Thinkpads Forum

I have just purchased a refurbished T43 which is fitted with a 40Gb hard drive. i would be interested to know if there is a maximum size limit if i fit a new hard drive as i would like to fit a larger drive in the future. i would be looking in the region in a size of at least 300gb. what problems am i likely to come across. my BIOS has no password protection. windows xp pro is protected using the biometric fingerprint reader and a password. if this mod cannot be done would i be better off buying an external 2.5'' external enclosure for a SATA drive that i can plug into the USB port. i could then fit a 1tb drive in the enclosure. to me capacity is more important than performance and speed. what make drive would be best?

Welcome.
The biggest available 2.5" PATA hard disk is 320GB, Western Digital's Scorpio Blue WD3200BEVE.
As it is a non-approved (by IBM) HD, the machine will throw an "Error 2010" at you, but you can press Esc to bypass it.
If you are sick of this Error 2010, apply TTav134's BIOS update: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=92115
Using a 2nd hard disk SATA adapter in the CD drive bay, any size 2.5" SATA drive can be used.
For the ultimate T43, you can modify this laptop to use SATA hard drives instead of the PATA hard drives.
See this: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=94308
Have fun

I honestly cannot see why IBM have decided to make life hard for their customers by making certain hard drives throw up an error code everytime they switch on their laptop. This is pointless because at the end of the day some geek is going to develop a non official BIOS to over come the problem. I believe this is done not just for security or warranty purposes but also to make more money.

As for my T43 the BIOS details are as follows:
BIOS version - 1.24 (1YET59WW) which is dated 7 November 2005 (2005-11-07)
Embedded controller version - 1.04

Also my BIOS has an option in the ''boot'' menus which relates to the hard drive. It reads
''Boot after message for HDD compatability without having to press <ESC>
The options are pause or continue. it is set to continue.

Does this option mean that if I fit a non compatible HDD that the error code can be bypassed by selecting the ''continue'' option

KRAZY KEV wrote:
Does this option mean that if I fit a non compatible HDD that the error code can be bypassed by selecting the ''continue'' option

Yes