Thinkpads Forum

Hello. I often use a 2nd Hard Disk Drive Adapter for Ultrabay Slim or a 2nd HDD SATA Adapter to load a backup hard drive in the ultrabay of my Thinkpads (X60 w base, T61). However, if I then want to use the ultrabay for something else, is there a way that the 2nd HDD Adaptor can be connected externally via cable to a USB port? Is this a proprietary IBM connector on the adaptor?

If this cannot be done, what cable(s) would I need to remove the hard drives from the 2nd HDD Adaptors and connect them (I have both PATA and SATA drives) externally via USB? I do have external mounting enclosures, but since I only do this occasionally, I'd rather not have to mount and unmount the drive from an external enclosure each time to place it back in the 2nd Hard Disk Drive adapter as discussed here: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 76&start=0

I've got one that looks like this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0373910322

and it works great. The one above seems to be $15 shipped worldwide. I think I paid $10-$13 shipped to U.S. several months ago, from a different seller, probably also from Hong Kong.

If every dollar or Franc counts, you might save a little if you look around or wait for a slightly better price than the above one.

The enclosures, if anyone wants one of those, are $10-$12 now, which is their "normal" low price I think. For example item 140408838769 or 180515486357. I have a similar one, and like it. Of course, it is a more permanent solution, good for a CD drive. I use the one from my first link (130373910322) with hard drives or compact flash "drives" when testing or backing up.

Thanks eyestrain. That's basically it. It just wasn't clear to me how to look for it. You don't happen to know what this connector is called? Judging from the description in the ebay listing, it looks like it a standard, non-proprietary laptop dvd/cd connector.

I take it that it will work with both PATA and SATA drives as the connector is the same for both.

I remember on my old Thinkpads having an IBM technician show me a two part IBM cable that would allow a Thinkpad floppy drive to connect via the parallel port thereby freeing up the ultrabay 2000 slot and I thought that it was a great idea. Once I had the part numbers for those two cables, it was easy to find it.

I'm pretty sure that the device works with the 2nd Hard drive adapter for Sata hard drives. Of course, it is still using PATA at the connector we're talking about. (The 2nd HDD adapter is an Ultrabay slim Pata adapter, that accepts SATA drives and converts to PATA.)

I think it is a proprietary connector to IBM/Lenovo.

Not sure if it has a public/common name, other than "Ultrabay slim" or "Ultrabay". Some other kinds of ultrabay besides ultrabay slim may also use the same connector, buy not Ultrabay 2000, that is a different, larger connector as you may recall.

There is a standard connector called "50 pin ATAPI" which is often used for CD drives, and looks slightly similar to the proprietary one, may cause confusion. Many small notebook CD drives use the 50 pin ATAPI connector. I have a small adaptor from IBM which converts 50 pin ATAPI into Ultrabay 2000. If you take apart an old IBM Ultrabay CD drive, some of them will have a similar adapter in them, probably how I got mine. This might even be true for some older ultrabay slim drives, I'm not sure. I don't believe any hard drives use this connector, so might only help in attaching CD drives or similar devices.

Well I purchased one of these connectors on Ebay for 10 Euro and it works just fine for Ultrabay Slim devices. However, it will not accept the IBM Serial ATA Second Hard Drive Adapter which has in addition to the Ultray Slim connector (female) a protuding piece of plastic on the opposite side that sits in the drive. See here: http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/-Y ... directlink

It looks like this plastic piece is there just to insure that the adapter seats in the bay properly (the plastic is not for any type of connection). So I can't see why one of these Ultrabay Slim Adapters could not have a simple cutout to accept this plastic piece and the Serial ATA Secod HDD adapter.

You can apparently break off that plastic piece.
See also this post: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=88467

That's a great catch, RealBlackStuff. It does seem like that plastic piece can't be there for any logical reason other than to prevent the Serial ATA 2nd HDD adaptor from being inserted into older Thinkpads.

When I looked at the ThinkWiki page on Ultrabays here http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/UltraBay , the T61 is still reported to use an Ultrabay Slim and the thread that you pointed out linked to another ThinkWiki article that indicated that the Serial ATA 2nd HDD actually converts from SATA to PATA. So now it all makes sense.

Success!

Thanks to you both, eystrain and RealBlackStuff, for your help. The instructions from the ThinkWiki article were correct. I carefully cut off the protruding plastic tab with a box cutter and now in seats perfectly in the adapter and the SATA drive was recognized without problem. That will be very convenient to have a way to temporarily mount drives for cloning when the drive bay is occupied.

Again, thanks to you both for your great suggestions.