Help With Lenovo T61 HD upgrade?

Greetings friends, I'm new to the boards. I own a company and have both the Lenovo T60 and T61. I wanted to upgrade the HD in both units to 160GB so I bought the two new drives. I have my full set of installation disks for the T60, but after almost five weeks of searching I can't find those for my T61. Now, I don't have any important information or records stored on these laptops, so I'm not worried about losing something I would need for work.

What I would like to know, is how I can install the new HD in my T61, and still be able to use the computer without having to pay for a new set of disks from IBM I would like to be able to keep the correct drivers and everything. Also, I have to say that this will be my first time doing an upgrade myself, as in the past I avoided it because of these kinds of problems. I'd simply buy a new unit. Retirement is not far away, so spending the funds on new computers that don't hardly get used as it is does not make any sense.

I did not try installing the T60 disks on the T61. Are they the same or would that work for me? Also, before I use the T60 disks on the T60 system with a new blank HD, do I need to make or copy anything first? Same question for the T61 I am asking for more help with from someone? Thanks friends, and have a great day/evening. My best to you, and yours. < rr67gto >

 

I doubt the T60 disks will work on the T61. You're talking about the recovery discs, right?

Did you burn recovery disc using R&R on the T61? If so, you can just install a factory image onto the new HDD.

 

If you have an external USB enclosure you can plug your new HDD into your T61 and use some sort of software like Acronis True Image to make an exact copy of your old HDD's contents onto your new HDD. This way you don't have to reinstall everything. BTW enclosures are cheap I got mine for $15.

 

Here is a Windows XP Clean Install Guide: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=188992

For a free replacement to Acronis True Image, you can try using Clonezilla, PartImage, or the tools located on the Ultimate Boot CD (I like g4u). The prompts are relatively easy to understand.

Essentially, the point is to copy one hard drive to the other. At the end of this process, you may need to expand the partition of your main OS drive to fill the entire hard drive. To do this, take a look at Gparted Live CD.

This is most easily accomplished if you have a desktop that can support two SATA drives. Since the SATA connectors for both data and power are the same anywhere you go, just plug them into your hard drives (you can leave the hard drives lying on the ground) and you're good to go. It's relatively easy, and it takes about a day to do a full disk copy.