New hard drive for T61

[John Jason Jordan-2]

When Karmic goes final next week I plan to do a reinstall. But instead
of wiping the 160 GB hard drive that came with my T61 I want to buy a
new drive, then put the old drive in a USB enclosure. After the new
install I'll copy over ~/ and perhaps other things as needed to get
things back to the way they currently are (installed programs, etc.).

Normally I do a dist-upgrade, but for some time I have been having
issues with Xorg or Gnome or something on Jaunty. I have spent entire
days trying to fix it, but there are literally hundreds of libraries,
modules, configurations and so on. I give up.

I'd like a somewhat larger hard disk than the Hitachi 5416 that came
with the Thinkpad, maybe around 300 GB. From past discussions that I
have read here there are a couple issues:

1) My dim understanding is that Lenovo did something in the BIOS so
that only hard drives bought from them will work. However, I think that
is not entirely correct.

2) I understand that my T61 has a SATA-2 controller, but Lenovo
throttled it to no more than 100 Mb/s. Hence, there is no point in
getting a faster hard disk. Yet there may be other issues that would
make disk access faster. If possible, I would like as fast a disk as
possible, given the controller situation.

So my question is: Are there any T61 users here who have installed
larger hard disks? If so, what did you install, and are you happy with
its performance?
--
The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-thinkpad

[Nikolay Panov-3]

> 1) My dim understanding is that Lenovo did something in the BIOS so
> that only hard drives bought from them will work. However, I think that
> is not entirely correct.

I have successfully installed WDC WD3200BEKT (320Gb, 7200 rpm). With
no any issues.

> 2) I understand that my T61 has a SATA-2 controller, but Lenovo
> throttled it to no more than 100 Mb/s. Hence, there is no point in
> getting a faster hard disk. Yet there may be other issues that would
> make disk access faster. If possible, I would like as fast a disk as
> possible, given the controller situation.
> So my question is: Are there any T61 users here who have installed
> larger hard disks? If so, what did you install, and are you happy with
> its performance?

My previous hitachi disk drive (5400 rpm) was on ~60Mb/s speed by 'hdparm -t'.
My currend WD3200BEKT (7200 rpm) working on ~90Mb/s. This it 150% speed up!

Which disks can now work on more than 100Mb/s? SSD? I doubt if big SSD
disks already has good price to buy it now.
--
The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-thinkpad

[Paul Seelig-2]

Hi John,

i bought a bigger replacement drive, and a second faster one in a second
step, just a few months ago. Both times it was a Seagate Momentus 500GB
disk in its G version, in order to have the drive itself take care of
any gravitational issues. First drive was the 5400rpm speed version, and
the second one the faster 7200rpm speed version. There actually is a
speed difference, as the system does feel more responsive thanks to the
7200rpm disk (running Debian/unstable). As an added benefit, the 7200rpm
disk comes with a 5 year warranty.

I didn't bother to measure it, because i am not at all interested in any
numbers. Don't even really care about whether disk has 3.0Gbit/sec or
1.5Gbits/sec throughput. Just being able to simply feel the enhanced
responsiveness was already enough for me to be content with the doubled
disk upgrade.

The slower 5400GB Momentus is now in some cheap "Ultrabay Slim SATA HDD
Adapter II" imitation. I had to put a jumper on the disk to limit its
speed to a 1.5 Gb/s data rate, because there was an issue for it being
recognized by the T61 BIOS 3 (or even 4) out of 5 times during startup.

The jumpering solution for this issue is fully described here:

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=193775
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=168595

Might be worth to have this info added to ThinkWiki by some kind soul.

In any case, it is nice to have so much superfluous disk space available
for some KVM virtual machines or simply for scratch, using the second
disk primarily as an almost identical backup device by mirroring.

No, i don't endorse Seagate disks for any economic interest, but i do
happen to like their Momentus series quite a lot.

Cheers
P. *8^)

John Jason Jordan wrote:
>
> So my question is: Are there any T61 users here who have installed
> larger hard disks? If so, what did you install, and are you happy with
> its performance?

--
https://www.xing.com/profile/Paul_Seelig
--
The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-thinkpad

[Paul Seelig-3]

Hi John,

i bought a bigger replacement drive and, in a second step, a
second faster one just a few months ago. Both times it was a
Seagate Momentus 500GB disk in its G version, in order to have
the drive itself take care of any gravitational issues. First
drive was the 5400rpm speed version, and the second one the
faster 7200rpm speed version. There actually is a speed
difference, as the system does feel more responsive thanks to the
faster disk (running Debian/unstable). As an added benefit, the
7200rpm disk comes with a 5 year warranty.

I didn't bother to measure it, because i am not at all interested
in any numbers. Don't even really care about whether disk has
3.0Gbit/sec or 1.5Gbits/sec throughput. Just being able to simply
feel the enhanced responsiveness was already enough for me to be
content with the doubled disk upgrade.

The slower 5400GB Momentus is now in some cheap "Ultrabay Slim
SATA HDD Adapter II" imitation. I had to put a jumper on the disk
to limit its speed to a 1.5 Gb/s data rate, because there was an
issue for it being recognized by the T61 BIOS 3 (or even 4) out
of 5 times during startup.

The jumpering solution for this issue is fully described here:

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=193775
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=168595

Might be worth to have this info added to ThinkWiki by some kind soul.

In any case, it is nice to have so much superfluous disk space
available for some KVM virtual machines or simply for scratch,
using the second disk primarily as an almost identical backup
device by mirroring.

No, i don't endorse Seagate disks for any economic interest, but
i do happen to like their Momentus series quite a lot.

Cheers
P. *8^)

John Jason Jordan wrote:

> When Karmic goes final next week I plan to do a reinstall. But instead
> of wiping the 160 GB hard drive that came with my T61 I want to buy a
> new drive, then put the old drive in a USB enclosure. After the new
> install I'll copy over ~/ and perhaps other things as needed to get
> things back to the way they currently are (installed programs, etc.).
>
> Normally I do a dist-upgrade, but for some time I have been having
> issues with Xorg or Gnome or something on Jaunty. I have spent entire
> days trying to fix it, but there are literally hundreds of libraries,
> modules, configurations and so on. I give up.
>
> I'd like a somewhat larger hard disk than the Hitachi 5416 that came
> with the Thinkpad, maybe around 300 GB. From past discussions that I
> have read here there are a couple issues:
>
> 1) My dim understanding is that Lenovo did something in the BIOS so
> that only hard drives bought from them will work. However, I think that
> is not entirely correct.
>
> 2) I understand that my T61 has a SATA-2 controller, but Lenovo
> throttled it to no more than 100 Mb/s. Hence, there is no point in
> getting a faster hard disk. Yet there may be other issues that would
> make disk access faster. If possible, I would like as fast a disk as
> possible, given the controller situation.
>
> So my question is: Are there any T61 users here who have installed
> larger hard disks? If so, what did you install, and are you happy with
> its performance?

--
The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-thinkpad

Just to make you aware, I actually had a not so smooth experience with exactly the same Seagate Momentus 500GB "g" drive 7200RPM. My drive made very annoying clicking sounds each 3 to 5 seconds, which was  really bothering me as the overall machine (T500) is very quiet.

I looked around on the net and found other people reporting the same thing a few times on various forums with one or two proposed "solutions", but nothing of that worked for me.

Seagate offered a full replacement, so they handled my complaint correctly, but because I was wary of probable shipment costs from Europe to somewhere which could nearly cost the same as a new drive I ended up buying another drive from some other vendor and I am now using the Seagate as backup drive in an USB enclosure where I don't much care about noise, so nothing lost, but some time to copy things around.

Just so that you know if you catch one of those that have that clicking-noise-problem.

Dominik.

On Sat, Oct 24, 2009 at 9:11 PM, Paul Seelig <pseelig@...> wrote:

Hi John,

i bought a bigger replacement drive and, in a second step, a
second faster one just a few months ago. Both times it was a
Seagate Momentus 500GB disk in its G version, in order to have
the drive itself take care of any gravitational issues. First
drive was the 5400rpm speed version, and the second one the
faster 7200rpm speed version. There actually is a speed
difference, as the system does feel more responsive thanks to the
faster disk (running Debian/unstable). As an added benefit, the
7200rpm disk comes with a 5 year warranty.

I didn't bother to measure it, because i am not at all interested
in any numbers. Don't even really care about whether disk has
3.0Gbit/sec or 1.5Gbits/sec throughput. Just being able to simply
feel the enhanced responsiveness was already enough for me to be
content with the doubled disk upgrade.

The slower 5400GB Momentus is now in some cheap "Ultrabay Slim
SATA HDD Adapter II" imitation. I had to put a jumper on the disk
to limit its speed to a 1.5 Gb/s data rate, because there was an
issue for it being recognized by the T61 BIOS 3 (or even 4) out
of 5 times during startup.

The jumpering solution for this issue is fully described here:

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=193775
http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=168595

Might be worth to have this info added to ThinkWiki by some kind soul.

In any case, it is nice to have so much superfluous disk space
available for some KVM virtual machines or simply for scratch,
using the second disk primarily as an almost identical backup
device by mirroring.

No, i don't endorse Seagate disks for any economic interest, but
i do happen to like their Momentus series quite a lot.

Cheers
P. *8^)

John Jason Jordan wrote:
> When Karmic goes final next week I plan to do a reinstall. But instead
> of wiping the 160 GB hard drive that came with my T61 I want to buy a
> new drive, then put the old drive in a USB enclosure. After the new
> install I'll copy over ~/ and perhaps other things as needed to get
> things back to the way they currently are (installed programs, etc.).
>
> Normally I do a dist-upgrade, but for some time I have been having
> issues with Xorg or Gnome or something on Jaunty. I have spent entire
> days trying to fix it, but there are literally hundreds of libraries,
> modules, configurations and so on. I give up.
>
> I'd like a somewhat larger hard disk than the Hitachi 5416 that came
> with the Thinkpad, maybe around 300 GB. From past discussions that I
> have read here there are a couple issues:
>
> 1) My dim understanding is that Lenovo did something in the BIOS so
> that only hard drives bought from them will work. However, I think that
> is not entirely correct.
>
> 2) I understand that my T61 has a SATA-2 controller, but Lenovo
> throttled it to no more than 100 Mb/s. Hence, there is no point in
> getting a faster hard disk. Yet there may be other issues that would
> make disk access faster. If possible, I would like as fast a disk as
> possible, given the controller situation.
>
> So my question is: Are there any T61 users here who have installed
> larger hard disks? If so, what did you install, and are you happy with
> its performance?
--
The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-thinkpad

[John Jason Jordan-2]

Thanks for the information. I was considering the Seagate Momentus 7400
rpm 500 GB drive. It's good to hear that it works well in a T61.

However, I just finished reading reviews on Newegg.com. There are about
250 reviews. It seems people give it top rating or bottom rating, with
few in between. The bottom raters all had their drive fail after a few
days to a few months. If the reviews are a guide, the failure rate
seems to be about 20%.

But I am wondering if the G version has the same issues.

I agree with your view on impressions v. numbers. I don't care about
numbers either. If it feels faster, that is what I am looking for.


On Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:11:54 +0200
Paul Seelig <pseelig@...> dijo:

> Hi John,
>
> i bought a bigger replacement drive and, in a second step, a
> second faster one just a few months ago. Both times it was a
> Seagate Momentus 500GB disk in its G version, in order to have
> the drive itself take care of any gravitational issues. First
> drive was the 5400rpm speed version, and the second one the
> faster 7200rpm speed version. There actually is a speed
> difference, as the system does feel more responsive thanks to the
> faster disk (running Debian/unstable). As an added benefit, the
> 7200rpm disk comes with a 5 year warranty.
>
> I didn't bother to measure it, because i am not at all interested
> in any numbers. Don't even really care about whether disk has
> 3.0Gbit/sec or 1.5Gbits/sec throughput. Just being able to simply
> feel the enhanced responsiveness was already enough for me to be
> content with the doubled disk upgrade.
>
> The slower 5400GB Momentus is now in some cheap "Ultrabay Slim
> SATA HDD Adapter II" imitation. I had to put a jumper on the disk
> to limit its speed to a 1.5 Gb/s data rate, because there was an
> issue for it being recognized by the T61 BIOS 3 (or even 4) out
> of 5 times during startup.
>
> The jumpering solution for this issue is fully described here:
>
> http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=193775
> http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=168595
>
> Might be worth to have this info added to ThinkWiki by some kind soul.
>
> In any case, it is nice to have so much superfluous disk space
> available for some KVM virtual machines or simply for scratch,
> using the second disk primarily as an almost identical backup
> device by mirroring.
>
> No, i don't endorse Seagate disks for any economic interest, but
> i do happen to like their Momentus series quite a lot.
>
> Cheers
> P. *8^)
>
> John Jason Jordan wrote:
> > When Karmic goes final next week I plan to do a reinstall. But instead
> > of wiping the 160 GB hard drive that came with my T61 I want to buy a
> > new drive, then put the old drive in a USB enclosure. After the new
> > install I'll copy over ~/ and perhaps other things as needed to get
> > things back to the way they currently are (installed programs, etc.).
> >
> > Normally I do a dist-upgrade, but for some time I have been having
> > issues with Xorg or Gnome or something on Jaunty. I have spent entire
> > days trying to fix it, but there are literally hundreds of libraries,
> > modules, configurations and so on. I give up.
> >
> > I'd like a somewhat larger hard disk than the Hitachi 5416 that came
> > with the Thinkpad, maybe around 300 GB. From past discussions that I
> > have read here there are a couple issues:
> >
> > 1) My dim understanding is that Lenovo did something in the BIOS so
> > that only hard drives bought from them will work. However, I think that
> > is not entirely correct.
> >
> > 2) I understand that my T61 has a SATA-2 controller, but Lenovo
> > throttled it to no more than 100 Mb/s. Hence, there is no point in
> > getting a faster hard disk. Yet there may be other issues that would
> > make disk access faster. If possible, I would like as fast a disk as
> > possible, given the controller situation.
> >
> > So my question is: Are there any T61 users here who have installed
> > larger hard disks? If so, what did you install, and are you happy with
> > its performance?
> --
> The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
> http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-thinkpad

--
The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-thinkpad

[Stefan Monnier]

> 1) My dim understanding is that Lenovo did something in the BIOS so
> that only hard drives bought from them will work. However, I think that
> is not entirely correct.

Your info is incorrect.  There is no such problem for the T61
(those problems only really affect the T43).  Any SATA 2,5" drive
should work fine.

> 2) I understand that my T61 has a SATA-2 controller, but Lenovo
> throttled it to no more than 100 Mb/s. Hence, there is no point in
> getting a faster hard disk. Yet there may be other issues that would
> make disk access faster. If possible, I would like as fast a disk as
> possible, given the controller situation.

I wouldn't worry about it.  Even with a 100MB/s limit, you'll probably
get most (if not all) of the performance increase a faster drive can
bring you (whether SSD or not).


        Stefan

--
The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-thinkpad

[Florian Manschwetus]

I would suggest to buy a 7k500 from hitachi, they are supported out of
the box including hdaps. Never have had trouble with 7k200, 7k320
personally I not have had my hands on a 7k500 ones but no idea why there
should be a difference.

Florian

Am 24.10.2009 22:48, schrieb John Jason Jordan:

> Thanks for the information. I was considering the Seagate Momentus 7400
> rpm 500 GB drive. It's good to hear that it works well in a T61.
>
> However, I just finished reading reviews on Newegg.com. There are about
> 250 reviews. It seems people give it top rating or bottom rating, with
> few in between. The bottom raters all had their drive fail after a few
> days to a few months. If the reviews are a guide, the failure rate
> seems to be about 20%.
>
> But I am wondering if the G version has the same issues.
>
> I agree with your view on impressions v. numbers. I don't care about
> numbers either. If it feels faster, that is what I am looking for.
>
>
> On Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:11:54 +0200
> Paul Seelig <pseelig@...> dijo:
>
>> Hi John,
>>
>> i bought a bigger replacement drive and, in a second step, a
>> second faster one just a few months ago. Both times it was a
>> Seagate Momentus 500GB disk in its G version, in order to have
>> the drive itself take care of any gravitational issues. First
>> drive was the 5400rpm speed version, and the second one the
>> faster 7200rpm speed version. There actually is a speed
>> difference, as the system does feel more responsive thanks to the
>> faster disk (running Debian/unstable). As an added benefit, the
>> 7200rpm disk comes with a 5 year warranty.
>>
>> I didn't bother to measure it, because i am not at all interested
>> in any numbers. Don't even really care about whether disk has
>> 3.0Gbit/sec or 1.5Gbits/sec throughput. Just being able to simply
>> feel the enhanced responsiveness was already enough for me to be
>> content with the doubled disk upgrade.
>>
>> The slower 5400GB Momentus is now in some cheap "Ultrabay Slim
>> SATA HDD Adapter II" imitation. I had to put a jumper on the disk
>> to limit its speed to a 1.5 Gb/s data rate, because there was an
>> issue for it being recognized by the T61 BIOS 3 (or even 4) out
>> of 5 times during startup.
>>
>> The jumpering solution for this issue is fully described here:
>>
>> http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=193775
>> http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=168595
>>
>> Might be worth to have this info added to ThinkWiki by some kind soul.
>>
>> In any case, it is nice to have so much superfluous disk space
>> available for some KVM virtual machines or simply for scratch,
>> using the second disk primarily as an almost identical backup
>> device by mirroring.
>>
>> No, i don't endorse Seagate disks for any economic interest, but
>> i do happen to like their Momentus series quite a lot.
>>
>> Cheers
>> P. *8^)
>>
>> John Jason Jordan wrote:
>>> When Karmic goes final next week I plan to do a reinstall. But instead
>>> of wiping the 160 GB hard drive that came with my T61 I want to buy a
>>> new drive, then put the old drive in a USB enclosure. After the new
>>> install I'll copy over ~/ and perhaps other things as needed to get
>>> things back to the way they currently are (installed programs, etc.).
>>>
>>> Normally I do a dist-upgrade, but for some time I have been having
>>> issues with Xorg or Gnome or something on Jaunty. I have spent entire
>>> days trying to fix it, but there are literally hundreds of libraries,
>>> modules, configurations and so on. I give up.
>>>
>>> I'd like a somewhat larger hard disk than the Hitachi 5416 that came
>>> with the Thinkpad, maybe around 300 GB. From past discussions that I
>>> have read here there are a couple issues:
>>>
>>> 1) My dim understanding is that Lenovo did something in the BIOS so
>>> that only hard drives bought from them will work. However, I think that
>>> is not entirely correct.
>>>
>>> 2) I understand that my T61 has a SATA-2 controller, but Lenovo
>>> throttled it to no more than 100 Mb/s. Hence, there is no point in
>>> getting a faster hard disk. Yet there may be other issues that would
>>> make disk access faster. If possible, I would like as fast a disk as
>>> possible, given the controller situation.
>>>
>>> So my question is: Are there any T61 users here who have installed
>>> larger hard disks? If so, what did you install, and are you happy with
>>> its performance?
>> --
>> The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
>> http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-thinkpad

[John Jason Jordan-2]

I can't find the 7K500; only the 7K320. The reviews on the 7K320 seem
pretty good - not as many failures as the Seagate. And 320 GB is all I
need anyway.

How is the 7K320 for speed?


On Sun, 25 Oct 2009 09:08:21 +0100
Florian Manschwetus <florianmanschwetus@...> dijo:

> I would suggest to buy a 7k500 from hitachi, they are supported out of
> the box including hdaps. Never have had trouble with 7k200, 7k320
> personally I not have had my hands on a 7k500 ones but no idea why there
> should be a difference.
>
> Florian
>
> Am 24.10.2009 22:48, schrieb John Jason Jordan:
> > Thanks for the information. I was considering the Seagate Momentus 7400
> > rpm 500 GB drive. It's good to hear that it works well in a T61.
> >
> > However, I just finished reading reviews on Newegg.com. There are about
> > 250 reviews. It seems people give it top rating or bottom rating, with
> > few in between. The bottom raters all had their drive fail after a few
> > days to a few months. If the reviews are a guide, the failure rate
> > seems to be about 20%.
> >
> > But I am wondering if the G version has the same issues.
> >
> > I agree with your view on impressions v. numbers. I don't care about
> > numbers either. If it feels faster, that is what I am looking for.
> >
> >
> > On Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:11:54 +0200
> > Paul Seelig <pseelig@...> dijo:
> >
> >> Hi John,
> >>
> >> i bought a bigger replacement drive and, in a second step, a
> >> second faster one just a few months ago. Both times it was a
> >> Seagate Momentus 500GB disk in its G version, in order to have
> >> the drive itself take care of any gravitational issues. First
> >> drive was the 5400rpm speed version, and the second one the
> >> faster 7200rpm speed version. There actually is a speed
> >> difference, as the system does feel more responsive thanks to the
> >> faster disk (running Debian/unstable). As an added benefit, the
> >> 7200rpm disk comes with a 5 year warranty.
> >>
> >> I didn't bother to measure it, because i am not at all interested
> >> in any numbers. Don't even really care about whether disk has
> >> 3.0Gbit/sec or 1.5Gbits/sec throughput. Just being able to simply
> >> feel the enhanced responsiveness was already enough for me to be
> >> content with the doubled disk upgrade.
> >>
> >> The slower 5400GB Momentus is now in some cheap "Ultrabay Slim
> >> SATA HDD Adapter II" imitation. I had to put a jumper on the disk
> >> to limit its speed to a 1.5 Gb/s data rate, because there was an
> >> issue for it being recognized by the T61 BIOS 3 (or even 4) out
> >> of 5 times during startup.
> >>
> >> The jumpering solution for this issue is fully described here:
> >>
> >> http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=193775
> >> http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=168595
> >>
> >> Might be worth to have this info added to ThinkWiki by some kind soul.
> >>
> >> In any case, it is nice to have so much superfluous disk space
> >> available for some KVM virtual machines or simply for scratch,
> >> using the second disk primarily as an almost identical backup
> >> device by mirroring.
> >>
> >> No, i don't endorse Seagate disks for any economic interest, but
> >> i do happen to like their Momentus series quite a lot.
> >>
> >> Cheers
> >> P. *8^)
> >>
> >> John Jason Jordan wrote:
> >>> When Karmic goes final next week I plan to do a reinstall. But instead
> >>> of wiping the 160 GB hard drive that came with my T61 I want to buy a
> >>> new drive, then put the old drive in a USB enclosure. After the new
> >>> install I'll copy over ~/ and perhaps other things as needed to get
> >>> things back to the way they currently are (installed programs, etc.).
> >>>
> >>> Normally I do a dist-upgrade, but for some time I have been having
> >>> issues with Xorg or Gnome or something on Jaunty. I have spent entire
> >>> days trying to fix it, but there are literally hundreds of libraries,
> >>> modules, configurations and so on. I give up.
> >>>
> >>> I'd like a somewhat larger hard disk than the Hitachi 5416 that came
> >>> with the Thinkpad, maybe around 300 GB. From past discussions that I
> >>> have read here there are a couple issues:
> >>>
> >>> 1) My dim understanding is that Lenovo did something in the BIOS so
> >>> that only hard drives bought from them will work. However, I think that
> >>> is not entirely correct.
> >>>
> >>> 2) I understand that my T61 has a SATA-2 controller, but Lenovo
> >>> throttled it to no more than 100 Mb/s. Hence, there is no point in
> >>> getting a faster hard disk. Yet there may be other issues that would
> >>> make disk access faster. If possible, I would like as fast a disk as
> >>> possible, given the controller situation.
> >>>
> >>> So my question is: Are there any T61 users here who have installed
> >>> larger hard disks? If so, what did you install, and are you happy with
> >>> its performance?
> >> --
> >> The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
> >> http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-thinkpad
>
>
>

--
The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-thinkpad

[Florian Manschwetus]

Am 25.10.2009 18:00, schrieb John Jason Jordan:
> I can't find the 7K500; only the 7K320. The reviews on the 7K320 seem
> pretty good - not as many failures as the Seagate. And 320 GB is all I
> need anyway.
>
> How is the 7K320 for speed?
Great, personally I use the previous revision, 7k200, in my T60 a
unbelievable boost compared with the original 5k100.
My father uses the 7k320 in his T61 same result.

7k500
http://www.hitachigst.com/portal/site/en/products/travelstar/7K500/

Florian

>
>
> On Sun, 25 Oct 2009 09:08:21 +0100
> Florian Manschwetus <florianmanschwetus@...> dijo:
>
>> I would suggest to buy a 7k500 from hitachi, they are supported out of
>> the box including hdaps. Never have had trouble with 7k200, 7k320
>> personally I not have had my hands on a 7k500 ones but no idea why there
>> should be a difference.
>>
>> Florian
>>
>> Am 24.10.2009 22:48, schrieb John Jason Jordan:
>>> Thanks for the information. I was considering the Seagate Momentus 7400
>>> rpm 500 GB drive. It's good to hear that it works well in a T61.
>>>
>>> However, I just finished reading reviews on Newegg.com. There are about
>>> 250 reviews. It seems people give it top rating or bottom rating, with
>>> few in between. The bottom raters all had their drive fail after a few
>>> days to a few months. If the reviews are a guide, the failure rate
>>> seems to be about 20%.
>>>
>>> But I am wondering if the G version has the same issues.
>>>
>>> I agree with your view on impressions v. numbers. I don't care about
>>> numbers either. If it feels faster, that is what I am looking for.
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:11:54 +0200
>>> Paul Seelig <pseelig@...> dijo:
>>>
>>>> Hi John,
>>>>
>>>> i bought a bigger replacement drive and, in a second step, a
>>>> second faster one just a few months ago. Both times it was a
>>>> Seagate Momentus 500GB disk in its G version, in order to have
>>>> the drive itself take care of any gravitational issues. First
>>>> drive was the 5400rpm speed version, and the second one the
>>>> faster 7200rpm speed version. There actually is a speed
>>>> difference, as the system does feel more responsive thanks to the
>>>> faster disk (running Debian/unstable). As an added benefit, the
>>>> 7200rpm disk comes with a 5 year warranty.
>>>>
>>>> I didn't bother to measure it, because i am not at all interested
>>>> in any numbers. Don't even really care about whether disk has
>>>> 3.0Gbit/sec or 1.5Gbits/sec throughput. Just being able to simply
>>>> feel the enhanced responsiveness was already enough for me to be
>>>> content with the doubled disk upgrade.
>>>>
>>>> The slower 5400GB Momentus is now in some cheap "Ultrabay Slim
>>>> SATA HDD Adapter II" imitation. I had to put a jumper on the disk
>>>> to limit its speed to a 1.5 Gb/s data rate, because there was an
>>>> issue for it being recognized by the T61 BIOS 3 (or even 4) out
>>>> of 5 times during startup.
>>>>
>>>> The jumpering solution for this issue is fully described here:
>>>>
>>>> http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=193775
>>>> http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/crm/selfservice/search.jsp?DocId=168595
>>>>
>>>> Might be worth to have this info added to ThinkWiki by some kind soul.
>>>>
>>>> In any case, it is nice to have so much superfluous disk space
>>>> available for some KVM virtual machines or simply for scratch,
>>>> using the second disk primarily as an almost identical backup
>>>> device by mirroring.
>>>>
>>>> No, i don't endorse Seagate disks for any economic interest, but
>>>> i do happen to like their Momentus series quite a lot.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers
>>>> P. *8^)
>>>>
>>>> John Jason Jordan wrote:
>>>>> When Karmic goes final next week I plan to do a reinstall. But instead
>>>>> of wiping the 160 GB hard drive that came with my T61 I want to buy a
>>>>> new drive, then put the old drive in a USB enclosure. After the new
>>>>> install I'll copy over ~/ and perhaps other things as needed to get
>>>>> things back to the way they currently are (installed programs, etc.).
>>>>>
>>>>> Normally I do a dist-upgrade, but for some time I have been having
>>>>> issues with Xorg or Gnome or something on Jaunty. I have spent entire
>>>>> days trying to fix it, but there are literally hundreds of libraries,
>>>>> modules, configurations and so on. I give up.
>>>>>
>>>>> I'd like a somewhat larger hard disk than the Hitachi 5416 that came
>>>>> with the Thinkpad, maybe around 300 GB. From past discussions that I
>>>>> have read here there are a couple issues:
>>>>>
>>>>> 1) My dim understanding is that Lenovo did something in the BIOS so
>>>>> that only hard drives bought from them will work. However, I think that
>>>>> is not entirely correct.
>>>>>
>>>>> 2) I understand that my T61 has a SATA-2 controller, but Lenovo
>>>>> throttled it to no more than 100 Mb/s. Hence, there is no point in
>>>>> getting a faster hard disk. Yet there may be other issues that would
>>>>> make disk access faster. If possible, I would like as fast a disk as
>>>>> possible, given the controller situation.
>>>>>
>>>>> So my question is: Are there any T61 users here who have installed
>>>>> larger hard disks? If so, what did you install, and are you happy with
>>>>> its performance?
>>>> --
>>>> The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
>>>> http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-thinkpad
>>
>>
>>

[John Jason Jordan-2]

On Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:53:24 +0100
Florian Manschwetus <florianmanschwetus@...> dijo:

> Am 25.10.2009 18:00, schrieb John Jason Jordan:
> > I can't find the 7K500; only the 7K320. The reviews on the 7K320 seem
> > pretty good - not as many failures as the Seagate. And 320 GB is all I
> > need anyway.
> >
> > How is the 7K320 for speed?

> Great, personally I use the previous revision, 7k200, in my T60 a
> unbelievable boost compared with the original 5k100.
> My father uses the 7k320 in his T61 same result.

Thanks for the information. At the moment the 7k320 is at the top of my
list.

The Seagates seem to have a pretty bad failure rate. And it's not that
they're dead on arrival - that would be bad, but tolerable, because you
could just return it before any damage was done to your data. The
failures are all after a couple of weeks to a couple of months, and
there is no advance warning - no funny noises, odd behavior, or
anything. Lots of reports of lost data. I always do backups, but the
consumer complaints about the Seagates leave me unimpressed.
--
The linux-thinkpad mailing list home page is at:
http://mailman.linux-thinkpad.org/mailman/listinfo/linux-thinkpad