$Id: hard-drive.html,v 1.1 1997/12/27 19:41:01 dgaudet Exp $

Upgrading/Replacing the 560 Hard Drive

Note: I assume no responsibility for lost data or damages as a result of using the information on this page. You're on your own.

The Thinkpad 560 takes any 2.5", 12.5mm IDE hard drive. Folks have used models from Toshiba and IBM with success. I previously reported that hibernation didn't work with the Toshiba drives, but someone has stated they have it working. It could have been a BIOS issue. Note that these are slim drives, the more common models are 19mm tall, be careful what you order. I believe IBM announced availability of a 3Gb model in the 12.5mm form-factor.

For details on how to do the physical disassembly, and replacement you should just visit the hardware maintenance manual. It'd be foolish for me to reproduce the steps here.

The main details that I want to go over here are the re-installation of software on the new harddrive. Let me first say that there's no free win95 backup utility that I'm happy with, mind you I didn't look far. I decided just to blow away everything. I happen to have a win95 CDROM handy, so I chose not to make copies of any of the win95 disks from my original hard drive. You also don't need to make copies of any of the IBM Thinkpad disks because you can find them all online at IBM's website (I can't give an exact link because IBM keeps changing the links around).

Here's a roughly chronological order of steps: