Runs cool & SUPER reliable-best & biggest Seagate PATA/IDE Drive available!
Recommend these highly! Bought 2 of these years ago to replace some failing 80GB Hitachi's in my four IBM T42 laptops. The Hitachi's were always flaky, ran hot, kept developing bad sectors. Had to run SpinRite on the Hitachi's repeatedly, which did fix them, but only until the next time.
These Seagate drives have performed flawlessly, fast, smooth, quiet, cool and reliable. Run at about 95~105 F, vs. the Hitachi's at 105~122 F! They read and write faster too.
Most important, they are SUPER reliable! The two I bought a few years ago have over 7,000 and 13,700 hours on them respectively (I leave my laptop on a lot), and have yet to see any problems whatsoever!
I understand that Western Digital makes bigger PATA models, but I've never tried them myself, and I think they are quite a bit more expensive. Also, I believe 160GB is the max my T42 can see. While not as cheap as their SATA counterparts, these Seagate 160GB drives are great value to max out your older PATA laptop, provided it can see the whole drive. It'll speed up the whole laptop, make it feel almost twice as responsive!
About these drives in my T42 laptops, these are the biggest Seagate Parallel-IDE drives you can get for them. They work without any problems at all.
The only problem is if you own some "IBM FACTORY RESTORE" CDs, they don't quite work right with the big drive, but I've discovered a workaround:
1: Install the 160GB drive, and make sure it's blank,
2: Create a 60GB "Linux" partition at the end of the drive,
3: Run IBM Restore - i.e. boot off the 1st CD,
4: Done.
The IBM restore program works on ~80gb drives, so if you use up some space to make the new 160GB drive appear 'smaller', it works!
End result is normal, with a 155GB XP System partition, and a 5GB IBM Service Partition at the end of the drive. The "Linux" partition is deleted automatically.
Just bought 2 more of these to replace the other Hitachi drives in my T42's.
Hope this helps someone - Cheers!Read full review
