Changing HDD on T43p

Is there a possibility to change original 80GB (5400rpm) HDD with one bigger and faster, like 160GB (7200rpm)? Does T43p supports bigger HDDs?

 

100GB is the largest 7200RPM IDE hard drives at the moment, with none larger likely coming. They command a bit of a premium since they are no longer being produced. This may be of interest to you.

 

New T400 comes with 160GB 7200rpm HDD (optionally).

But, thanks anyway for link!

Regards!

 

That's because they use a different connector. IDE, which is what older notebooks use, are no longer being produced.

 

The T400 (as well as T61, x200, etc.) use a SATA interface. Conversely, your T43p uses a PATA interface.

All of the current high capacity drives are SATA based. Therefore, you will have trouble upgrading.

 

There's a WD 320GB made for PATA interface, sold at Newegg, it's even faster than the last 100GB 7200rpm except of access times.

 

Bigger hard drives aren't a problem. It's modifying the firmware of the drive so it will be accepted by the T43's BIOS so you don't have to put up with the boot error, which is detailed in ZaZ's link. That said, I'm sure that the current generation of 5400rpm laptop drives have done a better job of closing the gap to the first generation of 7200rpm laptop drives and are much faster than the generation of 5400s that came with the T43. It's just a matter of making them work.

 

I just saw it. It's good WD is serving the older market. If you are only doing Office and internet, there's no need to upgrade from a Pentium M.

 

Any proof for such 'radical' statement?

 

There's two measurements which determine how fast a drive is. One is the throughput, how much data can be put the system per second. The second is the seek times, how fast data can be found. Some larger 5400RPM drives do have faster throughput than smaller 7200RPM drives, but it is the seek times where 7200RPM drives shine and what makes them seem faster even if the throughput is not as fast.