t60 ultrabay second hard drive observations

Just in case anyone is thinking of adding a second hard drive in place of the CD/DVD ROM drive using the ultrabay adapter 40Y8725, I wanted to share my experience.

I wanted to add the second drive in order to have more space, create back up images quickly and I figured it would get more use than the CD/DVD drive.

Swapping it in and out is super simple, although I had to make one change in the bios for the sata entry to "compatible".

I ordered the 7200 rpm hitachi 100g drive and the sata ultrabay adapter My primary drive is a 7200 rpm 60g.

Here's the problem - the fan began running almost continually and the drive sends a vibration through the machine which is very noticable when your typing and your palms are at rest. I think part of the reason that the vibration is more apparent with the drive is in the ultrabay is that it is not shock/rubber mounted. Neither problem would really bother me all that much if I really needed to have the second drive active. I would probably get used to the fan running all the time and the vibration from the drive but It's not an absolute requirement for my laptop to have this extra drive.

So for now, I just have a spare. It was just slightly too annoying to cope with full time. I know hitachi has a disk management program which might make things a bit let buzzy and cool things down but it's not worth the bother at this time.

I have a 14.1 T60.

 

Thanks for posting. I'm always interested in things on can do with the Ultrabay. Sorry to hear that didn't work so well.

Maybe I'll get the UltraBay battery one of these days.

Chris

 

That is unfortunate, I was hoping to make use of the ultrabay drive option at some point. Isn't the 100gb hitachi a better drive overall than the 60gb? Why not make it your primary?

Also, you might want to look at western digital passport drives for extra storage. They are small, rugged, and do not require lugging around an extra power cable.

 

Thanks for the comments! I did pick up an external WD 120G USB portable drive and it works great, very compact, light and appears rugged as well.

I might end up eventually swapping out my 60G primary for the 100G. I was pretty sure the specs were about the same since they are both 7200 RPM drives but I haven't checked to verify that. It looks like the change would be real easy, especially with the ultrabay adapter.

 

I have the 2nd hd bay for the T4x series in my T60 and it works great. It's very quite and I haven't noticed any heat increase.

Scott

 

I also purchased the same hard drive and ultrabay adapter. I put the drive in the CD bay, and the hard drive doesn't come up in My Computer folder. Is there anything else I need to do to get this hard drive running? Thanks

 

I had to go to control panel->administrative tools->computer management->disk management

Once I set it up there it appeared as my D drive.

 

Thanks a lot. Looks like its working.