I worked the whole day trying to make this kingspec pata ssd work on my old T43. But my T43 just doesn't recognize it, when sliding into the PATA slot. In bios->startup->boot HHD0 has no information ( when the old disk plugged in, it shows the disk name.). The SSD should be a good one since if I connect it to a IDE->USB adapter, my desktop can recognize it. Someone said the controller of this SSD is not good. By the way, I updated the bios to 1.29, still didn't work.

Has anyone successfully put a PATA SSD in your T43? Any input is appreciated.

Welcome to the forum!

Is the drive properly positioned in the caddy, facing down, secured with all four screws and HD cover,?

I think so. I even took out the caddy and just plugged the ssd into the slot. I felt the pins of ssd was well contacted with the holes on the laptop.

When I was in the bios, the blank for HHD0 had nothing there. It's quite possible that the contact was sort of loose.

I just contacted the seller. and the seller contacted the manufacturer. It's said that T43 might have two versions of motherboard chip. One supports ssd the other doesn't. However, this is just a guess. they are not sure either.

What Can I do? My purpose of doing this is to gain some speed because my laptop has a 5400RPM hard disk which is 6 years old. Would a PATA 7200RPM hard disk give the similar performance as this SSD?

How about this one?
http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-2-5-Hitachi-60G ... 3362d66a80


thanks a lot!

You either have a bad connection or a bad SSD.

Any T43 will support a SSD, even machines much older than it have no problems with them...

I don't know where the bad connection could be.

Bad ssd? not likely since it can be recognized when I put it into a hard disk enclosure.

That doesn't rule out a bad SSD. I have a 2 GB DoC SSD that absolutely refuses to work in an external enclosure but works just great when plugged directly in. The fun part about flaky hardware is that it can basically be black magic as to why/how it fails...

The "bad connection" I was referring to is most likely between the drive itself and machine.

If you're not seeing a "2010 error" on boot, the machine is not recognizing the drive, which may be caused by one of three reasons:

a) Drive not inserted properly/fully.

b) Drive defective.

c) Soutbridge chip on the board failing - but this would prevent the machine from recognizing *any* drive, not just the SSD.

Good luck.

a) is most likely. Let me give another try and report back.

thanks

i have a similar problem with my T43. Not using an SSD though, just an ordinary 'IBM approved' drive. Some HDD will work fine, others have to be propped up so that a connection is made with the interface. Of course with an HDD you can hear it spin up, an SSD as we all know is trickier.

Does anyone have any experience reloading the IBM recovery disc set FRESH onto the Kingspec SSD in T43?

I do have the 2010 error passage saying my HDD is not approved by IBM and may have compatibility issues. But the BIOS recognizes the SSD.

However, after loading the whole set of recovery discs, total 8, after reboot and continue, I got a message saying it cannot recovery the system and stopped, giving no error code or hint of what might be wrong. I had loaded these things 2 to 3 times already, nothing changed.

My questions are
1. Do I have to format the drive first? It doesn't seem that's necessary as that should have been accounted for. Or it should have tell me during the process.
2. Is there a way to see what is in the SSD?
3. I am hitting a wall, any suggestion to work around this?

Thanks

Have you tried switching the mode in bios config from Compatibility to ACHI (or from ACHI to Compatibility)?

I found this about a blue screen when booting a new install of windows, and although it is not the same situation, maybe it applies to your recovery?

"If you load win in compatibility mode it will run with out any sata drivers. Is the performance drastically effected? not sure. There is usually no reason to keep a sata drive running in compat mode though, that is more for diag or legacy type systems or older IDE drives. If you find that you installed xp for example in compat mode then you will need to download your sata drivers and install them then reboot your system. When you reboot you will need to switch your mode back to "AHCI" or you will get the BSOD. I just wanted to make sure you know you dont have to reload your system if you have this problem. Just update the drivers and then change the mode in the bios to "AHCI" then your good to go. I did this on a test machine just to verify before posting.

The moral of this story is "dont load your os in compatiblity mode". Just get your drivers when you do your initial install of xp or use nlite as suggested. The following is straight out of the support doc for the sata drivers:

NOTES A Blue Screen error will come up on the Windows preload when these models boot with "Compatible" mode instead of "AHCI" that is modified from the BIOS Setup/ Config/Serial SATA menu. This is caused by an absence of a compatible driver on the Windows preload. Stay "AHCI" mode when you boot Windows preload.

T43 and prior PATA-driven models do not have AHCI/Compatibility setting in BIOS.

My guess is that OP has a bad disk in his/hers recovery set.

oops

No wonder I couldn't find the Compatibility/AHCI mode in my BIOS. Thanks ajikee!

IBM for some reason sent me multiple sets of discs. I hope you are right. I will try a different set and hope the sets are from different batch.

Thanks to both of you!

BTW, how do I check for bad disc? May be pop it into a different machine and see if it reads. But that's all I can do. If the files contain error, I have no way of knowing.

Did you find a resolution of your problem ?
I try to put TRANSCEND 64GB SSD into my T41 with same resultat, BIOS does not recognized the SSD.

I have the same problem with the Transcend 64GB IDE SSD in my X32. If I set the jumpers to Master or Slave, I get the 0200 Fixed Disk Error. If I leave the jumper off (cable select), I show no drive in the BIOS.

Funny thing is, I can boot using a Ubuntu 11.10 USB drive, and successfully installs to the 64GB drive. However, on reboot, it's gone (from a BIOS perspective.... which is usually pretty important ).

Most of the threads I read were related to IDE to CF adapters. However, I do not use one of those. I have the TS64GSSD25-M IDE drive. I'd love to hear the fix!

Thanks,
T.J.

Folks:

The Transcend-PATA SSD "0200 disk error" seems related to a new (erroneous?) Transcend FW; see the thread T43 Installed Transcend SSD observations **PICTURE LINKS***... in particular this post.

The solution in the Transcend-case?? I am not sure; perhaps try to revert to an earlier Transcend-FW if possible/available? Ask user scr71822 for his advice/suggestions.

I have no idea about why the Kingspec does not work (but I recall having read many users' compalins about Kingspec SSD's...)

Johan

I once bought a used Kingspec SSD for my T40, to which I cloned the old HDD after having done a full reinstall first. Pretty much the same happened (in my case "no boot disk") but after much grief, I randomly decided to wipe the disk (with Active Killdisk, there are others), cloned it again and voila!, it worked.

Dunno if that would help in this case, but you never know...

Incidentally, I replaced the Kingspec with a Transcend when the Kingspec died on me, which actually did work right away.

I gave up f...g around with it, spent close to a week on it all together. Tried everything, low level format, new recovery discs, etc. Returned the sh_t to China. Guess what? It costed me close to 40 bucks for Express International Mail, that's the ONLY way to have tracking period. My drive was the 120g version.

The dealer at first offered to split the shipping cost. But guess what, when I inquired about it, they sent me something short in chinese writing I guess. I don't know what it is, my computer can't display it, but it can't be good.

Lessons learned:
1. Don't buy from dealer overseas
2. Don't buy Kingspec. There were tell tale signs that company is not thorough. They just dumped the QC tag in there, things that need to be labeled, etc. they skipped it.
3. Don't buy products had been proprietized. I guess IBM deliberately locked out other HDDs, they want to limit people calling in for tech support. I can hear them saying, "It is a non approved drive, its your problem."

While I understand your frustration, let's be clear about one thing here: so-called "non-approved" drives work in T43/p units. They throw an error and continue booting. You were dealing with a dud SSD and that issue has absolutely nothing to do with IBM...

This post was brought to you by a SATA-modded T43p running on a non-approved Crucial SSD...

I wouln't go so extreme, I agree that such a big distance is a risk and may be extra costs if you need to return a product. But I have bought several parts from Ebay (mostly Chinese seller), including ZIF hard drives and about 95% have been good deals.This I agree, but I also have to point out that a little search in this forum would have been useful. Feedback on those drives are "mixed", to put it positively I agree with Ajkula66 about the "non-approved" drives. I also have a non approved drive in my T43p, and my X41's are also using "non-approved" drives. In all cases the "non approved" work better than with the "approved"

I just updared my thread about the Transcend line of drives which share the msame controllers as the Kingspec. After a firmware update the drives never worked again and any subsequent updates didn't work either including the new 320 series PATA drive. After 4 returns I gave up and requested a SATA III SSD as replacement. The R&D team is really dropping the ball on the old PATA stuff, and I guess that is to be expected since it is a very small market for them compared to the SATA drives.

Steve

I just bought one of these for the family T43p ! expected delivery today.. I had high hopes for a faster drive than the 6 - 7 year old hard drive that died, now I'm really thinking of just sending it back, is there anyone else out there successfully running a kingspec with their T43?

I bought a cheap Sunspeed PATA SSD just for the test from ebay and while it was recognized in Ultrabay adapter, my T42p did not see it. Problem was solved by adding a jumper to the drive in a Master position and it worked tight away.

Some drives need it, the Ultrabay adapter connector accepted the Master/Slave pins and made the adjustment, while T4x PATA connector leaves these pins loose (connector is not long enough).

Thanks for the tip raceboy, will grab a jumper.

Well add me to the kingspec fails, put drive into bay booted into bios and its not recognised, FWIW bios is on 1.24 and Embedded controller is on 1.04, I've tried to upgrade the bios (I dont have a running hard drive so no windows OS) and have tried windows on a hirens boot disk but keep getting a resource error message..

Is it worth carrying on with it or should I just give up and get a 1.8SSD.

Well I had so much fun with this drive this weekened, talk about a learning curve! turned out the laptop had the incorrect caddy so couldn't get a connection, then it wouldn't load from boot so ended up running a dban and full windows format, as far as I know these are all problems from the person in the chair (i.e. ME) the drive is looking very good and its loading windows fast.. but the system looks like it has other underlining issues...for another thread..