HD Bracket Wierdness

[mahyar]

I bought a T42 (2373-4YU) from a guy who thought it was broken. I ran some tests with it in knoppix and the HD was dead and the casing was missing a few screws, but otherwise it was in good condtion. I think the reason why the hd was dead is because the hd wasn't installed properly when he got an upgrade.

The way the bracket is set up is that if you actually attach the hd to the bracket, the hd doesn't go in compeletly (even though the bracket smoothly lines up with the edge of the thinkpad). You have to remove the bracket from the HD for the hd to even reach the connector pins. The bracket is a different texture from the rest of the thinkpad (even though I compared it w/ a friends T43 bracket and they look exactly the same shape wise) so I'm somewhat stuck on where to go to get this small part or just how to attach it properly. Ideas?

img]http://img521.imageshack.us/img521/7250 ... pl7.th.jpg[/img]
img]http://img111.imageshack.us/img111/6011 ... hl7.th.jpg[/img]

[GomJabbar]

I have a T42 and I installed an aftermarket hard drive using just the end piece, without the cage. I don't think using the cage part would make any difference. I did notice that the label portion of the hard drive faces downward, and if you don't use the cage piece, you need to turn the ThinkPad upside down, so that the pins line up correctly - otherwise you could be one row of pins off.

Regarding your problem: could it be that someone disassembled the ThinkPad and the connector the hard drive plugs into is not in its proper location, or is loose inside the ThinkPad?