Thinkpads Forum

Hi,

I do suffer from the same problem. Further more I have big problems with DMA-read timouts using the momentus Seagate harddisk mentioned. From time to time the OS even does not boot in early stage.
About the posts here which mentioned firmware updates of foreign disks: I think IBM/Lenovo make their life very easy. They just forbid us to use seagates or other drives. There will be no solution!

Which harddisk supported by T43 is fast, reliable, has at least 5400rpm and 80GB of space?

Thanks for ideas.

2010 wrote:Hi,

Which harddisk supported by T43 is fast, reliable, has at least 5400rpm and 80GB of space?

check out this link
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... MIGR-41008

scroll till section II Supported HDD.

A few days ago I moved the Seagate drive to the ultrabay slim until I get a replacement harddisk from fujitsu. Now there are no more errors about DMA related problems and with file corruption!
Conclusion: Never ever use ths drive with this combination of chipset and PATA/SATA bridge. (I do not use Windoze, but this problems most likely are OS independent.)

Help please
I'm afraid I'm very much a beginner with PCs, I've been using Macintosh for many years.
I have replaced my 40 GB hard disk on my T43 with a new Hitachi 100 GB disk. I cloned the disk using the second hard disk adapter for the Ultra Bay. Everything seemed to be going very smoothly but upon physically switching the two drives the computer still thinks I've got a 40 GB hard drive instead of the hundred gigabyte I have replaced it with.
Could somebody give a beginner a hand and tell me how to get the computer to recognise my larger hard disk.
Many thanks
Interestingly there is no error message on startup but I is soon that will starts as soon as I tell the computer I have got the larger disk.
Cheers John

This should probably be moved to a new thread.

It sounds like your clone software made an EXACT clone, and created a 40GB partition on your 100GB drive.

If you go under Control Panal>Administrative Tools>Computer Management>Disk Management.

You'll probably see your 100GB drive with a ~36-40GB primary parition, with another ~55+GB of unallocated space. You need a program that can dynamically merge the current 40GB parition with the 5xGB of unused/unallocated space.

A program like Partition Magic should be able to do that.

AFAIK, there is no way to non-destructively resize the parititon using just windows (except a clean install).

Thanks JHaislet
Your diagnosis is spot on. Thanks to your help. I'm still not quite sure how to fix the problem without buying the software. I can physically swap with the 2 hard drives back and repeat my cloning process, but I don't remember any option that enabled me to preserve the full drive size.
It seems unusual that the IBM program doesn't offer the option of cloning to a larger drive.
Thanks the your help anyway
cheers John

You don't need to buy partition magic for some very simple partition resizing operations. Download a SuSe 9.x live CD image and burn it. Restart with this CD and browse to the admin tools dialog and there is a link somewhere for resizing harddisks. I've used it loads of times. You will probably find that the same tool is included with loads of linux live distros. BTW it is a little tricky finding the right section where this tool is located. I restart with my CD and write down the exact location and post later.

Having said all this partition magic is a great tool if you are into dual boot systems

Thanks seabeam
I found a utility section in the ibm clonining software and tried again but I now have 18 partions ! So I am still stuck.
Cheers john

Here's the link to download the SuSe live DVD:
http://ftp.iinet.net.au/pub/suse/Suse/i386/live-cd-9.2/
SUSE-Linux-9.2-LiveCD-KDE.iso
SUSE-Linux-9.2-LiveDVD.iso

Here's the instructions to find the partitioner which will allow you to resize your NTFS partition:

NB Restart your computer after every repartitioning operation otherwise the partitioner gets confused:

1) Click green suse circle where the XP start button is usually located
2) Click on "Control Center"
3) Click on "YaST" in LHS panel

OR

1) Click green suse circle where the XP start button is usually located
2) Click on "System"
3) Click on "YaST"

In YaST
1) Click on "System" in the LHS panel
2) Click on "Partitioner" in the RHS panel

Thanks seabeam
Cheers John

John, I would delete all those extra partitions using the XP Disk Admin tool before using the linux (kde) partitioner to resize the NTFS partition

Good luck

split from: Firmware Problems with Seagate 100g Drive on T43

Thanks to all those that helped. I coudnt get linux to boot so I spent the money on partion magic and now everthing works with 100Gs available (and no error message)
Thanks John