Legit Reviews

Yet another question about my pending laptop build

I have an old IBM Thinkpad. I don't recall the model right now, but in is a 12GB Hard Drive. As I plan building this laptop, I keep wanting to upgrade the parts I'm planning on buying. So, to counter this, I thought I could put this drive in to save a little coin. I figure if I skimp on the hard drive, it's easier for me to justify buying a Gig-o-RAM instead of just 512.

Would there be anything stopping me from doing this? I assume it just a regular 2.5" IDE Drive in there, but I don't know this for certain.

Nothing is stopping you from doing that as long as it fits.

If it is an older drive then it might not have much cache and be a bit slow on the RPM side.

I used a Toshiba Super Slimline MK8026GAX (HDD2191) 80GB 5400 RPM notebook drive. It features 16mb of cache, which is more than most notebooks and I can tell a difference.

Drive Features:
Price: $113
Average Latency: 5.55ms
Average Seek Time: 12ms
Cache: 16MB
Features: Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) Motor, Low Power Consumption, Improved Noise Reduction Technology
Form Factor: 2.5"
Interface: ATA-6
Manufacturer Warranty: 3 Years

Apoptosis wrote:Nothing is stopping you from doing that as long as it fits.

If it is an older drive then it might not have much cache and be a bit slow on the RPM side.

I used a Toshiba Super Slimline MK8026GAX (HDD2191) 80GB 5400 RPM notebook drive. It features 16mb of cache, which is more than most notebooks and I can tell a difference.

Drive Features:
Price: $113
Average Latency: 5.55ms
Average Seek Time: 12ms
Cache: 16MB
Features: Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) Motor, Low Power Consumption, Improved Noise Reduction Technology
Form Factor: 2.5"
Interface: ATA-6
Manufacturer Warranty: 3 Years

Where would I see the difference between using a new drive like the Toshiba and using my older drive? Is it something noticable during gaming or just general usage?

you'd see the biggest differences in load times of games/applications and file transfer times from a USB key or a network.

I checked it out and from what I can tell it's a regular 2.5" IDE Drive. So, as long as I can figure out how to open it up, I should be able to put it in the new laptop.