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IBM Lenovo T61 Thinkpad - a standard SATA harddisk cannot be used ? Is this true
patthecat:
A question that should be asked is whether or not the notebook takes an ATA or SATA (Serial ATA) interface on the harddrive. Take a look at newegg.com for "notebook harddrive" and you'll see references for SATA drive indicating "Notebook compatibility: SATA interface only".
iphigenie:
We have lenovos and we swap hard drives around all the time - there's the original windows drive, the linux drive, the windows-for-games drive etc.
You should also be able to request the recovery partition on CDs. They don't send them always by default, which is strange since if the drive fails you want the CDs!!!
f0dder:
Also keep in mind that you will be wanting a notebook sata harddrive, not a regular 3.5" model :P
johnfdeluca:
Disclaimer: I work for IBM that used to make ThinkPads before it sold that business to Lenovo. So I am biased but I swear by ThinkPads.
That said, you should be able to replace the hard drive easily....Ive done it many times to start from scratch. The "proprietary" stuff is just partition for Rescue & Recovery, and the "Airbag" like feature....perhaps some others but neither are necessary for operation (though they have saved my butt on more than one occasion). Check carefully as many ThinkPads still have IDE 2.5" HDD (though I know X series now have SATA).
iphigenie:
and you can get the recovery partition from Lenovo on a CD.
The stuff that is installed on your original hard drive will be an exact image, the one used to install your machine in the first place, which makes it very quick to get your machine back to how it was on its first day should things get messed up. Depending on the recovery software you can even update or backup that image.
Of course it doesnt help if the whole drive dies, so there are also recovery CDs - you get these instead of official windows CDs with oem systems nowadays. They will reinstall the OS and most utilities, although might be missing some software you might have gotten as part of the package installed on your machine (these would be on your HD image but might not be on the generic recovery CD)
Just insist you get these CDs as part of your purchase, as there is a strange trend lately not to supply them. If the vendor says "but you have it on a partition on disk" go "what if the disk dies or someone steals the disk?" (drive-only theft can happen with swappable disks!). There is no excuse not to supply either the installation disks for all the software, os, drivers which are included in the system, or a recovery CD/DVD which contains an image containing all the above.
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