Shedding Some Light » Laptop upgrades http://rickschummer.com/blog2 Shedding some light on topics of software development, Visual FoxPro, saving our planet, paying it forward, and anything else I find important enough to share. Thu, 19 Mar 2026 20:55:26 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.3 Lenovo ThinkPad Hard Drives http://rickschummer.com/blog2/2007/06/lenovo-thinkpad-hard-drives/ http://rickschummer.com/blog2/2007/06/lenovo-thinkpad-hard-drives/#comments Tue, 26 Jun 2007 09:33:00 +0000 Rick Schummer http://rickschummer.com/blog2/2007/06/lenovo-thinkpad-hard-drives/ Yesterday I was talking to a Lenovo/IBM Technician because I want to know what type of hard drive is in my laptop. I want to purchase a backup drive in case this one fails (part of my disaster recovery plan). The technician tells me I have a SATA drive. Great, MicroCenter is selling a Western Digital 200GB SATA laptop drive for US$60. I was floored by the price so I plan to buy two of them and increase the storage on my machine by 80GB. I need the room. {g}

Then she asks me why I want to know. I explain my requirements to have a back up drive. She goes off for a minute to do something and comes back with “the best drive we have is a 100GB 7200 rpm drive.”

No thanks IBM. She then tells me I have to purchase an IBM Drive because my Lenovo Z61P laptop only takes IBM components. What?!? Seriously?!? I ask her what the deal is, and what is it that possessed Lenovo to architect a laptop to only accept IBM components? Was she pulling my leg? I told her if this is true it is the last Lenovo laptop I am purchasing, period. She could not give me the exact details of why the laptop requires an IBM drive. In fact, I believe she does not know what she is talking about and is reading some script. Stoopid. She said the same thing about memory and I already put in third party memory into a Lenovo laptop.

Do you have a recent or not so recent ThinkPad, and have you upgraded your hard drive?

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