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On Thu, 14 Aug 97 01:55:18 +0300, Dominique Pivard wrote: >On Wed, 13 Aug 1997 at 08:00 AM you, "Robert W. King" <rwking@ipa.net>, >said: > >>I've more or less decided to upgrade my 701CS to a 2.1 gig hard drive >>presuming I can find one for a price I can afford. The problem is >>identifying vendors who sell the things. I would also be looking for >>some means of making use of the present 540 meg drive. I've flipped >>through the portable computing and laptop magazines and found them >>remarkably free of ads for laptop replacement drives. Any suggestions? > >There seems to be huge difference in prices. Among the "specialists", >Roadwarrior is asking $855 for a 2.1GB drive that suits the TP701 >(warrior.com/arihd/ibm.html) and PEP is asking $524 for a 2.1GB Toshiba >drive. My understanding is that the above prices include a caddy. > >I made inquiries with local resellers here in Finland and I was surprised >to see I could get much lower prices for the naked drives (without a >caddy). The Toshiba 2.1GB was FIM 2100 ($380 at current exchange rates) >and the IBM 2.1GB FIM 2300 ($420). The Finnish prices include VAT (our >sales tax) 22%, which means comparable prices are even lower ($310 and >$340 respectively). Given that the US market is usually more competitive >than the European ones, I'd expect you should find a 2.1GB Slimline drive >for around $300 in the US. > >I chose the IBM drive because I could get it the following day (and it >wasn't that much more expensive than the Toshiba). In all truth, this is >probably not a "real" IBM drive, because the label on it says "Made for >IBM in Thailand". Anyway, the IBM drive is very well documented >(http://www.storage.ibm.com.:80/storage/oem/data/trav4lp.htm) and it is >used in a popular current model (the TP560). > >I had chosen to use the existing caddy (which hosted a 360MB drive) and >this was the most difficult part in the process: first of all I had to >find a Torx T6 screwdriver, which wasn't that easy; then I noticed the >holes on the side of the new drive were located differently compared to >the old drive. So I had to use a precision drill set to make 4 new holes >in the caddy; this was somewhat tricky for a non-technical person like me, >because the heads of the screws were V-shaped and had to be below the >surface of the caddy (which otherwise couldn't be inserted in the TP). >Based on the advice of a fellow list member, I teared the plastic film off >the old drive and wrapped the new drive in it: besides protecting it, it >also made the drive very quiet (and quiet it is indeed!). > >Once I put the drive with caddy back in place, everything went smoothly, >although the BIOS reports a wrong size for it. I have now Warp 3 Connect >installed in one half and I'm currently installing Linux RedHat in the >other half. > >Based on a few days' experience, I can recommend the IBM drive but I'm >sure the Toshiba would work as well. I think the price charged by the >specialists for a drive with caddy is much too high for what a caddy >really is. > >Dominique >-- >----------------------------------------------------------- >Dominique Pivard <domi@kenavo.fi> >Helsinki, Finland >----------------------------------------------------------- > > I heard rumors that ALL IBM notebook drives are made by Toshiba, but I think that if that's true, it's just the ones that say "Made for", rather than "Made by", because it would be misleading. Paul