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IBM Lenovo T61 Thinkpad - a standard SATA harddisk cannot be used ? Is this true

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patteo:
I was talking to the University co-op vendor who sold my son the Lenovo T61 Thinkpad and since I'm the so called resident computer "expert", I was exploring how I should go about downgrading from Vista Business to Windows XP Pro.

In the course of the discussion with the co-op vendor, I was given to understand that I cannot just buy an "ordinary" SATA harddisk, pop it in and just install Windows XP Pro on it because of certain proprietary things that Lenovo put in the "Lenovo" harddisk. That is, a ordinary SATA harddisk, will not work.

Why I would like to buy another harddisk is because I don't want to overwrite Windows Vista on the existing harddisk that came with the laptop because at some future point in time, he may just want to so call move on to Vista.

There are two possible comments that I make to this so call proprietary things that Lenovo put in the "Lenovo" harddisk (which if I remove it, looks exactly like a Hitachi harddisk - simply because it says so on the label).

1. It's a crappy red herring to scare me so I have to buy the high priced "Lenovo" harddisk from him - ie just go and get a ordinary generic SATA harddisk, either a Hitachi, Seagate or Samsung - I have done this so many times with Fujitsu, Toshiba and a Dell as well.

2. It is true that they make it proprietary by what they put in the harddisk - In which case, it is a rip off and I'll never ever buy a Lenovo again, at least not in this life time.

Tell me your experience or what you know about this.

I'm inclined to think it's 1 - it's a crappy Red Herring.

justice:
Because I don't know about Lenovo harddisks, but in case you need a plan b: DriveImage Xml, create a full image of the vista system, back it up somewhere, then put xp on it.

DriveImage XML is free and should allow you to restore it on the drive.

Wordzilla:
IMO, by "proprietary things" your co-op vendor was referring to IBM Preload Desktop partition (a hidden partition on almost every thinkpad harddisk that helps with system recovery and can be accessed through BIOS).

I was once a Thinkpad salesperson and support specialist and to my knowledge all ThinkPad hard drives are interchangeable - it's really no big deal to change hard disks on a ThinkPad.

patteo:
IMO, by "proprietary things" your co-op vendor was referring to IBM Preload Desktop partition (a hidden partition on almost every thinkpad harddisk that helps with system recovery and can be accessed through BIOS).

I was once a Thinkpad salesperson and support specialist and to my knowledge all ThinkPad hard drives are interchangeable - it's really no big deal to change hard disks on a ThinkPad.
-Wordzilla (August 24, 2007, 05:42 AM)
--- End quote ---
Thanks for your thoughts.

So if I understand it, the standard SATA should still work. Only thing is that I probably cannot perform a system recovery by accessing this hidden partition which is no big deal to me anyway as I prefer to load all my various needed software make all the necessary settings, update all the patches before I make an image (say with Acronis True Image before corruption sets in). So if need be, I will just restore this image (with its pristine state). I won't need to restore it to the factory condition stage which is probably too raw for me anyway.

patteo:
Because I don't know about Lenovo harddisks, but in case you need a plan b: DriveImage Xml, create a full image of the vista system, back it up somewhere, then put xp on it.

DriveImage XML is free and should allow you to restore it on the drive.
-justice (August 24, 2007, 05:18 AM)
--- End quote ---

Thanks Justice for the heads up on DriveImage XML. I will also check it out.

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