Thinkpads Forum

I am trying swap out a 20 GB HD that came with the T30 I just purchased. The new HD is a 60 GB Hitachi that I was using on my T20. When I boot with the 60GB installed I get the Blue screen of Death. The T30 is apparently not recognizing the new 60GB drive. I tried putting the old drive (20GB) back in and upgrading the Bios Firmware but it still does not work. I tried the 60GB in another unit and it works so I know that the 60GB is not defective. Any solutions would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

OK, so you're saying that when the 60GB HD is in the T30 it will start to BOOT into whatever OS you're using and then freeze with a BSOD?

Or, you start the machine with the 60GB HD installed and it immediately freezes up WITHOUT attempting to BOOT?

Very important difference.

Have you gone into the BIOS with the 60GB HD installed?

If the 60GB HD has W2K or XP installed from your T20, you'll have to BOOT into safe mode and load all of the drivers, etc. for the T30.

The T20 and T30 are VASTLY differing machines and I would never expect a HD with an OS installed from T20 to cold boot after being installed in a T30.

Regards,

James

Thanks for your reply Jim. To be a little more specific, I am using the 60GB HD with XP Pro installed. I get the blue screen with white letters to begin with and then the system tries to reboot. The IBM slash screen appears followed by the choice of how I want to start (safe, normal etc.). Whatever I press it then returns to the blue screen.

I have to get this up and running without reformating the drive. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

I posted on your other thread where you were having trouble removing the 20Gb HDD and suggested the pliars. Anyway, as I said in that thread, you probably need to Fdisk and format the drive in Thinkpad you are going to use the drive in. If you use a 2nd HDD adapter and Floppy cable kit or USB key, you can "clone" the smaller drive to the larger one with Ghost. I do this once a week as a way to back up my entire drive. It works great and you'll have a 60GB drive that boots fine. PM me if you need a source for any of these things I mention here.

I have seen this problem before.
I think you need to do a "repair" install of XP.
You need an XP cd, boot to it and when given a choice of repair or install choose install. Then the next time it offers to let you repair it choose repair and it should fix the boot problem.

Dr Peter wrote:I have to get this up and running without reformating the drive. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

You'll need an XP Pro CD. Boot from it and when asked tell it you want to repair an existing install. Go into the repair console and either run "fixboot" or run "fdisk /mbr".

I don't think the automatic repair utility will repair this, but you can try it first if you want by selecting "R" at the prompt.

Good luck.

Regards,

James