Thinkpads Forum

I bought a new Hitachi/IBM Travelstar 80GN ic25n080atmr04-0 (80 GB)
from a normal harware reseller and put it in my Thinkpad as an upgrade
to the old 80GN ic25n040atmer04-0 (the 40GB version).

Then I upgraded the fw using the FWHD41.iso successfully to a new
newer FW ADEA. The fw update programm completes without error.

Although checking the actual intstalled fw with the Hitachi Feature
Tool it turns out that the old FW AD4A is still installed.

I call IBM HW support, who is redirecting me to SW support,
who is telling me, I would have to pay for the service, even though
I have an 3-year-warranty extension (eService Pack), but support-man
was so nice to explain me the following anyway:

If I do not upgrade my harddisk with an original IBM spare part from
an IBM reseller, the HDD FW update is not supposed to work.
(Even though the actual update SW is not displaying a warning
or an error and ends with "HDD FW Updated completed successfully").

Now I'm getting really annoyed, because looking at the product no.
ic25xxxatmr04, you can assume you are buying the same HDD,
but in the end there seem to be some sigificant differences in firmware.


Maybe the next thing will be that a Samsung RAM module will prevent
you from updating to the most recent BIOS?


Does anyone know, how to teach the Hitachi HDD to behave like a IBM HDD?

Hello

Are you saying the new Travelstar isn't playing well with your R51? There really is no need to update the firmware on a HDD which will be used in a ThinkPad unless there's a specific need for it. Any Hitachi 2.5" HDD should technically work with a ThinkPad, although there are cases reported here and elsewhere that not to be the case with the T43.

To avoid any misunderstanding:
The Hitachi 80GN ic25n080atmr04 is working fine in my R51.

It is just the IBM HDD Firmware Update software which was fooling me,
by suggesting it was installing a new FW, even though in fact it did not do so.

Propably it is true that

there is no firmware update required for Hitachi drives to operate correctly.

citing Noel on the "non IBM HDD T43" thread:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... &start=210