Notebook Hard Drives

[Sentrosi2121]

A co-worker asked me to quote him prices for a memory upgrade and a hard drive upgrade to his IBM Thinkpad R40. I've got the memory taken care of. I am sort of struggling with the hard drives though.

The R40 takes ATA-5 but it is hard as hell to find a hard drive with more capacity than he already has (40G). I see a bunch of ATA-6 hard drives out there and was wondering if the ATA-6 hard drives are backwards compatible with the older ATA-5 specs. If this is the case I have a feeling he will lose some performance, but he mainly uses it for e-mail and presentations anyway. Any kind help is appreciated.

 

[imported_Kensai]

They are, I believe.

 

[corkyg]

Yes - they are backward compatible. Lappy drives are now available in 60, 80 and 100 GB sizes, and range in speed from 4200 to 5400 to 7200 rpm.

I am currently using a Toshiba 80 GB, 5400 rpm with 16 MB cache. It is excellent.

 

[Zepper]

It is mainily the physical size that might cause a problem. I think most drives that come standard equipment are the 9.5mm thick ones. So thicker ones might be problematic.

.bh.

 

[Excelsior]

Yeah they are backwards compatible. Installing HDs on some laptops can be a bitch though.