T43 harddisks with NO cache ?

[Blueberry]

Hi everyone, I'm from Hamburg/Germany and this is my first posting here...
I've used the search - option but I didn't find anything regarding my question...

We have a few new T43 notebooks here in our company (model type 2669 with 80 GB harddisks) and while I was checking one of the harddisks with the drive fitness test of Hitachi I noticed that the test was indicating that there's no cache installed with the harddisk. I used several other tools and all of them said : no cache.
In this case it is a Toshiba MK8032GAX harddisk...
I remember a few months ago Lenovo had some troubles with the 1.8" HD in the X41 Tablet PC series - no cache.

Has anyone here in the forum some information for me? I contacted Lenovo Germany but I haven't got any info from yet.

Thanks,

Blueberry

[cmarti]

Here are the specs for your drive:

MK8032GAX
2.5" HDD 80GB*

Key Features Specifications Support Related Items

80GB capacity
Rotational Speed of 5,400rpm
Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) motor drive
9.5mm High
12ms Average Seek Time
ATA-6 Interface
100MB/sec Transfer Rate
8MB Buffer <-------Yes it has cache!

[Blueberry]

Here are the specs for your drive:

MK8032GAX
2.5" HDD 80GB*

Key Features Specifications Support Related Items

80GB capacity
Rotational Speed of 5,400rpm
Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) motor drive
9.5mm High
12ms Average Seek Time
ATA-6 Interface
100MB/sec Transfer Rate
8MB Buffer <-------Yes it has cache!

Hi and thanks...

well, I'm pretty sure that in general these drives will have some cache... but I'm worried 'cause all my tools are showing nothing so maybe they are simply build wrong?!

[DIGITALgimpus]

If the cache chips were bad, they typically malfunction bad. My guess is that there's some sort of driver missing (Intel 915 chipset drivers perhaps?)

[cmarti]

well, I'm pretty sure that in general these drives will have some cache... but I'm worried 'cause all my tools are showing nothing so maybe they are simply build wrong?!

Another option would be testing the drive inside an external enclosure conected in another computer.

Do you have and enclosure?

[christopher_wolf]

Here are the specs for your drive:

MK8032GAX
2.5" HDD 80GB*

Key Features Specifications Support Related Items

80GB capacity
Rotational Speed of 5,400rpm
Fluid Dynamic Bearing (FDB) motor drive
9.5mm High
12ms Average Seek Time
ATA-6 Interface
100MB/sec Transfer Rate
8MB Buffer <-------Yes it has cache!

Hi and thanks...

well, I'm pretty sure that in general these drives will have some cache... but I'm worried 'cause all my tools are showing nothing so maybe they are simply build wrong?!

Welcome to the Thinkpad Forums

Alas, I am afraid that your tools aren't picking up the cache size due to the special hardware and firmware used. The T43s access their HDDs via a SATA controller, but the HDDs are PATA; therefore, a SATA-PATA bridge and modifications in the firmware, mostly system-side, have to be used. It has been reported that certain X41s exhibit the same behaviour of having the utility report zero-cache because they have a similar SATA-PATA setup. The R52 is, theoretically, supposed to behave the same way as the T43s and the X41s in this regard, not suprising since the R52s share almost exactly the same system board with the T43s. The tools simply haven't been built with the ability to detect the bridge and the modified data it reports for the cache; either that or their tests to measure the cache are rendered ineffective due to the special handling procedures of the SATA-PATA bridge. Note, however, that this doesn't affect anything else; neither HDD operation nor SMART attributes.

Don't worry, nothing is wrong with your T43s.