hard drive upgrade question

When upgrading to a larger/faster hard drive, you can use the recovery discs created from the original system to image the new drive, correct? Even if speed and capacity are different.

also, upgrading RAM and HD do not void the IBM/Lenovo warranty, correct?

 

Correct on both points

 

thank you. time to order

 

Will also depend on the model. Some of the T43s have issues with non-ThinkPad firmwared drives.

 

hmm, just bought a T43. planning on getting one of the Hitachi 7200 RPM drives. any problems with those? also, any idea what the difference between the 7K100 and the E7K60 models is?

 

The E7K60 is for blade servers. It lacks some of the power saving features on the the 7k100. It may be possible to upgrade the firmware on the drive and/or bios to fix the issue. I would check over on ThinkPads.com forum as there is more information on this issue over there.

 

Curently looking to upgrade my T42 7K60 HD as well. Just called IBM and they confirmed that warranty will NOT be voided. Just gotta keep the original HD in case I need to send laptop back to IBM for repair since they are going to accept only original configuration.

What do you guys think of Hitachi 7K80 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822146047 ? It has a lot of positive reviews in there. I also looked at Seagate 7K100 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822146230 but I'm not sure if it worth paying extra $110 for additional 20GB. Anybody has any experience with either of these HD? Also, I would assume that a new upgraded HD will no longer support "shock detection" the way how it is with an original 7K60?

Also, since I have original System recovery CDs (all 11 of them!!!), I assume I will be able to re-install WinXP Pro without all other IBM stuff? Or is it going to be installed automatically? At least, I'm hoping that I no longer need to waste 6GB of space for that hidden recovery partition, what a waste!

 

I believe the HD protection is integrated into the system, not the HD.

if I have to keep the original HD anyway, I might just get the Ultrabay adaptor for a second HD; will avoid any configuration issues as the primary drive, and be more efficient for Photoshop work anyway.

 

I'm very interested regarding this matter since this feature seems to be missing from my R50e
Can somebody competent acknowledge / deny the upper quote? Thank you very much.

 

Do you really think its a good idea? The whole point of having a hard drive and CDRW/DVDRW at the same time so you can back up/save your data, at least in my case. Otherwise, it makes no sense to have a removable hard drive from which I have to copy data everytime to a primary hard drive in order to back it up or copy to. I use optical drive quiet often, and I'm sure that FIT (failure-in-time) rate of constanstly re-connecting hard drive through ultrabay will go up as well. It makes sense to use ultrabay for extra battery, but not extra hard drive...

Also, I'm not sure its just a software/firmware that controls HD shock protection. Otherwise, any laptop could be upgraded with this neat feature. There gotta be some extra HD pin for a fast shut-off condition or something like that. Just my opinion...

I wonder if upcoming T60 will have options for a bigger hard drive?

 

well, according to this review, the hardware component is an accelerometer on the motherboard. no mention on whether the HD is special, maybe someone here with an upgraded drive can flip their's over quick and see if the Active protection screen lights up.

This laptop will not be my primary machine, my desktop with tons of storage and a DVD burner are for that. I didn't buy the DVD burner for the T43 since by all accounts the internal DVD burners suck. If I need to burn DVDs off the laptop I'll get an external case and burner. Burning CDs for backup isn't really an option, would be a lot of them since my CF cards are larger than the capacity of a CD.