T43p Caddy Question

[balagast]

I recently acquired a 15" t43p that had no harddrive. I have the harddrive from t42 (14"), and I found that when I inserted the harddrive into the t43p it did not pick up the harddrive. Is the caddy for the 15" laptops longer not allowing my harddrive to connect? As far as I know the laptop works perfectly fine. In fact I am typing this from a the laptop booted from a ubuntu live cd with no harddrive in the computer.

I wanted to see if this was the case before I try to determine if its another problem. I was unable to search the forum so to see if it was posted previously because it said the search function was currently not working.

Thanks.

[balagast]

I would also like to point out that the 15" did not come with a caddy, so I am using the caddy from my old 14".

[richk]

The cover is different. The legs that hold the drive are about 1/" longer

[balagast]

The cover is different. The legs that hold the drive are about 1/" longer

So I need to get a Caddy from a 15" ... that seems like a nice simple fix to try first.

Thanks

[BillMorrow]

FYI:
caddy = that metal tray the HDD is mountd within..
HDD Door = that black plastic thing that has "legs" that "snap" over the metal caddy HDD assembly..

are we clear so far.. ?

ok, the 14 inch HDD door is different as noted above..

BUT its all academic because all you need do to see if the thinkpad will boot is to puch the HDD (whether in a caddy or not) into the drive bay being sure that the bottom of the HDD is facing UP..
it would help if there are screws in the HDD as they will fit into the guides inside the drive bay..
the caddy and HDD door are not REQUIRED to see if it will work, but they are required if you intend to carry the thinkpad around from place to place..

NOW, while we do have an advertiser who sells these things (rather reasonably) just UP THERE, i probably still have the thinkpads.com caddy and i know i have some of those HDD doors as well.. well, at least one..

if you test the thinkpad with a naked HDD i would strongly advise putting a masking tape "tail" on the HDD so you can pull it out when you are finished testing it..

[balagast]

Thanks for that tip. I was going to try and shove it in there last night, but I was leery of doing that.

[balagast]

I put the drive in by itself, and it booted. I get an issue about the firmware though and have to hit Esc in order to boot every time though. Is this a typical issue because I am using a drive from an older thinkpad?

[richk]

It is a problem unique to T43 and R52 machines. See the post near the top of this forum. What is the drive model? Is it from another Thinkpad? Some can be flashed.