Problems taking out HDD from T43 1875-DMU

[Artem]

I recently purchased refurbished laptop and decided to upgrade hard drive to 250Gb from 60Gb. When I opened HDD cover, it was not attached to HDD, so I had to open laptop completely to access HDD. I noticed that HDD was sitting in the bay too far and because of that it was not possible to attach the cover to it. After further investigation, it appeared that motherboard is smaller than what it is supposed to be. I think they put a newer board to an older body. They solved this problem for a DVD-ROM by attaching a socket extender (it looks like a small board that is plugged to the motherboard and then DVD-ROM is plugged to the extender itself). However there is no such extender for the HDD. I wonder if anybody experienced the same problem and if there is a way to order an IDE extender. I tried to search the web but found nothing similar to what I need.
Right now I solved the problem by attaching a thread to the HDD, so it could be pulled out by it. It works as a temporary solution but it would be nice to fix it the right way.

Thanks,
Aretm

[aaa]

The motherboard's the right size, that's an IBM extender. Same board is used for both 14 and 15" models. I believe there's a longer HD cover as well that can reach, apparently they gave you the wrong HD cover.

See here:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... 0110325790

Admin edit: Shortened URL to prevent horizontal scrolling

[Johan]

Welcome to the forum!

Your T43 1875-DMU is a 15” model. In 14.1” and 15” model T43/p’s (and also in T42/p’s) the same size motherboard is used. Because of this an ”interposer card” is used in the 15” models, to ”extend” the connections from the motherboard to the connectors at the side of 15” models. This interposer card is seen as part # 23 in the System service parts - ThinkPad T43, T43p. You may perhaps better see it (on page 146) in the Hardware Maintenance Manual (July 2005) - ThinkPad T43 (1871, 1872, 1873, 1874, 1875, 1876) . Since the HDD itself is the same size in both 14.1" and 15", IBM therefore uses a short HDD cover for 14.1” models and a longer one for 15” models (I didn’t know that until recently – as clearly evident from the thread WTB: HDD cover for 15" T42p!).

Could the explanation on your problem be that the former owner has mistakenly used a short 14.1” HDD cover in a 15” model? See an image of a long T42/T43 HDD cover for 15” models here and compare to the short 14.1” HDD cover here. Which one of the HDD covers were on your T43?

Edit: Aah, aaa beat me - we seem to have the same idea however, and that's very flattering for me, because aaa is a true ThinkPad-expert!

Johan

[Artem]

Guys, you rock!!!
Thanks a lot for the info, I'll get one from ebay.

[zdriver]

It looks like you have the 15" hard drive cover problem under control.... In reading your op, you mention the drive upgrade, I am guessing a 250gb WD drive. If you are not aware of the 2010 drive error with the T43 and non-approved drives, you might want to glance at the sticky - Problems with non-thinkpad option drives on T43 thinkpads
You can override the error and the drive will function just fine, but some people go with other drives for this reason. (eg : fujitsu 2120AH)[/b]