Replacing an old hard drive in an IBM thinkpad

jcs1987 · 10 Apr 2006 at 14:57

Im going to be upgrading an old IBM thinkpad 390X with a new hard drive the old hard drive was an IBM Travelstar 6.49GB. I was hopin 2 get a 40 Gb hard drive. but i read somewhere that upgrading an older laptop with a new hard drive can be a problem and special software is needed to make it work does anyone know of anything like this and could someone suggest a decent hard drive please?

rpstewart · 10 Apr 2006 at 15:28

Yikes 390X, that's going back a wee bit. Just pulling up the Hardware Maintenance Manual now, back in a few for a swit edit...

EDIT: OK, it's a 1999 vintage machine so I'm not sure if a 40Gb would be a goer, it may be limited to 32Gb by the BIOS. Originally the machine only shipped with a 12Gb disk max so no clues there.

A 40Gb will certainly fit, you'll need to remove the current disk from the cage and replace it with the new one. Not sure if the machine will only recognise the first 32Gb or if it'll fail to recognise anything. A 30Gb disk might be a safer option but I'm not sure of availablity of 30s these days.

jcs1987 · 10 Apr 2006 at 15:55

yeah i was thinking that but i read somewhere but cant remember where that it is possible to upgrade to higher capacity hard drives with the use of software have you any clues on that

rpstewart · 11 Apr 2006 at 09:35

I have a vague recollection of getting a floppy with some of my previous HDD upgrades to allow you to use the full capacity of the drive in some PCs but I can't remember what it was or how it worked.

I've had another trawl through the service documentation and there's no reference of any HDD options above 12GB but that's just what IBM said in 2001 - there haven't been any updates to the documents since then. Googling suggests that there are plenty of folk selling 40Gb upgrades for 390Xs but I don't know if they're internal or Ultrabay drives.

jcs1987 · 11 Apr 2006 at 19:17

thanks any way im keepin an eye on some 12gb travelstar hard drives on ebay with luck i should get 1

james32 · 11 Apr 2006 at 21:25

should take upto a 30gb no problem, my mate had that laptop and had a 20gb in his

Ogbyte · 12 Apr 2006 at 11:00

I've just upgraded my Thinkpad 770 with a 20GB hd after the original 5GB died. I'd previously tried a 30GB fujitsu which also worked without issues.

System is now running XP pro with 220MB RAM

Ogbyte