Fastest hard drive for IBM Thinkpad A31?

[jakobkraft]

A friend was given a used Thinkpad A31 from his job and although it works well enough he says the drive is incredibly slow, despite having formatted and put a clean install of XP Pro. Given the specs, I would think it wouldn't be so bad, P4, 1.2.

I looked at IBM's website, but didn't find anything about possible hard drive upgrades...
Anyone know how I might find out the best hard drive that this thing can take? Thanks in advance

 

[applexxe]

You can use External drives !

 

[corkyg]

The A31 is a P4M machine, and it can take any good HDD you choose. Best speed will be a 7200 RPM, and they are currently available in up to 100 GB sizes.

Yes, you can use an external drive - but if you think the internal one is slow, it will seem like greased lightning compared to a USB 2 external.

The drive currently installed is in all probability a 4200 RPM drive. This is a mid-year 2004 product - and I believe there were some 5400 RPM drives then, so that is also possible.

 

[w00t]

as corkyg a 7,200RPM drive is the fastest you can probably put into notebook.

I am thinking there is a 5,400RPM drive in it though could be wrong though