T42 with a SATA ultrabay and a 500GB Seagate Momentus XT

[innuend0]

Hello thinkpadders,

After spending days searching for information, i have to give up, and just ask you..

I want to upgrade my T42 with a first generation 500GB Seagate Momentus XT hybrid hard disk drive. This one uses 4B of flash and it's possible to configure it so that his SATA interface is limited to 1.5GB/s. The hard disk will be located in an ultrabay slim SATA.

I didn't find anyone saying that it works on a T42. The only person that you can find on google is a german guy saying that the performance was limited to 33MB/s on his computer (but he didn't used the 1.5GB/s compability trick...)

It would be even better if i can use a Momentus XT 750GB with 8MB of flash, but it seems impossible to limit the speed of its SATA interface to 1.5GB/s


Can anyone tell me if this will work or not? Why?
Is there any limitation about the hard disk drive size?


PSs:
*I have a T42 - 2373
*I dont consider using a SSD instead
*My machine will run Linux as a base OS in the really near future; but for the moment it runs on Windows
*It doesn't seems to play any role to use a genuine IBM ultrabay slim or an "ebay" one. If you read the following thread you will also come to that conclusion:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=58974

Thanks a lot, a lot for any answer !

[RealBlackStuff]

Your T42 cannot take a SATA drive, other than using an Ultrabay SATA adapter for a 2nd hard disk, instead of your CD/DVD drive.
The largest hard drive that will fit (and is available) in the regular hard disk bay is a 320GB PATA drive, such as the Western Digital Scorpio Blue 320GB.
If you want SATA as your main drive, you need another laptop ( such as T43, T60, T61 and newer).

[innuend0]

Hello RealBlackStuff,

This was already clear to me.
But it's not true that the maximal drive i can use is a 320Gb.
It is possible to use a bigger drive, as some others already did. Take a look on internet.

[innuend0]

My above assumption is a bit too "much". I mean it's probably no that true:

What I know:
* A German guy used a Momentus XT 500Gb in his T42, and it worked.
* "rkawakami" used a SATA Momentus 500Gb on a T23 ! See here:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 53#p633853
* He also used a SATA Seagate 500Gb and a SATA Seagate on his A31p. See here:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 47#p640647

-- I will edit this post later to put additional informations below here. --

Okay... here we are:

Why should there be any maximal hard disk size limit?
- Some people told about a chipset limitation... so let's dig into the topic:
* The T23 uses an Intel 82801CAM chipset, known as an "Intel ICH3-M I/O Controller Hub " See http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Intel_82801CAM
* My T42 uses an Intel_82801DBM chipset, known as an "Intel ICH4-M I/O Controller Hub". See http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Intel_82801DBM

If the only problem would be a chipset limitation, I will really doubt that an ICH-3 chipset can support a 500Gb hard drive but an ICH-4 not!

[Tasurinchi]

The 320GB limit RBS is saying refers to the regular drive bay only, since the biggest drive currently in the market is 320GB Western Digital. This limitation should not apply to the Ultrabay Adapter AFAIK.

[RealBlackStuff]

I don't know what you edited in your first post, but your question was not as clear when you first posted.
The Ultrabay is slow IDE/PATA, and has remained slow IDE/PATA until the T400 and newer machines, which now have a SATA interface in the Ultrabay.
There is no way to run an Ultrabay adapter in a T42 at even SATA-I speed.

If you read my post again, I stated that the largest PATA HD is 320GB.
I did not indicate any limit for SATA drives, but AFAIK the largest 9mm 2.5" SATA HD is currently 1TB (Samsung M8 and WD Scorpio Blue).

[innuend0]

First thanks a lot for having read my original post again. Thanks also for your answer.

I don't know what you edited in your first post, but your question was not as clear when you first posted.

English is not my mother tongue. Sorry for beeing not clear. (I almost changed nothing)

The Ultrabay is slow IDE/PATA, and has remained slow IDE/PATA until the T400 and newer machines, which now have a SATA interface in the Ultrabay.
There is no way to run an Ultrabay adapter in a T42 at even SATA-I speed.

I understand know what confused me or what confused you:
With Ultrabay i meant the "Ultrabay SATA adapter for a 2nd hard disk", not the Ultrabay interface itself!

If you read my post again, I stated that the largest PATA HD is 320GB.
I did not indicate any limit for SATA drives, but AFAIK the largest 9mm 2.5" SATA HD is currently 1TB (Samsung M8 and WD Scorpio Blue).

Great! Thanks

[ajkula66]

What RBS was referring to is the fact that UltraBay in T4x/T6x series is PATA, and operates at PATA transfer speeds...regardless of what is installed...

So while one can install a SATA HDD in the UltraBay, the transfer speeds are locked into PATA/IDE realm.

[innuend0]

I think my question is now solved. Thanks a lot people.
I will buy a Momentus XT 500Gb and an Ultrabay SATA Adapter.

I would prefer to buy the 750Gb version, but it seems impossible to set it to 1.5Gb/s ... sad.

Another question aside:
May someone confirm that if a let's say 1000Gb PATA drive was available, it will work in a T42?

This may be a relevant question in the future, as some people are using old laptor as small storage server. It's also interesting for future big SDD in 1.8 format. SATA 1.8 drive exist also 320Gb version, and this may change. So, some people may use it in the regular bay, with a SATA to PATA adapter of course.

[Tasurinchi]

May someone confirm that if a let's say 1000Gb PATA drive was available, it will work in a T42?

I doubt that manufacturers will invest money in developing new PATA drives, but who knows? Hypothetically, IF some manufacturer wold build 1TB PATA drives with the same IDE connector AND these are 9.5mm high, then yes, it would work (still speaking about the regular bay).

[cadillacmike68]

I have a T30 (actually several T30s) which are even OLDER than T42s. I have sucessfully used a WDC SATA 500GB HDD in the ultrabay with a Utrabay 2000 SATA tray. I have not tried to use this as a boot drive, just ad a second HDD in the ultrabay. While IBM never made a SATA HDD tray for the Ultrabay 2000, there are two 3rd party makes that make the trays, and the one i bought works fine. IBM & Lenovo made purpose built Ultrabay Slim HDD trays that will let you put a SATA HDD in your T40 series, but you can't put one in your primary (internal) bay.

I don't know what transfer speeds it is using, haven't measured it and don't care. I didn't DO anything other than slap the HDD in the machine, turn it on and partition & format ithwith DIAKPART. But I'm pretty sure you are NOT going to get any SATA drive transfer speeds in a T40 series or older. SATA drives will work in these machines with the correct HDD tray, but as RBS states, they will operate at the system's internal PATA based speeds.

No disk maker is ever going to make a newer higher capacity HDD than the current WDC Scorpio blue 320GB units. I wish they would but it isn't going to happen.

As for brands, I prefer the Hitachi Travelstar series, available in both 5400RPM and 7200 RPM. They are up to 750GB - SATA only.