Hard drive upgrade for a Thinkpad R31

[Hyraxxx]

I have an R31 Thinkpad Laptop that the harddrive crashed. I want to pick up a new hard drive for it. Is it as easy to pick out as a PC hard-drive?

It's a 2.5" form factor
hard drive: 20 gig 4200rpm ATA / IDE

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-4L8R6R

According to here, is a 20 GB harddirve i looked up. It says i might need a Portable Drive Bay 2000 and Ultrabay 2000 HDD adapter.

I am so confused and have no idea how to work this.

Would any of the harddrives here work? http://www.newegg.com/Product/...010150380%201035907889

should i be worried about the laptop not recognizing over 137GB?

 

[Denithor]

You're looking to replace the crashed drive, correct? All the parts you'll need are already inside there holding the current drive. You will have to take off a cover plate and then pull out the drive (held in a drive carriage). Unscrew the four screws holding the drive in the carriage, put in the new drive, screw it in, then put it back into the laptop.

Do you have the OS restore disks for your laptop?

EDIT: And the 137GB limit is a problem with the OS not the laptop. If you have less than XP with SP2 don't get more than a 120GB HDD.

 

[Hyraxxx]

Originally posted by: Denithor
You're looking to replace the crashed drive, correct? All the parts you'll need are already inside there holding the current drive. You will have to take off a cover plate and then pull out the drive (held in a drive carriage). Unscrew the four screws holding the drive in the carriage, put in the new drive, screw it in, then put it back into the laptop.

Do you have the OS restore disks for your laptop?

I appreciate the quick reply, was not expecting a response so soon. My concern is what hard drive would be compatible? Not how to assemble it in.

Last think I want is to spend $70 and get a hard-drive and find out it doesn't fit, or i bought the wrong ATA version, or doesn't see all 160 GB

 

[Denithor]

Just get any of the ATA-6 drives listed at newegg.

Like this one: WD 120GB 8MB Scorpio for $65.

You're in luck, I've done a lot of work on Thinkpads over the last few years.

 

[Hyraxxx]

Originally posted by: Denithor
Just get any of the ATA-6 drives listed at newegg.

Like this one: WD 120GB 8MB Scorpio for $65.

You're in luck, I've done a lot of work on Thinkpads over the last few years.

haha, sweet! I was freaking out worrying about whether it would be compatible or not.

Would a 160GB work alright since it's a laptop from 2002? I am looking at the newegg reviews and it seems like the 160Gb drives are bad. That seagate over 30% of the people had it crashed, and the WD had 20%.

then there are drives like this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16822148130 which is a lot like the one you suggested, with only about 12% complaining.

 

[Denithor]

As long as it's an ATA-6 drive interface it will work fine in your laptop. The only thing to keep in mind is, when you reinstall Windows, if your disks don't include SP2 you will be limited to 137GB of the space on the drive.

And that 120GB Momentus you reference would be perfect.

 

[Hyraxxx]

This laptop is actually my sisters and the highschool she used to go to will actually replace it for free. I guess since it's 6 years old and the IT person had a harddrive that will never be used again.

Thanks for the help. I felt like I learned a little something lol.