need recommendation oin a cheap mechanical hard drive

i am thinking about upgrading the supplied hard drive with something bigger. what are your recommendations on specific models. i've previously used the wd3200bevt but it clicked a lot. is the seagate momentus xt a good one to try?

 

What kind of features are important to you? And don't say "I want fast, big, quiet, uses the lowest power ever, cheap, and sexy..." Rank them in order of importance, because you aren't going to get everything in one package. So:

A. Cost
B. Storage capacity
C. Noise
D. Heat / power consumption
E. Performance
F. I'm-moAr-l33t-than-you factor

Rank those in the order in which you feel they're important (no two items can 'share' a line) and then we can help you more effectively. You can leave out the ones that don't apply.

For me, it was:
Performance
Heat
Cost
Power consumption
Size

 

heat/power consumption
performance
storage
noise
cost

 

I think the Momentus XT is about the only notebook hybrid SSD/HDD on the market right now. It looks to be a significant performance jump from a 5400RPM HDD and on the par with the VelociRaptor desktop drives in some aspects, but it is still behind the raw performance of a good SSD. It looks to be a bit more of a power hog than a standard notebook drive, though. But... for a price of $150-175USD(500GB) it's not that much more than an HDD and ups the performance considerably.

You can read a good, detailed review and benchmarks here: Seagate's Momentus XT Reviewed, Finally a Good Hybrid HDD - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

Another contender is the Hitachi 7K500, which is a 500GB, 7200RPM that was regarded(till at least recently) as the fastest notebook HDD you can get. I have one and love it... ran me about $120 back in Feb. Admittedly I'm tempted to upgrade to the Momentus XT, though.

 

For someone looking for a cheap mechanical hard drive, why did cost sink to the bottom of your priority list?

Given that heat is your first issue, I'd stick to a high capacity 5400RPM drive like a 500GB or 640GB unit. The 7200RPM drives will invariably generate more heat and eat more power. Rather, the high-capacity 5400RPM drives will give you good transfer rates and reduced heat, power consumption, and also noise and vibration. Now, seek times on a 5400RPM drive are going to be slower, but since performance took second place to heat and power, this should explain why I'm suggesting them

The WD Scorpio Blue 500GB that Lenovo tosses in their IdeaPads is actually a very quick, quiet, reliable and cheap drive. Go looking around for application load and boot-time benchmarks, and you'll find that it fares quite favorably against other spindle-and-platter laptop drives.

 

the thing is that i used to have a wd3200bevt which is the 320gb 5200 RPM drive that western digital has. it made a few random clicking noises at times though.

 

I had two 500GB Scorpio Blues in my old XPS M1730. One's now being used as an external HDD, and the other's in my T400's Ultrabay as I type this. I got the 640GB variant for a good deal, but had it start throwing SMART errors at me after a couple of months. I still need to get a warranty replacement. The 500GB ones have worked very well over two years and I haven't had any issues whatsoever. I'm a little shy to recommend the larger ones due to the SMART issues and dead drives, as I am seeing reviewers complain about them on several sites.

 

thanks maybe i'll try out the wd5000bevt that you are talking about (is that the correct model)?

also if i do a clean install, how would i get the black thinkpad welcome screen back. i actually liked that.

 

Yes, the drive is the WD5000BEVT, and shouldn't be too expensive these days. I'd love to have the higher capacity drives because I'm a space hog(I don't use a desktop and my T400 and X200 are my primary systems), but I just don't feel completely confident about them on a reliability standpoint.

I don't really know how to post them here, but I've got the program required to get the TP login/welcome screen back. Just PM me and I can email them to you.

 

so lenovo doesn't have any utility that is downloadable off lenovo's website that i can just isntall?

 

also i really would like to keep the recovery drive that lenovo puts on the stock installation. if i restore the laptop using my restore discs on the new drive and then format the main operating system drive and do the clean install there, that should keep the recovery partition intact and functional right?

 

They don't, at least to my knowledge. Check this thread here; this is where I got the program and wallpaper needed for it: http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/497435-specific-thinkpad-wallpaper-2.html

Edit: I'm not sure how to keep the recovery partition in place. You may be able to keep it with a straight clone using a utility such as HDclone, but I haven't tried it.

 

Okay.. belay that last post, I think. A quick search yielded this:

teerapap on the binary playground: Upgrade Thinkpad X200 Harddisk and Keep Service Partition Safe By Puppy Linux.

It looks like you boot your X201 off a Linux CD then use that to copy the recovery partition to your new drive... just do it before installing your drive in your machine and installing Windows, obviously. You'll need an external optical drive(or flash media, maybe?) and HDD enclosure, however.

 

Seems quite a number of WD5000BEVT users here. It's a good drive under my experience, I use it as a second drive to coincide with my 80GB Intel SSD. Runs pretty cool here (35c at the moment) and is good value too.

 

I bought a hitachi 5k500.b 500gb 5400 rpm last year. It work ok about 6 months then a lot of bad sector has been appear and all my data has been gone. So i would like recommend you that say no with hitachi.

 

also thinkvantage's freefall airbag software should work with any drive right?

 

yes............