t43p and single drive in SATA ultrabay slim enclosure

[FrankL]

I'm going to buy a second hand Thinkpad T43p this friday, and I've got an important question before doing so:

I've read that non-thinkpad drives will boot with an error message and may cause instabilities in the OS. On thinkwiki.org it's also mentioned that these problems can be circumvented by putting a HDD in an ultrabay slim adapter.

My idea is to buy a s-ata SSD and put it in an after-market ultrabay slim SATA enclosure, and use it as sole drive (remove the old pata one from the thinkpad), and install vista onto it.

Is this possible, will it circumvent the error 2010 problem and can I install vista onto it?

edit: oh, and do I need to pay attention to particular problems before buying the T43p? other than visible wear on the flexview screen and dead pixels?

[Johan]

Welcome to the Forum, Frank!

First thing: You will no doubt find the answer to many of your questions on this forum (and even answers to questions you haven't thought of asking, yet!) but I believe you may benefit the most from learning to use the very useful Search-function. Note the existence of the "Search for all terms" button, and also that you can restrict your search to parts of the forum (e.g. this, the T4x sub-forum). Since many issues have (of course!) already been discussed here, it is probably less likely that you may have the fortune to have very detailed replies to all of your questions... so searching yourself for the answers may probably reveal more useful information.

Next, to specifically comment your questions:

Things to know and/or check before/when buying an used T43/p:

I suggest you review e.g. the following threads:

Would u say that a used T42P is reliable ? + Things To Check

About to buy a Thinkpad T42 Type 2373-JTU - Help?

Advice for Testing a Used T60

T42p Dust inside the Display - with pictures

Problems with non-thinkpad option drives on T43 thinkpads

Lenovo Systems Toolbox (PC Doctor 5+)

About using a SATA (not PATA!) HDD in the 2nd UltraBay Slim HDD adapter:

For a start, see these threads:

T42, Ultrabay Slim and Hitachi Travelstar 7K200-200

Will T4x take the SATA HDD in Ultrabay Slim Adapter?

Modify T43 mainboard to enable SATA drives?

Using SATA Drive in ultrabay slim as primary master pointing to -->

How to boot from Multibay

T43 Won't Boot From USB CD Or Ultrabay CD

How to boot from Multibay

Using a SATA SSD in a T43/p?

I don’t know if anybody has tried this, but (PATA) SSD’s have been used in T42’s, as e.g. discussed in the thread SSD PATA 44-Pin for T4x

About T43p's in general?

Some users have reported T43p's to be a bit warm and noisy (fan noise), compared to e.g. T42p's, but there are both hardware fixes (modified fans and heatsinks) as well as software tools to improve this, but nevertheless if noise and heat is of your concern, you probably ought to search this (T4x) forum for more information about T43/p's, before buying.

Good luck with your hopefully soon "new" T43p!

Johan

[FrankL]

ah sorry about giving the impression that I haven't done proper searches before posting; I have (most linked threads were not new for me.

I'm aware of the heat issues, and have no doubt that it can be solved by some modding and undervolting/underclocking.

About the booting from SATA HDD in ultrabay slim as the only harddrive installed; I can't find any posts which give me a clear answer!

I've already investigated the alternatives, and if this works (booting from sata in ultrabay as only drive), then I'm set!

[TomKroscavage]

Yes, you can. I did it with a 7k100 sata drive, but did not see a speed increase over my 7k100 ata drive, so I now use my sata drive as a d drive.

[SteveS]

FranKL asked:

About the booting from SATA HDD in ultrabay slim as the only harddrive installed; I can't find any posts which give me a clear answer!

In the BIOS set up (accessed by pressing F1 at the start of boot), you can select the boot order. Be sure that the Ultrabay drive is inserted when you do this, or it will not appear on the list.

While I have never tried setting the BIOS to default boot from the Ultrabay drive, I have done this a few times by pressing the F12/F11 key during boot and selecting the secondary drive. I have done this for diagnostic purposes when upgrading drives.

I have found that it seems to work fine with a T40, but the occasions I have tired it with T43 machines (3 tries on 2 different T43s), I have had problems. The machine boots from the Ultrabay mounted drive, but Windows seems to be unstable, and eventually blue screens. I don’t know what the cause is, and I did not take the time to troubleshoot. In all cases, these were PATA drives, and I was booting from the Ultrabay adapter to save the effort of swapping the drive with the main one.

Perhaps other forum members can comment.

[HK]

I've been booting to FreeBSD in the ultabay for over a
year now. Using F12 and PATA drives in both the ultrabay and
the dock. My only problem was when I forgot that I had mounted
a drive in the ultabay from an OS in the dock and that left the
ultrabay drive not bootable because I lost the mbr.
I managed to fix that by installing again on a different partition.
My opinion is that it works great, XP has been very stable, and
so has BSD.
I've thought about using an SATA adapter in the card slot, but
don't know if they are available? Good Luck.