I second that! What's up with all these 1802 1803 2010 crap?

It's *****Expletives removed by Moderator***** if you ask me.

I guess they forgot that little piece of US Consumer law which makes it ILLEGAL to "tie" products together with the sole intention of creating a monopoly and blocking competition.

Now if the IBM hard drives had some special wiz-bang security chip which worked in conjunction with the onboard security chip, then yeah, I'd understand. But forcing us to buy the EXACT same hard drive (minus one changed byte of data in the id string) appears to cross the line. Especially since their prices are grossly inflated.

Get rid of the White List IBM!

Unfortunately we are going to start seeing more and more of this sort of thing, and not just from IBM.

It all goes back to TCPA and being able to put the machine in a "trusted" state. Under TCPA the machine needs to be able to determine if the HDD firmware is trustworthy - i.e. not mucked with, hacked, patched, etc. IBM/Lenovo is not about to compile a list of the latest and greatest firmware version for every possible HDD on the market - that would be a huge task that would be obsolete the day before it was published. So they just focus on the drives they brand.

Barring a massive consumer revolt this thing is going to be crammed down our throats, and our computers are going to become a lot more like our cars - muck with anything and you'll fail inspection.

Ed Gibbs

Is this a T43 specific issue? I just picked up a 100GB Seagate drive, that I haven't opened up yet, for my T42.

It currently, AFAIK, seems to be present in the T43/T43p bios v1.03 and newer. I haven't heard anything about the whitelist being in the T42's, but it very well could *****Expletives removed by Moderator***** itself in the next T42 bios release.

Hey guys,
I just dropped an e-mail to my IBM/Lenovo PR guy. I'll let you know if I hear anything about this

Yup, T42 is not affected, at least for now.

Whether new T42 firmware will get the hdd check is probably not a big deal for most users. T42 firmware seems stable to me. After 10 months I am still running the factory firmware 3.06f.

I put a new OEM Hitachi HGST548080M9AT0 into my T43p, if you buy a 80gb HDD from IBM all you get is same HDD made by Hitachi with same manufacturer's part number, an extra sticker with IBM FRU/ASM.

I'm getting 2010 warning and even IBM put a check so I can't update the firmware. I even tried changing checksum to replace my firmware version with so called IBM's approved firmware. there is some other check that prevents it.

Now I'm on BIOS 1.03 for time being utill either IBM or hitachi solves this problem.

This is crazy.

It is nothing to do with TCPA.

ThinkPad T43 has the serial ATA interface for HDD but HDDs in the T43 are still using the Parallel ATA interface. There is a serial-to-parallel bridge chip on the planar. Because of the bridge chip, some applications which use specific ATA commands do not work on the T43, if non-supported HDDs are used instead of ones are originally installed.

If you are using non-IBM / non-Lenovo HDD or old generation IBM HDD which is not supported by this system in the primary drive bay, with the risk in mind, you can still use the drive by pressing ESC. If you are using supported IBM / Lenovo HDD with old HDD firmware in the primary drive bay, you need to update its firmware to the latest.

More info:
http://www-3.ibm.com/pc/support/site.ws ... MIGR-60169

Unacceptable

EDIT But thanks for the link

Okay I can buy this, but only to a point. if the drive I am using presents compatibility issues, then this is a message I want to see-- but only until I decide to make it go away. there absolutely needs to be a "don't show this again" check box, or a way to disable this message in future releases of the bios. I wouldn't even mind if they put in some sort of legal stipulation that by disabling the message, you agree to free IBM of any responsibility for damages, lost data etc etc...

--Al

fbrdphreak do you hear anything in response to your email.

From what n3il wrote , the particular chip which is converting from SATA to Parallel ATA is not doing a good job. May be this needs to be corrected instead of forcing firmwares on HD's and trying to find easy fixes.

Also it seems like a lame excuse because the hard disks in question here are from the same manufacturer ( Hitachi in my case), and are coming out of the same manufacturing facility. Hardware wise they are exactly identical. So the question of not being able to use specific ATA commands should not arise with identical firmware. Blocking certain firmwares specific to sale channel, makes no sense at all, unless if hitachi has a policy which says you got to have the same firmware level throughout the life of the product with which it left the factory !.

If they use this excuse for Western digital, seagate or others, yeah there is some room for beliving this logic.

No response as of yet. I will keep trying and we'll get an answer to this

hi all,

I am also having this same problem so I have been spurred to actually register and post rather than continue to passively read...

I am a student (read: limited income) who purchased a 2669-C4U in part with aspirations of dual-booting out of the extra harddrive bay (which I was lucky enough not to have back-ordered) off of my pre-existing harddrive from a previous machine. (planned to wipe the old drive and do a fresh Linux install, leaving the Thinkpad XP drive alone.)

The drive is an E7K60 (not 7K60), model# HTE726040(M9AT00), which is not on IBM's supported firmware upgrade list because it has never been put in one of their machines. It is the 40gig version of the 60gig, 7200rpm Hitachi that IBM provides in some Thinkpads.

First hint of a problem was when I put the drive in the add-on bay and asked the BIOS to boot from it; I got a single blinking cursor. If I put it in the main bay, I get a "you need to update your HDD firmware"-type error, and upon bypassing the message with ESC, then get the blinking cursor again.

Am a bit peeved that, according to others in this site, I can't even buy the identical part# from a non-IBM distributor (such as the 60 gig 7K60) and expect it to work, due ot the issue N3il mentioned with the ATA interface.

So, I made what I thought was an intelligent purchasing decision given my requirements and it is now appearing that I will have to hack together another dual-boot-on-same-drive option (which always gives me issues), a major reason I went for the extra bay in the first place.

Suggestions? Of course, I called tech support and got the expected circular logic over why IBM wouldn't have updates for a drive it complains should have such updates, while said drive works perfectly well in other machines (irritation is being nurtured by revelation by N3il that this has to do with screwy work-arounds by IBM, and that I spent several hours scouring the web for "firmware updates" that the error message implied must exist).

thanks,

-Jeff

PS forgot to say "thanks for once again being more useful than the people paid to know this kind of info", I've gotten helpful information off this forum in the past.

Does this mean as long as the harddrive is not the one from IBM (IBM sticker on it), T43 with newest bios version will have that error message when boot? If that's the case, may be we should change the topic name to address this (not only 100gb) to make it more useful as a sticky

I'm searching pricegrabber.com and found IBM 60gb(7k60) part number 08K0939. Is this the one from IBM and supported in new bios? I cannot find anything about this part number in IBM website.

The only 60gb that i could find in IBM website is 92P6550/92P6551

Thanks for all the great information on this forum.
My understanding from the discussion is that any notebook hard disc will work in the Ultra bay slim device.
It will also work when installed as the primary hard drive but an error message appears which requires the escape key to be hit during restart. Can someone confirm if this is correct.
Cheers John

John,

as far as I can tell, this is correct.

After posting my previous message (see above) I went ahead and ignored the issues I was having and just installed Linux on the drive (inserted into the main bay, using the DVD in the other bay for installation media).

The drive was also able to boot from the extra bay just fine, and because there is not error message from that bay (only the main bay), you wouldn't even know that there's a potential issue.

Any notebook harddrive will work in the extra bay - before I installed Linux on that drive, it had XP on it from my old laptop and I was dragging important files off it via the extra bay.

Perhaps I shouldn't have expected my old XP install to boot correctly when installed in the Thinkpad, but I expected more progress than the blinking cursor - the series of events that occured after that (warning messages, etc) made me second guess going through the trouble of doing a Linux install on the drive b/c I figured I had a more fundamental problem with getting the drive to boot. I should've just tried it in the first place.

Now, if only I could get X to recognize my minidock DVI port (works in XP, of course).

-Jeff

I had an interesting conversation with my Rep today. I explained that I was interested in exchanging my T43p for a T42p because of fan noise. I also mentioned to him about the T43 BIOS getting updated past 1.03 wihch forced the machine to check to see if an IBM/Lenovo hard drive was installed. This was another point that I was making that might sway me towards a T42. He had not heard of this change in the BIOS, and could not believe it. He said that he was personally going to look into this and let me know why this was being done. He said that one of the main selling points that he offers to customers is that IBM/Lenovo does not us proprietory equipment and 'force' the customer into using a specific device (hard drive in this instance). He said, "We may not support the other equipment, but at least you can use it if you so desire." Obviously, something has changed. He was noticably peaved at the move, though.

I'll relay any information that he can provide me in the future.

Thats good, hopefully I know if I ever need more harddrive space I have that capablity.

Can someone link me to the 1.03 bios for a 2668-4DU? Interested in getting this to go away for now, thanks

EDIT I found the link to the 1.03 BIOS, but it can't be found on IBM's site apparently. Anyone have a working link or wanna e-mail me the file? Thanks!

Update for everyone:
My IBM guy replied and said he is waiting on a response from Japan on this issue. Hope to have an official response soon, but knowing IBM it'll take a while

Got a response!!



I will try that for the 7K60 in the T43 I'm using and report back. Everyone else w/third-party drives please try to update the firmware from that manufacturer and let's see what that does. Thanks!

Slight hijack of thread, but maybe of interest to everyone (read: data corruption:


I've used BIOS v1.03 and T42 for half a year, and just had a very serious case of hard drive corruption leading to potential data loss.
Cannot boot into Windows-XP-Pro.
Cannot even boot into Access-IBM (Lenovo, whatever).

IBM repairs said there was nothing physically/electronically wrong with my T42 (and no bad sectors on my HDD).

***Specifically, IBM said that "BIOS v1.03 is documented to potentially corrupt your hard drive". they promptly upgraded my BIOS to the current one 3.xx

anyone else getting a similar experience with BIOS v1.03 ?

Got another response
Me:


Response:


I don't have a floppy in this T43, heck I don't even have a USB one. Anyone care to try this "fix" ?

Fire back, saying that the warning is a good idea for the first boot with that drive, but make it able to be disabled for every boot thereafter (possibly after reading some legalese that says that IBM/Lenovo is not responsible for any damage that this may cause to the hard drive or motherboard).

I asked him that in my last post. There are no plans to integrate such a feature. He believes that updating third-party drives with the latest firmware should do the trick.

PLEASE try that people. If it doesn't, I will see what we can do from there.

Due to noise issues with my T43p, I decided to order a T42p, hoping that things would be different. They are! Not only is the fan noise not a problem, but I'm able to use my 100g Seagate drive without any annoying messages regarding incompatibility!

I just downloaded the most recent version of the BIOS, which is already installed in my machine from the factory, so that I can always go back to it, if IBM/Lenovo changes the T42 BIOS in the future. For now, though, I'm set!

I have a T43p (2669C4U) which came with the 80 GB 5400 RPM drive.
It has all the current updates including the latest bios (at least it does
according to the software Installer version 3.12.0506). Bios is listed
as 1.08 (1YET47WW). Embedded controller version is 1.03

I have a Hitachi HTS726060M9AT00 (7200 RPM) which does NOT
have an IBM sticker (purchased from Bill Morrow in 2003). I put the
drive into the T43p and got the error about the drive possibly not being
compatible. I downloaded the drive firmware update from IBM and
ran it. After that, the T43p boot fine (without error messages) from
the Hitachi 60 GB 7200 RPM drive - it is running Sun Solaris 10 x86.

At some time in the future I'd like to get a larger 7200 RPM drive
to dual boot Windows and Solaris. Anyone successfully using a
7200 RPM drive larger than 60 GB in a T43p with the current bios?

I agree that the fan is a bit noisy but my hearing isn't all it should be.

Thanks,

Stuart

Good to know that a firmware update fixes the problem