Thinkpads Forum

Hello to everyone! This is not a regular HW problem. It's particular in the way that it happened. I have 2 hard drives, that both worked untill I formatted one of them. after the format my TP no longer acknoleges the exsistance of the HD. It kept telling me something like .... No hard disc found on system. This was when I tried to boot from Acronis, so to check Acronis I tried to boot from an original XP Pro installation CD and it gave me the same error. At that point I put my other HD into the TP and booted normally into Windows then connected the faulty HD to a USB dongle and it came up regularly in My Computer. I've tryied at least 4/5 times to switch the th hard drives around but to no avail. The only thing I know is it's not a problem with the TP's interface because the good HD works every time.Has anyone ever had a HD that will work in USB but not in the TP??? How is it possible?

Welcome to the forum.
For a Thinkpad hard drive to function properly, it has to be formatted INSIDE the hard disk drive bay itself, NOT in a USB case or a PC.

Hi RBS, Thanks for the reply. I guess the next question is kind of obvious bur ....... Now that i've "BROKE IT" can it be fixed? I tried to run the Windows XP installation CD hoping that it would see the drive (being that it starts in DOS), but that didn't work. Should I try something like DBan or maybe boot into Linux? If thats the case how should I proceed? I used Linux a few years ago but I defenatly can't say I know my way around. Is there a different post to check to do this? To say it simply ..... I'm LOST!!

Bump .... sorry if I'm anoying, but can anyone tell me if (and how) I can make my hard disc work again?

The simplest way to go about it would be to wipe the drive with DBAN and do a fresh install of XP.

All of the above with the said drive installed in the machine, and NOT in the USB enclosure.

Thanks for the reply .... So basically saying ................. if I run DBan with the Hard Drive that is now not being seen installed in my TP, DBan should see it and enable me to do another wipe. In that way correcting the format that I made from the external USB dongle. GREAT!! I'll try and get back ... Next week ... my TP is at work .

Summery and Results:
OK .... I brought my TP back home. Put in the non-working hard drive and turned it on ..... it says "operating system not found" Goes to say that is correct because I had wiped it out! Next put in a cd (that I have used before) with DBAN on it and re-boot. DBAN loads its kernel and asks me what kind of wipe to do .... A quick one , I told it. screen changes ... it starts and a second later comes up with "DBAN finished with non fatal errors. This is usually caused by disks with bad sectors. Send the log file (which I do not have) with all support requests. I tryied again with various settings (nofloppy, nosilent, autonuke, ect.) then figured it said "DBAN finished with non fatal errors" ..... it said it "finished" so I might as well try to load Windows ..... Put in my Windows CD , it says "verifing hardware configuration", it loaded the kernel and varios drivers then asks what to do, I "told it to re-install windows" so "ENTER". ....
"No hard disc installed on the computer" bla bla bla "press F3 to EXIT"
I'm going to put it back on the external USB and try a SCANDISC to see what it says .....
Any other suggestions are VERY WELCOME!

Don't install anything on that hard drive.

Get a new one.

Bad sectors are bad news...

Hello ajkula66, Thanks for the input!
I would generally AGREE with you completly, but something tells me that the hard drive does not have bad sectors. It was running fine before I formatted it in the external USB case and I'm thinking that some bit was set that confuses programs. I tried to do a SCANDISC
but even that would not work ....." bla bla bla ... do you want to execute SCANDISC at the next startup?" "YES" and after startup nothing would happen. I'm gonna keep at it a little while longer ... not for the money of a new hard drive but because it "URKS" the hell out of me that I can't find a way around this.

RBS is correct if the hard drive is still good.

You can try the following...
1) Perform a so-called low level format on the drive while it is in the ThinkPad drive slot. This is also called zeroing out the drive. Various drive manufacturers have utilities to do this on their own brand of drives.
2) Now do a normal format on the drive while in the ThinkPad drive slot. Do a complete format, not a quick format.
3) Lastly, try to install Windows with the drive in the ThinkPad drive slot.

Let's start with the basics...

1) Place HD in USB enclosure and connect to another known working machine. Can the HD be seen in [Control Panel][Computer Management][Disk Management]? Does it have active partition?

2) Once HD has been determined to be good in another working machine, place HD into your T43p. Power-up T43p and press [F1] for Bios Setup. Does BIOS recognize HD long identification number after HDD 0:?