May 14, 2009
Lenovo Thinkpad X61 hard drive replacement
My just-over-a-year-old Thinkpad's hard drive abruptly started giving a loud "clack clack clack" sound and became unusable. I let it cool down and tried again, only to get the same loud clicking and no boot. Called Lenovo for a replacement drive and a set of disks to restore the system (not supplied with the computer, and I hadn't burned a set since the X61 doesn't have an optical drive), and picked up an external DVD burner in preparation. While waiting for the replacement drive, tried the computer again, and this time it started up fine. Putting an ice pack over the hard drive, I quickly made a full backup to an external hard drive and burned restore disks as well.
Lenovo sent me a used drive as a replacement, and it came screwed into a metal slide that must have been for some other model of notebook. The slide had to be removed before I could install the drive, which was annoying. Then I found that the restore disks from Lenovo didn't work; perhaps not surprising, since they were labeled as being for the older X60 series. Luckily, the boot disk I had burned when my defective drive came back to life worked just fine, and I was then able to do a full restoration of my hard drive and all its contents from the backup.
The procedure was straightforward, but neither the Lenovo website nor extensive Googling gave me definitive, step-by-step instructions -- so here they are, for all of you who may need to replace or want to upgrade your Thinkpad's hard drive:
Use the Thinkvantage Rescue and Recovery utility to make a full system backup to an external hard drive. Go to Start > Programs > ThinkVantage > Create Recovery Media (for XP) and burn recovery disks, if you haven't already. If you have any encrypted partitions, format them after moving their contents elsewhere. Restart and press F1 on startup to go into Setup; change the boot order so that the external DVD/CD drive is on top. Open the tray on your external DVD/CD drive and leave it open. Shut down your computer, disconnect the power cord (none of this should be done on battery power), remove the battery, and do the hard drive swap. Put the battery back in place, put the bootable recovery startup disk in the external DVD/CD drive and close it up and plug it in, and plug in the external HD with your system backup. From here on it's easy. Turn on the power, and the computer should boot to the recovery utility. Follow the instructions, and all should go remarkably quickly. Note that you will not be given the option of restoring from a backup if you start without having plugging in your external HD first -- the only option shown will be a fresh installation of the factory original contents, which of course can be done with the other recovery disk(s) you burned before starting out.
Posted by David on May 14, 2009 7:51 PM
Nice article!! But I would suggest using offsite backup since I lost all my files on my external HDD when it was damaged. That's when I started using Safecopy online backup, www.safecopybackup.com, to backup my files.
With Safecopy I can backup all my files from both my Mac and Pc with just only one account. I can also backup my USB drives and share files as well. I'm very happy with and it's worth checking it.
Posted by: Dobi on May 15, 2009 4:48 AM
One certainly can't be too careful when dealing with critical information. My full-system backups normally alternate between two different external HDs, with the most important stuff getting backed up daily to a USB stick.
In the case of an ordinary HD upgrade, though, you should still have the original HD available with contents intact, so offsite backup would seem to be overkill.
Posted by: David on May 15, 2009 10:49 AM
Excellent piece, but what about the ultimate scare tale: took my Dell into the local repair shop. "Motherboard," says he after diagnostics! Of course that was after a two hour effort to reach Dell tech folks and finally got "B.J in Bombay," alias "David," who managed to tell me that my warranty had expired, but he could help diagnose the problem for a $65 fee. So, off to the local shop, and motherboard diagnoses. "Will order one--not more than $70 bucks or so." "Great," said I. One month later: "Expecting it in any day." "Good," said I. Tw weeks more: "Working onit." "Great," said I. Two weeks more, I drove over--not to far in a small town. "Hmm," said he, "Now where is that computer?" It had sort of gotten misplaced. "Will look for it. Sure it will turn up. Now what name will show on the screen if I turn it on after I find it?"
That was three weeks ago.
Posted by: Donald Wolberg on May 20, 2009 9:03 AM
gmail.com