t41 Ultrabay Slim *SMALL PIC*

[adona2]

Hi all

I want to buy a ultrabay slim to place in it a 2º hdd in my t41. I´ve been reading a lot of posts here and i can´t decide if cuold be better a sata ultrabay o an ide ultrabay. Sata ultrabay is gonna give me more reading hd velocity? Do you have experience whit sata 2º hdds? any problem whit them? Now is cheapier an easier to find a sata hd than a ide hd

Another cuestion is: Searching in ebay i´m finding a lot of diferents seller with differents prices for the same article, i read here that some of this seller ofers non cuality ultrabay devices, so i will appreciate if anyone of you could tell me experience whit this, a if you can recomend me serious ebayer even if the price is higer

Thanks in advance, Best Regards

[lukee]

Hello, I just ordered Ultrabay SATA HDD caddy for my T43. I am not sure if is possible to use SATA drive in caddy in T41, because T41 doesn't have SATA controller (correct me if I am wrong).

Properties of SATA caddy: you can install any SATA HDD with any capacity you want (500GB no problem), interface is fast, real velocity depends on drive velocity. There are also very fast drives for SATA interface on market.

Properties of ATA caddy: you can use older HDD's, maximum 2.5" ATA HDD's capacity is 320 GB. Fastest's ATA HDDs reaches about 60 MB/s real transfer rate.

I would choose SATA caddy, if your chipset supports it, because it is investment to future: caddy will work in T6x series also and SATA 2.5" HDDs are on market for very reasonable prices and many capacities.

[schen]

Hello, I just ordered Ultrabay SATA HDD caddy for my T43. I am not sure if is possible to use SATA drive in caddy in T41, because T41 doesn't have SATA controller (correct me if I am wrong).

Properties of SATA caddy: you can install any SATA HDD with any capacity you want (500GB no problem), interface is fast, real velocity depends on drive velocity. There are also very fast drives for SATA interface on market.

Properties of ATA caddy: you can use older HDD's, maximum 2.5" ATA HDD's capacity is 320 GB. Fastest's ATA HDDs reaches about 60 MB/s real transfer rate.

I would choose SATA caddy, if your chipset supports it, because it is investment to future: caddy will work in T6x series also and SATA 2.5" HDDs are on market for very reasonable prices and many capacities.

I've used both PATA and SATA UltraBay-Slim caddies in T42s as well as T43s. The hard drive is a Hitachi HTS723232LSA360, 7200rpm, 320Gb. It's a non-issue. They both have to "bridge" to the controller in the machine and there-in lies the limitation in throughput, so the capabilities of the drive itself isn't as relevant as it would be otherwise.

[ajkula66]

I actually installed a SATA UltraBay Caddy in my T42p and was able to access it, so it must have some "mini-controller" inside that acts as a SATA-to-PATA converter.

[JPOESQ]

Hi all

I want to buy a ultrabay slim to place in it a 2º hdd in my t41. I´ve been reading a lot of posts here and i can´t decide if cuold be better a sata ultrabay o an ide ultrabay. Sata ultrabay is gonna give me more reading hd velocity? Do you have experience whit sata 2º hdds? any problem whit them? Now is cheapier an easier to find a sata hd than a ide hd

Another cuestion is: Searching in ebay i´m finding a lot of diferents seller with differents prices for the same article, i read here that some of this seller ofers non cuality ultrabay devices, so i will appreciate if anyone of you could tell me experience whit this, a if you can recomend me serious ebayer even if the price is higer

Thanks in advance, Best Regards

A SATA drive will not work in a T41p; it's IDE only. But, I can tell you from experience since I have several, the ultrabay slim with an IDE drive works just fine.

[ajkula66]

JPOESQ wrote:

A SATA drive will not work in a T41p; it's IDE only.

Have you actually tested a SATA UltraBay adapter in your T41p? It makes absolutely no sense to me that it wouldn't work in T41/p when it does work in a T42p...

[JPOESQ]

Have you actually tested a SATA UltraBay adapter in your T41p? It makes absolutely no sense to me that it wouldn't work in T41/p when it does work in a T42p...

No, I never wanted to risk damage. IDE is a parallel interface with a different pinout than SATA, which is a serial interface. I would be suprised if the controller in the T41p will handle both, but I suppose that it's possible. If so, I suppose that the SATA UltraBay adapter would have to take care of the pinout difference. But, since the T42p used IDE drives, it you have SATA drives in the machine then I'm mistaken.

[ajkula66]

The thing here is that the adapter itself has IDE interface (going into the machine) and SATA on the outside (taking the appropriate drive), so I don't think that there's much for our vintage T4xs to digest..I presume that there's a small converter chip in the adapter itself but haven't really opened it up to look... so I might be wrong on that part myself...

[JPOESQ]

The thing here is that the adapter itself has IDE interface (going into the machine) and SATA on the outside (taking the appropriate drive), so I don't think that there's much for our vintage T4xs to digest..I presume that there's a small converter chip in the adapter itself but haven't really opened it up to look... so I might be wrong on that part myself...

I stand corrected! I had no idea that there was a SATA to IDE adapter in the SATA UltraBay adapater. That's great to know.

[ajkula66]

The key thing to remember here is that the media bays on both T4x and T6x are IDE...hence the media drives are interchangeable, although the hard drives in the main bay are not.

My ultrabay adapter is a cheap Chinese knock-off, but does what I need it to - extend the storage capability of my "desktop" T43p...

[RealBlackStuff]

And this is a picture of the electronics such as can be found in these HD adapters.
This one shows the Ultrabay Slim IDE connector on the left.
The board with the SATA connector looks very similar (no pic found).

[kge420]

I have just added a pata drive to the ultra slim bay. I was considering sata interface but the drive bays were 3x the cost and I wanted to use an old 80gb pata drive I had for MP3 storage and nothing else. My choice in the future will definitely be a sata drive and enclosure due to the cost per gb and availability of the sata drives.
I don't know if a sata drive in this use would have a faster read/write time due to the older components it must deal with in the machine. I'm not sure of this though, just an assumption.

[adona2]

Really thanks for your opinions
Regards

[Norway Pad]

One thing worth noting here is that the UltraBay adapter for the T60 will also fit in a T4x. I bought a T60 SATA adapter, and after removing a small plastic tab, it fits my T42 and T43. It doesn't line up 100% when used in a T4x, but you have to tilt the machine on it's side see to actually see that. So if you are considering upgrading to a T60 sometime soon, the T60 adapter and a matching SATA drive can be worth buying. Then you can use the adapter and drive in your next Thinkpad. The SATA drive can even be swapped in as your T60's primary hard drive.

[lukee]

And this is a picture of the electronics such as can be found in these HD adapters.
This one shows the Ultrabay Slim IDE connector on the left.
The board with the SATA connector looks very similar (no pic found).

I was think some time ago about modification of old UltraBay Slim DVD-ROM drive which was broken to re-build it to ATA HDD adapter, so without this piece of electronics it's impossible, right?

[4ckatro]

And what about this?

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... K:MEWAX:IT

Is it work in T42 laptop?
The seller said in his description it will work.
And if i buy this hd:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... K:MEWAX:IT

Will it work for 2nd hd?

Robert

[Mike Blake]

Searching in ebay i´m finding a lot of diferents seller with differents prices for the same article, i read here that some of this seller ofers non quality ultrabay devices, so i will appreciate if anyone of you could tell me experience whit this, a if you can recomend me serious ebayer even if the price is higher

One thing I've noticed when searching on eBay is that sometimes the range in prices is more apparent than real. I found once that the prices of one thing I wanted all came to within a few dollars of each other when you factored in how high or low the shipping was!

[RealBlackStuff]

@4ckatro:
both adapter and hard disk will work fine in your T4x.