Hard Drive Transplant Question

mongol05 · Post by **mongol05** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 7:37 am

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.

Post by **Apoptosis** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 9:33 am

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

mongol05 · Post by **mongol05** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 10:05 am

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?

Post by **Apoptosis** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 10:24 am

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

mongol05 · Post by **mongol05** » Wed Aug 17, 2005 8:44 pm

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.