R51 (built in 2004) hard drive replacement questions

[blm]

I own a 2004-built IBM Thinkpad R51, machine 2895 type AU3. It's original hard drive is 80 GB in size and may need replacement. Here are my questions about replacement of the drive:

1) How large a replacement drive can I install in it, and is the drive size determined by and stated somewhere in the BIOS?

2) Is a SATA hard drive suitable for my now 8 year old laptop or were hard drives for laptops always SATA no matter the age of the laptop?

3) Can any brand of hard drive go into my laptop?

[My OS is Linux MEPIS 11, variety Roadblock -32 bit.]

Thanks

[ajkula66 Guru]

Your R51 takes PATA/IDE, not SATA hard drives.

The largest PATA laptop drive is WD 320GB/5400rpm which will work just fine in your machine, there is no known BIOS limit on HD size for R5x series.

[blm]

Thanks ajkula66 for your help the other day.

You told me about the largest size HD that would be fine for my 2004-built R51. I assume by largest you meant capacity (i. e. GB) and not spin speed. Yes? Is any hard disk drive spin speed OK for my laptop? My failed/failing one is 4200 RPM and was installed by IBM when the laptop was built. [I figure a faster spinning one will just take a bit more electricity to spin than the one I have now, but I also figure that probably tiny amount is not so important.]

[ajkula66 Guru]

Spin speed is a non-issue here as far as compatibility is concerned. I've had 7200rpm drives in R51s - while those were still available - and the power consumption was fine.

Not that you have much of a choice anyway, since most of the manufacturers have discontinued the production of PATA/IDE laptop drives. WD is pretty much the only game in town nowadays.

Happy upgrading.