Can I put any 2.5" IDE HDD into a Thinkpad X31?

sb44

I have a spare IBM Thinkpad X31 that I am going to give to my MIL for basic surfing.

It doesn't have a HDD but has a caddy.

I have seen that CEX have some 2.5" IDE HDD's for about £5 to £8.

Would these be suitable to put in the Thinkpad?

Ta.

GunJack

In a word, yes

kwikbreaks

I'd stick to a smallish hdd as it looks like that machine only came with a 40GB drive which is small by todays standards and a big modern drive could possibly confuse the bios. Apart from that any 2.5 IDE drive should fit assuming the laptop is IDE which it almost certainly will be. You'll be needing to install an operating system obviously and find any drivers that aren't built into it.

sb44

kwikbreaks wrote: »

I'd stick to a smallish hdd as it looks like that machine only came with a 40GB drive which is small by todays standards and a big modern drive could possibly confuse the bios. Apart from that any 2.5 IDE drive should fit assuming the laptop is IDE which it almost certainly will be. You'll be needing to install an operating system obviously and find any drivers that aren't built into it.

I have the original XP Pro and SP 2 disks and the keycode sticker is still on the bottom of the laptop so that should be fine. I will get her the 40GB one then.

Thanks for your help.

NiftyDigits

sb44 wrote: »

I have the original XP Pro and SP 2 disks and the keycode sticker is still on the bottom of the laptop so that should be fine. I will get her the 40GB one then.

Thanks for your help.

I know that I gave you the SP3 image.

zaax

If you put a SSD* in it you may think to keep it yourself

* Solid State Drive

sb44

NiftyDigits wrote: »

I know that I gave you the SP3 image.

I saved the stuff that you gave me a while ago Nifty, thanks very much for that.

I won a job lot of 4 x31's on ebay, think I paid £40 inc postage for them.

Also got a couple more for £5 or so each as I wanted to have a go at stripping them down and swapping bits around.

I am not very well up on these things but watched a few vids and managed to insert wireless cards, replace keyboards etc and got the bug.

Only because they are Thinkpads and seemed to be quite easy to take bits off, otherwise I would be stumped.

Beats asking my husband to have a look at them, he hasn't got a clue.

sb44

zaax wrote: »

If you put a SSD* in it you may think to keep it yourself

* Solid State Drive

I would have to read up on those, only thing I know about them is there may be one in my Acer Aspire One, no moveable parts so withstand knocks (or I think that is what I read somewhere).

sb44

I just found this vid which looks useful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK4GvvQIQfU

GunJack

https://archive.org/details/ibm-service-manual-thinkpad-x30-x31.pdf

this Service Manual may help

sb44

Well, I went to CEX today in the hope of buying a 80GB HDD for £8 but came away without one.

I took the HDD out of my X31 and took a photo before I went.

The ones that they had for sale said SATA on them, mine says ATA/IDE.

Guess I will have to get one via ebay as I don't want to pay a lot for it.