the ultrabay adapter, at least thats what makes sense to me.

 

You can place the SSD in either the 2.5" HDD bay, or the UltraBay.

I would generally recommend placing the SSD in the 2.5" bay and installing your OS to the SSD. This way, you can pull the 320GB drive from the UltraBay and swap in the optical drive on the odd occasion that you need it.

You can use the 320GB 5400 RPM drive as an alternate boot device if desired (e.g. run Windows 7 on the SSD, and keep the Lenovo Vista preload on the HDD). However, I would generally recommend just using one big partition for the 320GB drive (298GB in reality) and setting it as drive D: or E:. You can then use it for video, music, photos, and other large files (generally accessed in large chunks, and with little to no effect from latency).

You should install the OS and ALL of your applications to the SSD. You should also leave the pagefile and any other cache type files on the SSD as well.

 

I live in uk and it'll cost me around £120 for a 64gb ssd.

I'm thinking whether it really worth it.

Will they be a huge difference? Not many people on this forum are using it.

Please convince me, i'm confuse

 

Read the SSD Effects link in my signature. I explore in detail the transition from a 320GB 5400 RPM HDD to an SSD. The drive I have is a Samsung 1.8" SLC drive, but the 2.5" MLC drive should perform comparably.

If you can't afford the upgrade now, just wait a few months for the prices to drop and stick it out with the 5400 RPM drive. A 7200RPM drive will only be marginally faster than a 5400RPM drive so you don't gain much. Conversely, a good SSD can make a computer feel MUCH faster.

 

Thanks Jonlumpkin for your advise and the awareness of SSD.

I ordered the 64GB SSD from the link you gave me. I may get it a weeks time b/c of International Shipping. Then, I'll need your help on setting up and running Vista X64. I'll expecting my T500 by Saturday 16 May.

I really grateful. And Thanks for everyone of this forum.

Another question, Should I upgrade to Vista X64 or Windows 7 X64? I've access to both OS Softwares

 

As of right now, I would suggest the Vista x64 operating system. Even though most people have had few issues with Windows 7 and driver support, Vista drivers are more mature, and the general experience will be smoother and less troublesome. Plus, you won't have to do a reformat next year when the RC expires.

Also, switchable graphics is only available on Vista as of right now, so if that feature is valuable to you, you should definitely install Vista.

 

Hi All,

If I need to use the T500 Ultrabay for the 320gb 5400rpm, Do I need to buy a caddy to support it or will it just fit?

 

Hummm, question.

I was wondering what this ultrabay is. I've tried googling it but it but can't really figure out if it's a completely different entity from where you insert the SSD.

Reason being, I was planning on buying a SSD for my 320g 7200rpm T500 come Windows 7 release but I was assuming that I would be swapping out the harddrive for it. Does this mean there's way to use both of them in my machine?

 

That's right, try & read the previous post on this thread.

Jonlumpkin open my eye to this new world. I'm trying to understanding more about this.

I hope Jon and other helper people will shed more light on this

 

The Ultrabay is where your DVD unit sits. You can hotswap this unit out and insert a number of accessories that Lenovo provides. One is a second battery, another one is a SATA disk adapter.

chukwe please reread my entry on the need or not need for a caddy in the Ultrabay adapter. There is no difference in the requirements whether you buy an SSD or a new 7200 rpm disk. As you didn't buy a Lenovo SSD you will need to unscrew the caddy from your old disk and put it on the SSD.

 

Ah that was exactly what I wanted to know. Thanks!

 

You will need the Ultrabay Slim SATA HDD Adapter II to mount a 2.5" HDD or SSD in the optical bay.

 

Yes, and it's inside that adapter your old disk will be a loose fit once you take off the caddy to use it with your new SSD.

 

After alot of confusion and deliberation, I finally when for the "OCZ Vertex Series 60GB 2.5" SATA-II Solid State Hard Drive" for my Lenovo T500.

Speed was an important issue for me chosing this SSD.

I'll receive it in a couple of days and will write about my experience.

Thanks All

 

No experience with SSD's, but I bought a hard drive caddy from eBay that works fantastic in my T400. Click this link for an example. Mine is indistinguishable from the OEM caddy.

 

Hi Lew,

Can I use this Caddy instead of buying the Ultrabay Slim SATA HDD Adapter II?

 

No you need the caddy AND the adapter. You can use the disk without the caddy inside the adapter but it will be a loose fit. See my earlier posts in this thread.

ps the two rubber brackets you see in the picture are only used when you use the caddy for a disk in the primary slot of your TP. For the Ultrabay adapter only the metal part of the caddy is used.