Non-option drive not working in T42

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thegraham · #1 Post by **thegraham** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 11:46 am

I've just bought a Seagate Momentus 5400.2 80GB hard drive for my T42 and it doesn't work. I've checked the hard drive out and it definitely works, but when I put it in the thinkpad I get an error saying "Hard drive read error" (no error number), or it just isn't recognised at all and it goes to the network boot screen.

I was wondering if this was an extension of the T43 non-option hard drive problem? I've got BIOS Version 3.20 (1RETDOWW).

Any ideas?

christopher_wolf · #2 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 11:54 am

thegraham wrote:I've just bought a Seagate Momentus 5400.2 80GB hard drive for my T42 and it doesn't work. I've checked the hard drive out and it definitely works, but when I put it in the thinkpad I get an error saying "Hard drive read error" (no error number), or it just isn't recognised at all and it goes to the network boot screen.

I was wondering if this was an extension of the T43 non-option hard drive problem? I've got BIOS Version 3.20 (1RETDOWW).

Any ideas?

Welcome to the Thinkpad Forums; no, that isn't an extension to the 2010 Error. What else happens when you put it in? Does the HDD activity light stay on all the time? Does the HDD spin but not seek with the heads?

thegraham · #3 Post by **thegraham** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 12:24 pm

What else happens when you put it in? Does the HDD activity light stay on all the time? Does the HDD spin but not seek with the heads?

The first time I put it in, I got no hard disk activity showing on the light, but I could hear it spinning.

The second time, the light was flickering on and off and I could hear the hard drive spinning and reading data.

I think got an error message saying "Hard drive read error. Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart".

JHEM · #4 Post by **JHEM** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 12:33 pm

Any shorting clips installed on the drive? It needs to be set as drive 0, usually no clips installed, but I'm not certain in the newer Seagates.

Regards,

James

thegraham · #5 Post by **thegraham** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 12:37 pm

Nope - no jumpers installed, but that sets it to master.

christopher_wolf · #6 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 1:25 pm

thegraham wrote:
What else happens when you put it in? Does the HDD activity light stay on all the time? Does the HDD spin but not seek with the heads?
The first time I put it in, I got no hard disk activity showing on the light, but I could hear it spinning.

The second time, the light was flickering on and off and I could hear the hard drive spinning and reading data.

I think got an error message saying "Hard drive read error. Ctrl + Alt + Del to restart".

Hmmm, that isn't a good sign; whenever the light either lights up continously or stays off continously, it usually suggests that the system is having a hard time reading the drive to begin with...as if there was a drive controller problem. Although the behavior did change the second time you tried it, so it also suggests there might be some interoperability problem with either the driver or the firmware on the drive, controller, or both.

JHEM had a good point about the jumpers, but I haven't seen jumpers that would do that on the most recent Seagate HDDs for laptops ; you could also try a LiveCD and see if, by the time the system boots from the LiveCD, it recognizes the HDD.

#7 Post by **GomJabbar** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 4:39 pm

If the hard drive is new, I believe it needs to be partitioned and formatted before it can be read. You should do this from the enclosure (location) where the hard drive will be used. If you put the hard drive in the main hard drive slot, you need to boot up a Windows Installation CD, then partition and format the drive. AFAIK, If the drive is in the Ultrabay Slim optical bay slot, or an external drive, you can boot up Windows on your existing drive and partition and format it your new drive from there. If you are cloning the drive, partitioning and formatting is not necessary, as the cloning process does this.

If the drive already has Windows on it, then it may be a geometry error ususally caused by the drive being partioned in another computer.

Hard disk geometry thread

thegraham · #8 Post by **thegraham** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 4:46 pm

The hard drive is/was new when I first inserted it. I then tried to install both Fedora Core 5 (failed unable to partition hard disk) and Windows XP (again failed). Both recognised an 80GB hard drive, but were unable to write to it.

I then inserted the hard drive into another machine and managed to install Windows XP onto the disk.

#9 Post by **GomJabbar** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 5:59 pm

Since your BIOS is at the latest version, I wouldn't think that is the problem, however you could try downgrading to an earlier version, in case there is a bug in the latest version, or in case Lenovo is beginning to put a white list for IBM/Lenovo branded hard drives in the BIOS code (I have not heard anything to this effect).

First I would go to Seagate's site and update the drive to the latest firmware version (if a newer one is available).

Anecdote:
FWIW, I had a problem with a desktop PC with an ABIT motherboard using a P4 processor with Intel onboard raid. I set the computer up with a raid 0 array. Sometimes the computer would not boot up, but after trying again, it would usually work. A little later ABIT came out with a BIOS update that addressed this issue with Maxtor SATA drives (which I had), and the booting problem went away.

icantux · #10 Post by **icantux** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 6:20 pm

thegraham wrote:The hard drive is/was new when I first inserted it. I then tried to install both Fedora Core 5 (failed unable to partition hard disk) and Windows XP (again failed). Both recognised an 80GB hard drive, but were unable to write to it.

I then inserted the hard drive into another machine and managed to install Windows XP onto the disk.

Another suggestion would be to initialize the disk using System Rescue, then format and partition the disk ONLY after the initialization process is complete. System Rescue is a free hdd utility found on the net (120MB download).

thegraham · #11 Post by **thegraham** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 7:00 pm

I've just tried again and found some weird things. I can't find where to download firmware updates from Seagate (says something about only OEMs doing them), so I downloaded their disk utility.

I plugged the hard drive in and there was no activity, but it slid in very easily rather than the expected resistance you feel when the pins go into the connector. I tried again and it seemed to have a bit more resistance (I don't get this, where did it go before if it wasn't in the connector - the pins aren't damaged or anything) and I powered up with the disk utility. The disk utility recognised the correct hard disk, I initialised it and formatted it (NTFS) and that all seemed to work fine.

Then I reboot. I get an error message saying

NTLDR is missing.
Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to restart

So its an installation issue now right? I can deal with that... I grabbed my nearest disk (which happened to be Vista Beta 2) and tried installing. I get an Error 80070017 - An error occured while copying setup files onto your machine. Well that isn't too great, but its a Beta could be a problem with that. I thought I'd give Fedora Core a go, but that was unable to partition my hard disk automatically, and when I did it manually it tried to install but died with an unhandled exception.

I'm stuck for ideas right now, so I plug my old hard drive in. It doesn't work. When I boot up, the hard drive light is constantly on and it goes to the net boot screen. I power down, reinsert the hard drive take the battery out put it in again a couple of times and then the machine boots fine from the hard disk.

Something isn't right here and I don't really know what's going on :S

christopher_wolf · #12 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 8:08 pm

thegraham wrote:I've just tried again and found some weird things. I can't find where to download firmware updates from Seagate (says something about only OEMs doing them), so I downloaded their disk utility.

I plugged the hard drive in and there was no activity, but it slid in very easily rather than the expected resistance you feel when the pins go into the connector. I tried again and it seemed to have a bit more resistance (I don't get this, where did it go before if it wasn't in the connector - the pins aren't damaged or anything) and I powered up with the disk utility. The disk utility recognised the correct hard disk, I initialised it and formatted it (NTFS) and that all seemed to work fine.

Then I reboot. I get an error message saying
NTLDR is missing.
Press Ctrl + Alt + Delete to restart
So its an installation issue now right? I can deal with that... I grabbed my nearest disk (which happened to be Vista Beta 2) and tried installing. I get an Error 80070017 - An error occured while copying setup files onto your machine. Well that isn't too great, but its a Beta could be a problem with that. I thought I'd give Fedora Core a go, but that was unable to partition my hard disk automatically, and when I did it manually it tried to install but died with an unhandled exception.

I'm stuck for ideas right now, so I plug my old hard drive in. It doesn't work. When I boot up, the hard drive light is constantly on and it goes to the net boot screen. I power down, reinsert the hard drive take the battery out put it in again a couple of times and then the machine boots fine from the hard disk.

Something isn't right here and I don't really know what's going on :S

Hmmm, sounds like there is a mechnical issue going on; if indeed the resistance changed like that and now the old HDD doesn't work in it, you might want to check the IDE connector and where it connects to the mainboard.

thegraham · #13 Post by **thegraham** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 8:11 pm

It might be a mechanical problem, but why is this hard drive working fine then?

christopher_wolf · #14 Post by **christopher_wolf** » Sat Jun 10, 2006 10:37 pm

thegraham wrote:It might be a mechanical problem, but why is this hard drive working fine then?

Oh, sorry; I read that as meaning that your old HDD now stopped. So it is just the Seagate that is having problems....Hmmmm.

thegraham · #15 Post by **thegraham** » Sun Jun 11, 2006 2:31 am

Oh, sorry; I read that as meaning that your old HDD now stopped. So it is just the Seagate that is having problems....Hmmmm.

Well after the Seagate was inserted my original IBM supplied drive didn't work for about 5 minutes until I'd remove and inserted the battery a couple of times. It now works fine.

Non-option drive not working in T42

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