Thinkpads Forum

I have been doing many clones with sata to sata (ultrabay) and back stuff on any of my SATA only thinkpads with no problem. Can not do this with R52 using generic ultrabay containing PATA-SATA bridge adapter yet booted up OS accessing HD data no problem resting in that generic ultrabay adapter? One more thing cloned HD resting in the caddy also will not boot as well.

If I cannot do this, I would have to brute force using a motherboard with PATA connector but this is annoying to set up a computer again when need comes, I prefer doing this on notebook. Also cannot find a PATA-PATA "ultrabay" caddy made for older thinkpads, based on male connector on ebay, all I find are common female connector.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

The way that I've been cloning ThinkPads is as follows:

a) Insert the "source" drive (the one that you're making a clone of) into an USB adapter.

b) Install the "target" (blank) drive in the main HDD bay.

c) Boot Clonezilla and follow the prompts.

I haven't had a failed/non-bootable clone using this method. Obviously, YMMV.

Tried that. No luck. I think this USB 3.0 2 in 1 external enclosure has a compatibility problem particularly to cloning. The design of this enclosure is based on 2 bridges chipsets. One USB to SATA chipset and SATA signals tied to the Jmicron JM20330 SATA-PATA bridge.

How can I find a PATA-only USB adapter or enclosure? Ajkula86, what is your pata only usb adapter is based on?

The weapon of choice is partition magic with clone utility. Very reliable on sata based computers and quick. All out there with cloning software are usually self-paced slower due to trial-ware, personal info needed to use, limited features. Clonezilla and Partition Magic are opensource and based on linux but latter is ease of use and powerful.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection

thinkpadcollection wrote: How can I find a PATA-only USB adapter or enclosure? Ajkula86, what is your pata only usb adapter is based on?

Heh...I don't have one anymore so I really can't answer that question. The only non-SATA ThinkPad in my possession is A31p, and it's perfectly capable - as I'm sure you know - of cloning itself...

The weapon of choice is partition magic with clone utility.

I'm a bit stumped on why it doesn't work...more than a bit, really.

My approach would likely be to find a PATA ThinkPad without a SATA bridge and attempt cloning in that environment, if you believe that it's the bridge(s) that are giving you grief...

While technically T43 is SATA, it has IDE ports for the HDD and Ultrabay even though I'm pretty sure you did SATA mod. Also some systems like NT4 and Windows 2000 will simply refuse to work under most circumstances after cloning and call it BSOD of Inaccessible Boot Device
XP is a bit better, 7 and up are very likely to work even though you may lose the license and the ACPI sometimes malfunctions if the two models are too different

Update: SUCCESS!

Macirum Reflect ver 6.x did the trick, this one used a intelligent copy and can boot ultrabay as well. Negative is must install this software on same computer. And good news is this is a free download, no registration and full speed. I prefer to do offline cloning which clonezilla and P.W. minitool does. But I have no idea if there are another offline clone with intelligent copy design out there?

I was mistaken for name of Partition magic, the correct name is Partition Wizard bundled with minitool clone. Works best on all SATA only and not cross platform like using another machine to do it then transfer drive to another. Also even on same thinkpad like R52 for example will fail due to poorly handled LBA translations that trips up dumb cloners. Use Macirum Reflect for this odd problem. Before trying Reflect program dragged together another computer on the table using P5K motherboard's PATA-PATA clone even PATA-SATA and back did not work out.

Muttering.

Cheers, thinkpadcollection