Need new hard drive for older IBM Thinkpad. Will any 2.5 inch drive work?

[sohcrates]

I have found several 2.5 inch notebook hard drives by Hitachi on Newegg. $70 for about 20 gigs or so.

They are 5400 rpm's and 8 meg cache and ATA 6 interface.

From what i can find out, my current IBM drive is 4600 RPM and i *think* an ata 4 interface. It has basically died, as it sits there and makes horrible clicking sounds and windows has mysteriously started losing my profile and not loading correctly.

I guess i'm wondering if a new "ata 6" interface and a drive bigger than 10gb will work on my thinkpad? I assume i'll have to update the bios.

But interface - wise, should a "new" laptop HDD word in my "old" thinkpad?

Thanks

 

[sohcrates]

*bump*

 

[BespinReactorShaft]

My 3-4 year old Dell Latitude C600 uses this. Not sure about the dimensions though...

 

[vegetation]

The only issue is drive height. It's either 12mm or 9.5mm. Older thicker laptops tend to use the 12mm standard but they can adopt a 9.5mm just fine. However, you wouldn't be able to use a 12mm drive in a 9.5mm sized laptop drive bay for obvious reasons. Nonetheless, almost all 2.5" drives today come in 9.5mm size but check the specs when you buy just to make sure.

 

[sohcrates]

Ok. i'll check out the current drive height tonight. Thanks for the info!